Homemade Sausage Making

After my marathon sausage tour last week I had 2 lengths of casing left so I put them in salt water a put em back in the fridge.Yesterday the missus made a big batch of Chili. I woke up this morning thinking "Hmmm, I'm gonna try a chili sausage"

So, I mixed about 6 cups of chili, 2 cups of cooked white rice, and 1/2 cup soy protein concentrate hopefully to bind the mass a bit.


Stuffed into the last of the casing, hung to dry in the cool garage most of the day, vacuum packed and froze 9 links and kept out 3 for supper tomorrow. I plan on grilling them up and see what happens


They will be served up on a fresh batch of Chuckwagon's "Horsethief Hot dog buns" made into hoagie size.

I'll let you all know how I make out. Worst case, chili in a bread bowl

This is an interesting twist. I was talking with a lady at church this morning and she made reference to the pigs in blankets that I supplied for part of the food at a recent funeral reception. She ask if the sausage I used was cased. I told her that it was uncased. She said GOOD! because she doesn't like sausage casing. I wonder how many people share her feelings. Sausage casing makes a nice package but most of the hot dogs we buy are skinless.
It would make an interesting survey to make sausage stuffed in natural casing and in thin collagen casing, and in lamb casing and in no casing, which can be a problem if you wish to smoke the links. Can the links be hot smoked and the casing stripped? I know that there used to be a shallow cut line on hot dogs where the casing was slit and removed. This is all just a curosity.

nice job!!!!

Hi Dave Zac
Nice job with chilli sausages, it's gonna be interesting to follow the development of this project. Let's hope they don't explode , and to comment on Ssorllih's thoughts on the casings. It is possible to remove collagen casings if you put them to cool in cold water after smoking and then peel them after soaking for an hour.
Regards
Stickan

Thanks, Stickan. That is good to know.

Hi Dave Zac,

Very interesting, and I'd like to know how they turned out after you cooked or steamed them.

Chuckwagon's "Horsethief Hot dog buns" are on my list to be made soon!

Hey, hey, ol' pard,
Those are some mighty fine lookin' dog buns you've got there wrangler! And your sausages are second to none! Very professional. Rytek Kutas used to put chili in a casing too. His ol' "Uncle Abe" Carducci even won a national contest with chili sausage in the early 80's. Let us know how everything turns out.

Best Wishes,
Chuckwagon

The chili sausages were grilled over a medium flame. One of the fatter stuffed sausages actually burst on me during grilling. I was very surprised that they would have expanded as much as they did. The skinnier 'loose stuffed' sausage turned out the best.


The horse thief hot dog buns turned out very nice too. But I made them way too big as it turns out. One batch of dough made into 4 buns. I think you should get about 12 or so normal sized hot dog buns.

In the end, I was pleased but not as happy as my anticipation had hoped for. At this point I'm not too sure what I would do differently to "firm up" the sausage more. Maybe some egg white? When biting into the sausage it bursts open with a creamy chili texture.

Dave

Dave , I would say that your effort was a complete success. I also make my own chilli and sometimes when we are getting towards the botton of the pot it has cooked down and gotten rather thick. That's when I add a little water. Instead of adding water if I just let it cook down a little more maybe it would be about right for stuffing. My concern would be that without enough fat it might be the consistancy of chunky peanut butter.

That grilled sausage looks divine!
I agree with Ross that maybe letting the Chili cook down a bit would help.
And perhaps one can get away with the lack of fat (so to speak) because the Chilli is already cooked, one really just browns the sausage on the outside and gets the Chilli heated up.

On a trip through France some years ago I bought a German Frank from a road-side Food vendor. What the vendor did was push a warm spike into the roll length-wise on one end without protruding through the far end, then squeezed some condiments desired followed by the sausage.

With the Chilli sausage bursting open while eating this may work, because all the good juics would soak into the bread roll.

Dave, Try this method for your bread rolls. When you dump the dough onto a floured table spread it to roughly the width you need for the length of the rolls. Then with either a pizza cutter or a straight blade cut off pieces of about 3 ounces each and gently shape them into the shape you want for the roll. try not to fold spindle or mutilate it otherwise. lay them out on a sheet pan and let them rise. They should come out pretty close to the size of a short sub roll or a large hotdog bun. Of course if you want them longer than a hotdog bun then they have to be bit heavier.

ssorllih wrote:try not to fold spindle or mutilate it otherwise.

I guess you could tell I did some mutilating Ross? This was my second try at rolls and have never been taught the proper way. Thanks for the advise. I will try next time and will most likely have a better roll!

Dave

they were just nice looking little loaves of bread. Stretch the dough out to a good fat half inch thick maybe 3/4 inch and just cut the pieces loose and coax them into uniform shapes.

Bread making comes with an awful lot of handling details that work for the person writing the recipe but it is rather funny to know how little effort is needed to make good tasting bread.
I haven't tried it yet but I believe that you could dump the dough out and divide it into a half dozen equal pieces and drop it onto a sheet without any shaping and have perfectly acceptable bread. the loaves just wouldn't be pretty.

Oh you easterners! Shucks pards, on the ranch we just mixed the stuff in the horse waterin` troughs and stirred it with pitchforks. Eight or ten cowhands and horsethieves would then lasoooo each trough-full of dough and drag the things behind their horses into the upper pasture while shootin` in the air and hollarin` "yee-haw"! We dumped the troughs and had our specially-trained "dough-rolling horses" do all the work actually, while we drank Colorado Cool-Aid in the shade! Once those "dough-rolling horses" had dozens of huge dough balls spread around the pasture, we`d just start a stampede and have the cow critters run over them a few times to flatten and level the dough. The next step was easy. We`d elongate several large cookie cutters and strap `em onto the hooves of the cows. As they walked around in the flat dough, they would punch out perfectly elongated, bun-shaped, dough. Shucks pards, that`s actually where the word "cowpuncher" came from.

Best Wishes,
Chuckwagon

just be sure to pick out the raisins.