What you do with the sausage will be interesting, but I’m looking for recipes to make sausage. I got the grinder and sausage stuffing attachment for the KitchenAid for christmas and just got time to use it. I made delicious burgers over the weekend from shortrib meat. Now I want to make some sausage. I’ll be trying breakfast sausage first, with sage and savory, and maybe some maple syrup because my wife likes that. I can pick up perfectly good italian sausage at the butcher shop or grocery store, I’d really like to try other varieties, like stuff with lamb and spinach, maybe chicken, just about anything different. I’d really like a good beef sausage recipe, something that doesn’t taste like a hotdog. So please let me know what you’ve done, or just good ideas for what to make sausage from. And if you have recipes that use sausage go ahead and share those too.
This is all you need to know: Charcuterie.
Don’t be put off by the fancy stuff on the cover. They have many great recipes for various types and styles of sausage, and every one I’ve made have been great. It also goes into technique - how to grind, how important temperature is, etc. etc.
Very much worth the $$.
I’m digging trying to find where my recipes are. There’s a bratwurst recipe I’ve been tweaking forever, but I just can’t find anything on my computer. Oh, wait, thankfully, it looks like I posted it on the Dope before, so here it is:
Come to think of it, I think in the FINAL incarnation, I may have bumped down the mace to 0.15.
Thanks for reminding me that I own that book 
Now I just have to find it.
Fantastic. I love brats, and what I can buy locally aren’t great. That looks great, I might pepper it up a little, and I’d try adding some onion.
I saw mixed reviews online for the KitchenAid attachment but I didn’t have any problem with partially frozen meat. Cut right through it.
Yeah, for me I was trying to recreate the memory of Thuringer bratwursts that I had in Erfurt, Germany about 15 years ago. Those were served stuffed into sheep casings and quite long and thin. Best goddamned brats I’ve ever eaten. I have no way to compare my recipe with the real thing, but it comes close to my memory of it, and I researched dozens and dozens of recipes and went through about 10 revisions of my recipe tweaking the spice ratio before settling on one I’m finally happy with. I particularly remember a mace flavor to the one I had (not all recipes include mace), as well as caraway and marjoram. Many recipes also include garlic, but I don’t remember that standing out in the version I had (Thuringer Rostbratwurst spices vary a bit regionally.)
Go to food network and find Alton Brown’s Gyro recipe. Make sausages out of that. Oh, And buy a hand crank sausage stuffer from LEM. their relatively cheap, a breeze to use and you have better control of the sausage that comes out. The kitchen aid stuffer is really a pain and because it takes so long to stuff, the meat and fat get warm and result in mealy dry sausage.
That, or I was going to suggest cevapcici. You can make them out of all beef if you want to. I like beef + lamb the best, or even goat when I can find it. Do not omit the baking soda–it gives a unique texture. I usually add a squeeze of lemon and some grated onion to my mixture as well. Serve like you would gyro, with pita, sliced onions, other salad if you want, feta cheese, and tzatziki or labnah, and roasted red pepper pickles or chutney (ajvar). Yum yum.
From my husband’s neck of the woods, we make boudin from this recipe. If you’ve never had it, it’s a spicy natural-casing pork and rice sausage. Although you can make it with other meats, we’ve never tried. It’s good grilled, but you have to watch for the casings splitting open. I like to put them in a pan with an inch of water and a bit of oil, so they steam first and then brown the skins a little. Serve with your favorite brown mustard, or I like it with sour cream with a little hot sauce mixed in, but some people have rolled their eyes at that. 
Don’t forget the fennel seed!
As for recipes, one of my favorite go-to recipes whenever I was on my own was chunks of sausage, chunks of potato, and a coarsely chopped onion, salt and pepper. Fry it all up in a pan with some oil, and either eat it like it is, or topped with an egg or two. I still make it every so often.
All of these sound great. Chefguy your recipe sounds like something special. Did you mean chunks of sausage or some type of meat?
That Cajun boudin sounds really good too, I can take that places.
I’ll stick to the KitchenAid for now. I probably won’t be doing this all that often, but if I make a habit of I’ll definitely look into the best device.
Ha! I realize the recipe from Chefguy wasn’t for making sausage, but a dish to make from sausage. I have done something like that before, thin slices of potato sauteed with slices of sausage, onion, garlic, and peppers. I usually use slices of Italian fennel sausage and whatever other kinds of sausage I can find to mix up the flavors.
I do something that is a relative of that recipe:
Amounts are completely up to the chef. Into a large bowl, throw sausage chunks, Brussel sprouts (cut in half if very large), and cut-up potatoes, sweet potatoes, and carrots. Sprinkle liberally with herb(s) of choice - I usually use thyme but tarragon is nice too - and some salt. Drizzle with olive oil and mix thoroughly.
Put into a glass baking pan and add a good amount of home-made broth. Cover and bake in a moderate oven for a half-hour or so, then check to see if it needs more liquid/time to cook the veggies. When the veggies are fairly soft, give it a stir and return to oven uncovered so that things brown a bit.
This is an extremely easy way to get my vegetable-phobic family to scarf up awesome amounts of scary vegetables like Brussel sprouts and sweet potatoes.
Cevapcici are awesome. Note to TriPolar that they are not encased sausages–you just make little finger sausages out of them. They are somewhat similar to kofte kebabs (and you’ll note that the word “cevap” is derived from “kebab.”) Definitely agree on the baking soda–the sausages should have a bit of a springy texture to them, and that comes from the baking soda. Also agree on at least mixing it beef and lamb. I generally do either 50-50 beef-lamb or 50-25-25 lamb-beef-pork (or sometimes veal instead of pork.) But the lamb gives it a lot of flavor, and I always go with lamb making up at least 50% of the meat mixture. Serve with diced fresh onions, pita bread (or lepnije), and ajvar. You could also do kajmak, but for me, it’s ajvar that’s required.
I have made skinless sausages and sausage patties before. I just get mix seasoning with already ground pork and other meats. The flavor will be largely the same and new recipes are great to try out, but there’s also something special about sausage links the way they cook inside the casing, and then there’s the snap too. I’m still going to try that, I’ll just wait until I don’t feel like going all out on the grinding and stuffing. Even for stuffed sausages I’m thinking I’ll buy already ground meat and not have to bother with chopping and grinding phases. I guess I’m getting pretty lazy as an old cook, but I think I earned it.
And if anybody has a duck sausage recipe I’m all ears and already salivating at the thought of it.
Another fast recipe (not for making sausage, Tripolar):
A couple of Italian sausages, skinned and broken up
1 boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut up bite-sized
Olive oil for frying
1 15oz can white beans
1 15oz can chopped tomatoes
1-2 sprigs rosemary
Saute the sausage and chicken in oil until browned. Add the rest of the ingredients. Cover and simmer for about a half hour to an hour. Add some black pepper.
This is deceptively simple and very tasty.
I made breakfast sausage today, that was already planned as my first attempt. I followed a friend’s advice to use lean pork and bacon fat to get a drier sausage. 2 pounds of pork and 1/2 pound of bacon is too dry though, probably needs another 1/2 pound of fat. My next try I’ll add some bacon for flavor but use back fat. Fresh sage and some crushed red pepper did make it delicious though. I didn’t refreeze the ground meat, should have done that, it was difficult to feed into the grinding screw, just kept popping up around the plunger thingy.
Next week I’m looking at **pulykamell’**s Brat recipe.