Ground meat/sausage from old birds?

[Kris5902]

We don’t run our meat quite par frozen, but our walk in cooler keeps it at about 1degree Celsius, and we only grind once then hand mix, because re grinding it is so hard on the grinder. You’re 100% on with the beef fat texture difference, the only reason we occasionally use it instead is some people don’t eat pork for religious reasons, for our all beef sausages or improving the texture on the goat and venison for our Jewish and Muslim clients.

Also if your vacuum sealing the sausages, it really helps to lay them out on trays and par freeze them before bagging, they handle easier and maintain their shape when sealed. Our machine will flatten them out completely if we try to package fresh. Pork casing wraps much easier in paper as well. But I just prefer the more “Dainty” sheep casing for chicken. We really should have a sausagemaking thread somewhere here for sharing recipes and techniques.

 

[archeryrob]

I stopped with sheep casings. For one they are expensive!! I put 5# of breakfast sausage in the stuffer and the 1/2" or 5/8" tube. Latex glove on left hand and squirt from index finger to pinkie and lift across the end of the tube to cut it off. Then freeze on trays and seal in package size you would eat. Skinless breakfast sausages just start cooking frozen.

We individual freeze sausages too and clip wrap over and under pieces lets it so you can get single serving sausages out without unfreezing them all

Spaces for sausages, I can't make the top. Lay one done on it, next one over, next one on it and so on.
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[EggSighted4Life]

Hey thanks!

Do you use ground meat from old birds or young ones, or both?

We do both.

No rhyme or reason really. Other than using what we can... I also process my bantam birds.

 

[Kris5902]

Our grinder is this model, ancient but awesome. We do our breakfast patties like you do your breakfast sausages, but we mostly do brats and dinner sausages in natural casings. The chicken (IMO) and merguez really do need the sheep casings. We buy the ones on the folded plastic thingies (and now you can tell my husband is the professional and I’m just learning the trade ) and only use them for about six recipes.


This baby will flatten pretty much anything though, so pre freezing is needed when we use it for sausages and patties. Frozen patties in pic below are 5oz burgers, the breakfast ones are just 2oz. And come paper wrapped.

And yes, I have been enabling DH over the years and investing in our equipment as we could while working, with the goal of moving to the Farm and relying on his sausage making skill set for our personal income (as the Farm and Family Abbatoir/butcher shop doesn’t pay us When we work in it)

Really you should start small and practice the techniques to see if you like it. We prefer, and our customers also appreciate the stronger flavors of more mature birds in our sausages, and it’s a good use of otherwise slow moving (drumsticks) or less than perfect products for us (torn breast skin or a “utility” bird because it damaged its wing being an idiot in the crate on the way to the plant etc).

 

[Kris5902]

One other tip for linking up the sausages and I’ll stop going on, but this drove me crazy at first! If you are linking one at a time you have to twirl the sausage in an alternating pattern towards you, then the next link you twirl away, then towards and so on. As you get more used to it you can twirl in one direction but skip a sausage in between the ones you twirl. Forward measure one blank forward again. ^—^—^ your left hand on the left end of each arrow and right hand on the right end. If you try to do ^^^ you actually undo each one as you move on.

 

[archeryrob]

Wow, that's one of those wet pack vac seal machines (pricey) I got a VacMaster Pro 350 and thought I dropped a good dime, but not like you did!!

I tried the sausage twisting as you speak and I blow out casings. I guess I haven't got the trick to not over stuffing them. Hot dogs in cellulose casings too. I run out 6' in he casing and tie them so I can make a 3' string to hang in the smokehouse. The meat pushes back and slides more casing out, if not it would split.

 

[Kris5902]

Wow, that's one of those wet pack vac seal machines (pricey) I got a VacMaster Pro 350 and thought I dropped a good dime, but not like you did!!

I tried the sausage twisting as you speak and I blow out casings. I guess I haven't got the trick to not over stuffing them. Hot dogs in cellulose casings too. I run out 6' in he casing and tie them so I can make a 3' string to hang in the smokehouse. The meat pushes back and slides more casing out, if not it would split.

The machine is shared, it belongs to a chef with a small vegetarian (go figure!) burger company here, but it was a little too small and slow for his needs so he got a faster, larger one, and we trade space in our walk in freezer for the use of it.

It can be helpful if you have a hand with the manual stuffers then you can concentrate on the pace of the filling while your helper cranks slow and evenly. As to the automatic ones and the ones that you use directly on the grinder... I don’t like them at all for just that reason! It’s a practice thing, I’m getting better at it, but DH is the professional. I’m jealous you have a smokehouse! We want to build one someday... I really want to get into smoked and dry cured sausage. And prosciutto

 

[triplepurpose]

Yes! The richer flavor of older birds goes very well in sausage, and because you grind it and add fat the texture isn’t an issue. Also if making chicken sausage, and say your family likes skinless breasts, or you do a batch of meat birds and they get a little on the fatty side? (Oops) Save all of that, freeze it as you go then you can add it into your chicken sausage and it won’t be too dry. The key is adding as much fat as you can for chicken sausage. you want about 15-20% maximum fat in a sausage, you can go lower like 10%, but it won’t be as juicy.

It sounds crazy but chicken kale sausage... it’s bright green and delicious, and I hate kale! 2parts chicken to 1 part kale by weight, get the freshest kale you can, it is super easy to grow in most places. Chunk up your chicken and kale so it will go in your grinder (tear the ribs out of the kale just use the leafy parts) mix it up throughly with your spices, (salt, pepper, allspice, coriander,) then put it through the grinder, kale, spices, and all. When it comes out you want to knead it some until it’s kind of sticky (you don’t need to add water to this recipe because of the kale) load your stuffer and go. I prefer this one in sheep casings for thickness. You can also use this technique with cheddar and apple in pork sausage. All the flavor with no molten burn your mouth cheese pockets, thank you very much!



They are so worth it... as are small sausage stuffers! I don’t like the attachments that fit on the grinder for burgers and sausage though. At all. Remember, you can also make all sorts of other grinds, venison, goat, rabbit, most everything makes good sausage.

Get a decent grinder if you can, it will make you happy, and you can buy cheaper cuts from warehouse stores like bone in pork butts or whole legs and chunk it up and grind for chili, burgers, breakfast patties. Ground beef is usually cheaper at the grocery store though. (Old dairy cattle and beef breeders go here to retire)



This is actually not a bad attachment, if you’re only doing a small amount. They don’t always handle slightly tougher meats or kale like additions well.

And our Toledo grinder is fixed and running beautifully again, if anyone remembers my griping about the Lem we have as a back up in our Abbatoir from another thread (and generally geeking out about grinders)

I'm intrigued by the kale idea. We grow lots of kale, because our customers can't get enough of it. ironically almost 30 yrs ago my father couldn't give it away. but now... it's trendy! rofl

anyway, sounds good! thanks

 

[triplepurpose]

thanks everyone!

 

[Morrigan]

Our grinder is this model, ancient but awesome. We do our breakfast patties like you do your breakfast sausages, but we mostly do brats and dinner sausages in natural casings. The chicken (IMO) and merguez really do need the sheep casings. We buy the ones on the folded plastic thingies (and now you can tell my husband is the professional and I’m just learning the trade ) and only use them for about six recipes.

View attachment 1864733 View attachment 1864728
This baby will flatten pretty much anything though, so pre freezing is needed when we use it for sausages and patties. Frozen patties in pic below are 5oz burgers, the breakfast ones are just 2oz. And come paper wrapped.
View attachment 1864729
View attachment 1864730
View attachment 1864727
And yes, I have been enabling DH over the years and investing in our equipment as we could while working, with the goal of moving to the Farm and relying on his sausage making skill set for our personal income (as the Farm and Family Abbatoir/butcher shop doesn’t pay us When we work in it)

Really you should start small and practice the techniques to see if you like it. We prefer, and our customers also appreciate the stronger flavors of more mature birds in our sausages, and it’s a good use of otherwise slow moving (drumsticks) or less than perfect products for us (torn breast skin or a “utility” bird because it damaged its wing being an idiot in the crate on the way to the plant etc).

What an awesome set up! I like the idea of pre-shaping and freezing the patties. I've just been doing a one pound "ball" of sausage and then shape it into patties at the time we take it out and defrost it.

To make our sausage, we use a combination of older cockerels and a few CX chickens we let go to 12+ weeks to get some really big birds. The first time we added in pork fat, but now we just save all the skin and any fat from the chickens and blend that in with the meat. It makes for a leaner sausage, but still juicy enough (for my taste at least).