now tips for young players from a couple of amateurs
I preface this with all meats cuts being a course grind.
1. 50kg on a first attempt is fkn ambitious. esp without a proper stuffer. And we were fkn lucky the butcher actually minced it for us even though i said not to.
CAUTION: if you dont know meat and i mean really bloody kow your meats and what cuts are what dont get a butcher to mince it for you unless you trust the bugger. a lot of guys will try and pass off **** stuff as premium cuts minced etc which is why most people who make snags and salami mince their own. and once your making a huge amount its cheaper to buy half pigs etc so you get the ribs etc which the butchers will keep themselves and sell even though youve basicly bought most o half a pig by the time you buy 2 shoulders.
2. Fents is right. even the dedicated mincers dont stuff as well as a stuffer. my tefal was high powered and didnt have the best fitting nozzel for the skins (fat) and we got a lot of air. Brendos kenwood multi mixer benchtop thing didnt have the power of mine but a lot less air issues.
3. wet mixtures suck balls!!! the bockwurst we had to use my machine to force the stuff through. it was making butter from the cream in brendos machine!
4. raw chicken whilst not quite the same as a wet mixture is also a PITA but brendos machine coped.
5. this is a 2 person gig. 1 to stuff **** down the mouth of the stuffer and 1 to control the skins. we had 2 machines but could use both at the same time as its a 2 man job.
6. your place with stink (each to his own smell etc) of meat and spices etc. i loved it in the beginning. im growing tired of it. more to the point as my wife has taken over half the outside room as her work space im coping it big gtime about the smell.
7. its hard work but fun. we mixed our beer in there and had a few through the day to appease the beer and snag gods (obviously not enough as at times they spited us). But there i satisfaction at making stuff yourself and you can make stuff you just cant buy. wtf was the last time you saw knokwurst or bockwurst or chicken tomato basil snags?
we will be investing in a stuffer...and maybe making smaller amounts. actually i recon we might try and sneak in a nother salami batch before the end of winter. the calabrese salami is interesting. i posted all; our recipes in the sausage threasd but i post it here as well.
View attachment Sausage List June 2013 a.xlsx
NOTE: the chicken snag recipe we worked off used cooked chicken that was then minced. we ignored that and used raw chicken. so the 10 eggs for a single batch is for cooked chicken. we used 4 eggs total in a quad batch. add your liquid slowly and mix then add more. if it lookds too wet it might be. the other thing is that he recipes called for breat. we used 50/50 breast and thigh cause IMO thigh is nicer.