home made andouille sausage

I have been itching to try my hands on preserved meat for some time. However I have been reluctant to begin for the fear of indulging in a diet of cured meat; well too much meat for the matter. What push me eventually is the want for good quality products that are hard to obtain locally here in Portland, Oregon. I few months ago I acquired this sausage stuffing machine from Amazon. I have done a bit of research. Even for home cook that make sausage occasionally you want to invest in a good quality stuffer with solid construction. A cheap one will simply fall apart after a few use. This one has metal gears as well as mostly stainless steel construction.

I just spent close to a month in Asia. Having been on the road and living out of the suitcase I was very much looking forward to home cooking. In my weekly grocery shopping I pick up a piece of pork butt. At the time I didn't give it much thought as to how I will use it. Only later that I decided to use it for my first attempt in sausage making.

I have always been intrigued by chorizo as well as andouille. I have been wanting to try out the andouille recipe at nola cuisine. I have been following nola cuisine on and off for nearly 10 years and love his posts.

for the dry ingredients I just used what I have in my pantry

 this is the first time I use curing salt (in pink)

 there is about 2.5 lb of pork so it is perfect for first attempt, in case it turns out to be a flop

the pork is rough cut into large pieces and mixed with the dry ingredients, then left in the refrigerator a couple of days

i soak some wood chip to prepare for smoking

 two days later it is the big day to stuff the sausage; i bought this bag of hog casing

I have never handle sausage casing so mentally it was a bit intimidating. One of the hard part is not know how much casing i would need. I guesstimated 3 lengths should be enough.
the casings are preserved in coarse salt; you have to rinse off the salt before using them

 following the recipe i coarse ground one half of the pork and hand cut the remain into 1/4 inch pieces

 

in the last minute i had to run to the store and pick up a carton of skim milk power that serves as binder

I didn't know what to expect handling the what seemingly very delicate casing. It turned out they are very tough despite being so thin. I was very surprised how elastic they are.
here is one length of the casing - i chose to use the smallest diameter stuffing nozzle for the fear of rupturing the casing when i stretched them onto the nozzle

i was almost a natural - no rupture; the only short fall was the diameters are not uniform as it took me a few links to know how hard I can stretch the casing without rupturing them

 you can see the last few links have much bigger cross section

 here is one photogenic link

When the piston of the stuffer bottoms out there is still a good amount of pork left in the bottom of the stuffer cylinder. I reckon a good cook can stuff them into the casing by hand. I didn't want to meet this challenge so I saved them for cooking.
left over sausage pork

this is just an improvised pasta dish - delicious

there was enough sausage pork to make two meals

 

 i left the sausage in the refrigerator overnight to dry out the casing to smoke them the following day

On the following day, mother of nature would dealt me a challenge. We were hit by a blustery day when a cold front moved though the Pacific Northwest. As anyone that have done outdoor smoking knows controlling the temperature in a charcoal toy smoker is challenging enough even in a calm day. Smoking in 30 mph guests can ruin the whole batch.
my toy smoker

 i used a spray bottle of water to keep the charcoal from getting too hot

the reward of my hard work

 i could hardly wait for the sausage to cool to taste them

Not to toot my own horn, the result is one of the best sausage I'd ever have. It is full of flavor and very smoky. Smoking the sausage in such windy day cause the temperature to be too high and they experienced considerable weight loss. It is however no big lost as the sausages flavor is proportionally more concentrated.

There are a few things I would adjust/change next time:

• Make a huge batch to make the effort worthwhile - may be 15 pound at a time
• Increase the amount of paprika (i used smoked paprika)
• Increase the amount of dried chili
• Keep the hand cut pork pieces chunkier - I didn't for the fear of cogging up the stuffing nozzle
• I also have a much better handle that a little bit of casing goes a long way