Anyone have a breakfast sausage recipe

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garlicbee

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Have tried half venison and pork with some maple syrup but they are very dense and dry

What recipe do you use?

How much do you squash in the meat or do you leave lots of gaps?

Thanks
 
Could be a few things:
1. Your ingredients might not be cold enough when grinding/mixing causing the sausage to lose its structure.

2. Your grind may be too fine for venison.

3. Your recipe may not have enough fat. My family likes a venison/pork mixture as well, so we use a 50% venison, 35%-40% pork butt, and 10%-15% pork fat (depending on the fat content of the pork butts).

Hope it helps.
 
Have been using pork loin with the fat and ground venison....
It sounds like not enough fat

Thanks for the tip!
 
I made a good Turkey sausage that was fairly simple, just ground turkey, some maple syrup sage and a healthy pinch of salt. Needed to saute with some olive oil though as it was very lean.
 
A friend gave me some venison sausage he made recently. Not so good. It was italian, but it was too too dry.

But it was better than the greek sausage he made from wild board. Funny, my son ate that up.

Sorry, I've only had mediocre luck with my sausage-making, I am not qualified to add anything here.
 
I love breakfast sausage. I also love bacon! I don't know what I love more, bacon or sausage.

I also love pork chops, ham, pork rinds and BBQ ribs. Wouldn't be awesome if they all came from one magical animal?
 
My recipe for breakfast sausage is nothing fancy or multigenerational or anything, but it's tasty.

1/4lb diced salt pork
1lb hamburger (from the family farm, it's 90% lean hence the salt pork)
1 t kosher salt
1 t freshly ground black pepper
1 t sage
1 t thyme
2 t light brown sugar
1/4 t rosemary
1/4 t nutmeg
1/4 t cayenne pepper
1/4 t red pepper flakes

It's not dry and I like it, although I suppose you could call it pretty dense. It packs a lot of flavor, just be very careful not to add to much nutmeg or it starts tasting like it's been mixed with apple pie.
 
Throwing more fat into it might not be the answer. You said you have gaps, right? You might not have established a good primary bind of the meat, and the fat you have, which is where you create a bond or an emulsification by working the meat and the fat together for a couple minutes usually with some liquid.

Have you read Michael Rulman and Brian Polcyn's charcuterie? He goes into great detail about how to achieve a good primary bind.
 
I would check out Ruhlman and Polcyn's Charcuterie, as Revvy mentioned above. I have used that book as one of my primary sausage making resources, along with a textbook from the CIA covering charcuterie and the cold kitchen. Dense and dry to me would mean first and foremost not enough fat. You need a good 30% fat to make a juicy sausage. To get good results with venison or other lean meat, I would use it 50/50 with some pork belly, or use some pork shoulder and pork back fat to make up the other half of the sausage. If you are making a straight pork sausage you can use all pork shoulder for good results. Overcooking can make a sausage come out dry an dense as it cooks out all the juices and much of the fat. Make sure you don't cook a pork or other red meat sausage past 145 or max 150 degrees, unless it has eggs or chicken then cook it to 160. Well chilled meat ground on a cold and very importantly sharp grinder will help keep the meat and fat bound in addition to a minute or so of vigorous mixing all the ingredients before portioning, shaping, or stuffing into casing. My sausage really improved when I bought a dedicated grinder and stopped using the attachment for my Kitchen Aid mixer. I will sometimes let a mixed sausage mix sit in the fridge overnight before stuffing into casings the next day. You could also try adding some dry milk powder or soy protein concentrate to help your sausage retain moisture. I usually only use these for sausages that will be smoked or cooked for a long time in a dry environment. Good luck with the sausage, I would just keep trying. Nothing works in the kitchen like trial and error with good notes and improving or changing each time you make a recipe.
 
Nah, I'm just a noob in this charcuterie stuff. I'm just sharing the one thing I've figured out so far where sausage making is concerned, that the right bind is important. You can have all the right combination of ingredients, the right amount of fats, cures, and liquids, but if it's not blended enough, OR blended too much, the texture is going to be not what you are looking for.

My first attempt as sausage making, when I was just trying to get the flavors right to capture the Spanish chorizo my family grew up on, even before I bought the casings and stuff and just rolled them in plastic and sous-vided them then grilled them, I under mixed everything not wanting to over work it. And it came out dry and kinda grainy.

My "real" ones came out pretty good texture wise, I got in there and worked it, and stopped when everything looked pretty integrated, I didn't go too far. But I think I hit the sweet spot.

I'm building a water stuffer this weekend. I did did have some issues with running it through augur again, and my reading shows that using a water or mechanical stuffer will maintain whatever consistency you make with the blend.

I noticed just now looking a some of the breakfast sausage vids on youtube, that they double grind the meat. They do all the meats and fats separately, then hand combine them with the liquid and spices, then run them a second time through the grinder before stuffing.
 
I use Penzey's breakfast sausage mix and extra coarse ground black pepper. I only use ground pork butt. Probably not the type of answer you were looking for, but everyone here loves it.
 
Traditional english breakfast sausage uses cracker meal to retain the fat and give it the unique texture. I believe in the UK they set a legal limit to the amount of cracker meal you could put in a sausage before you can't call it a sausage anymore. Something tells me it was around 10%...

Anyway, pork, fine cracker meal, salt, pepper, ginger, sage, nutmeg & mace.

I really don't like that style so I don't make it...but many people do.
 
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