Chicken Sausage Homestead style

Yesterday we spent the day Making Home Made Chicken Sausage and it turned out fantastic. Homemade chicken sausage is tricky, since you are dealing with chicken ( and not super duper ultra fatty greasy pork,, yum! heheee) its very easy to make chicken sausage that has an end result similar to sawdust, trust me I know, we made that variety 2 years ago ....
with a little trial and error we have come a long way in our sausage making....

what you need:
**a chicken or 2 or 3 or 4.. :)preferrably from your backyard. . The following recipe is based on 3 lbs of chicken meat./ about 1-2 chickens depending on breed etc...
** a Meat Grinder
** a sausage Stuffer
** sausage casing
**spices n extra fixins depending on what kind you want to make..

Step 1.. least favorite part.. butcher your chickens :/  this is my husbands Job
Step 2: Remove meat from the bone,, this is my Job. Be sure to add some of the Fat and skin into the meat as well, if you dont, you will end up with a dry sausage,,, I would say add 50% of the skin and fat from the bird.

steps 1 and 2 will take a better part of your day if you are butchering your own birds. Its time consuming, and labor intensive, but knowing it came directly from you homestead makes it all worth while.

SAVE the Bones if you want to make chicken stock later.

Step 3: Put the meat through the grinder. we use the biggest setting for the first time through

Step 4: add spices ( see recipe below)

Step 5: add Chicken broth or water.. I added chicken broth, we had broth simmering from a previous meal, and Ive read that broth is 100 times better than adding plain ol water.  I added about 2 cups worth to this recipe. This is also going to aid in keeping the moisture content in the sausage.

 

Step6: Attach sausage stuffer. now some grinders have sausage stuffer attachments, or you can buy a seperate sausage stuffer, we have both :). this is just a little plastic hicka ma doo, that goes on the end of the grinder... This is where we put the other attachment on to grind the meat up even smaller and then it goes directly into the casing.

 

 

You can make the links any length you want, you can twist and tie the ends when you have the desired length.
and Voila************ Homemade Chicken Sausage****** You can freeze or Pressure can your sausage.

Recipe for Bratwurst Style Chicken Sausage ( this is what we made)

3 lbs Chicken
1/2 Tsp All spice
3/4 Tsp Caraway seeds Crushed
3/4 Tsp Marjoram
1 Tsp Pepper
1 Tsp Salt
1 Tbsp Liquid Smoke ( be easy on this stuff, I hear its easy to over do it)
1-2 cups water /broth/beer , some kind of liquid. I hear beer is great to add!

 Recipe for Italian Style

5 lbs Meat
2tsp Whole Fennel seed
2 tsp crushed red pepper
1 Tbsp Salt
2 Tsp Oregano
2 Tsp Fresh Ground Black Pepper
1 Tsp Garlic Powder
( again I would probably add some kind of liquid if using chicken and not pork)

Recommendation: I personally recommend cooking these on the stove top. You could grill them, but again chicken sausage has a low fat content/moisture content so grilling them may dry them out,, but hey! give it a shot and let me know how it comes out :)



Happy Homesteading :)

The Cool Family
 
Oh,, dont forget to save the bones for Chicken Stock! Ill be canning some up this evening :)