Sausage Time!

[Alleged User]

Excellent...just the info I was looking for on the mixer. Real-life reviews from people who cook. Thanks so much, guys!
I may buy a refurbed one from KitchenAid'soutlet store. Might ease the blow a tad.

[caseydog]

Sausage. Big fan.

Now, about that mixer...I've been circling those KitchenAid stand mixers for quite a while, and keep talking myself in off the ledge. May I ask which model you have and how you like it?

I love my Kitchenaid mixer. I do have the meat grinder, but not the sausage stuffer. I sometimes grind my own burger meat. I have not made sausage, yet.

Get one. They are worth every penny. A real quality product, IMO.

CD

We don't have the meat grinder attachment but we love out Kitchenaid mixer. Well worth the money.

Mark, I only use mine a few days per year. You are welcome to borrow it any time. What I do is buy meat on sale in a big quantity, and trim it and grind it myself. I vacuum seal smaller amounts of the ground meat and freeze it. I usually grind sirloin, and the big advantage to doing it myself is that I KNOW for sure how much fat is in the grind.

It's also nice if you want to make a mixed grind, such as beef and pork and/or veal to make good Italian meatballs.

CD

[chorizon]

We don't do "single-use" appliances any more, they just take up space.

According to Alton Brown, there should be only one unitasker in the kitchen:

Sagely, sagely advice. Alton is a true rockstar, my favorite on the food network! "Unitasker", that's the word I was trying to think of!

What I do is buy meat on sale in a big quantity, and trim it and grind it myself. I vacuum seal smaller amounts of the ground meat and freeze it. I usually grind sirloin, and the big advantage to doing it myself is that I KNOW for sure how much fat is in the grind.

It's also nice if you want to make a mixed grind, such as beef and pork and/or veal to make good Italian meatballs.

That's what I do, I wait until I can get a big brisket (15-20#) for less than $10, or a big hunk of pigmeat (7-10#) for around $5. I'll buy whatever the limit is and throw it into the freezer in the beer-fridge.

Whenever I need more hamburger, roasts, or Italian sausage I'll just thaw them out for 2-3 days like I would a big turkey. After this period, they come out semi-frozen, which makes it easy to cut up and grind. Everything gets weighed to 1# and put into a freezer bag.

Occasionally it'll be a wash, I really won't save any money grinding myself, but at least I have a pretty good idea where the meat came from and in what condition it was ground.

I just wanted to point out too to Shaun (HighDesert) that you can make whatever type of sausage you want with something like this, even for people with diet restrictions. You can be very creative. I had a sausage stuffed with ground chicken breast, fresh cherries and some kind of low-fat cheese (doesn't sound that good,does it?) that would blow you away! The sky's the limit!

Viva Salchicha!

[Lawnjockey]

Opps, from the heading I thought this was another Tiger thread.

Jocko

[caseydog]

Opps, from the heading I thought this was another Tiger thread.

Jocko

[chorizon]

Love mine <Kitchenaid>but it is used mainly for these:

Dennis, I gotta admit, you called me out. There is actually a "unitasker" in the kitchen. I love to do bread, but I let the Oster Bread-Maker make the dough for me. I haven't been doing the whole bread-baking cycle, just the dough cycle. Throw the ingredients in, wait an hour-and-a-half and out pops the dough ready to be shaped and thrown into the oven. I especially like to make pizza dough, its awesome! Doing bread the 'ol fashioned way--even with the Kitchenaid--definitely takes some finesse. Your bread looks great, and the shortbread(?) cookies look like works of art and very tasty, too!