Homemade Andouille - Lessons learned

Cookinbob · February 2015

I have been wanting to try making sausage for a couple of months, got a grinder attachment and a stuffer attachment for my Kitchen-Aid for Christmas.

I decided to go for Andouille and also wanted to try homemade bratwurst, so tonight was the night.

I had a 5-1/2 lb piece of bone in butt, 12 oz of pork shoulder trimmed off another butt, and 1 lb of ground pork. Ended up making 3-1/2 lbs of smoked Andouille (Ruhlman Charcuterie recipe) and 2-1/2 lbs of Wisconsin style Brats from a recipe I found on the web. Turned out to be a bigger undertaking than I expected, and I learned a couple of things in the process:

Make one kind of sausage at a session. Had to clean up twice
Make sausage with a friend. Stuffing sausage single-handedly is a challenge. It took me a long time to get the hang of it.
The Sausage stuffer attachment for the Kitchen aid is tough to use, and it seems to be emulsifying the meat. My sausage is not the coarse ground texture I expected,

At any rate, the Andouille is smoking on the small, it looks pretty good. Will pull at 150 IT
The brats (mis-shapen brats) are on a tray in the freezer, I will vac seal them tomorrow.

I fried up a piece of the andouille that did not make it into the casing, pretty good, not as spicy as I expected though.

Next effort should go more smoothly.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5017260/uploads/editor/af/7j6i5csjeuvz.jpg

theyolksonyou · February 2015

Nice post. I learned that if the grinder says 1" chunks, cut them to 1/2" on my inaugural grind. It is fun though.

theyolksonyou · February 2015

could you link the brat recipe?

NPHuskerFL · February 2015

Looks real good to me. I have an Artisan KA & have thought about getting this attachment. I've seen a few on the forum that liked it and now your review. Now I'm torn...

Romain · February 2015

I've made 100's of pounds of sausage with my kitchenaid. Italian, venison, boudin noir and blanc, chorizo, andouille, etc. Mostly fresh as I've never had a cool, climate controlled area for hanging dry sausages. Some of my lessons learned...

Definitely partially freeze the meat.
Cube or dice the meat and mix it with the dry ingredients and then chill again in the fridge for an hour or so.
Put the grinder attachment in the fridge at the same time to chill.
Grind the seasoned meat mixture into a large enough bowl so that you can easily mix this with the water/vinegar/wine addition.
Once this is mixed thoroughly, put it back in the fridge while you pull the die and knife, clean out the sinew, and add the spacer and stuffing tube.
Grease the tube with lard/shortening/butter and slide on an appropriate amount of casing (10' feet of hog casing is about what is needed for 5lbs of sausage).
Tie off the end and prick with a toothpick to allow initial air to escape.
Mound the tray with the sausage mix and turn mixer on speed 2. This stuffs fairly evenly and and is not too fast for one person to stuff and use a guiding hand to handle the sausage coming out. You can control speed of the stuffing with the guiding hand...the slower you allow the casing to fill, the fatter the sausage.
If needed, turn the mixer off when twisting links.
Keep length of sausage (either in link or non-link form) to about 18".
If sausage mixture appears to be emulsifying as you stuff it, stop and return the mixture and grinder attachment to the fridge until they are thoroughly chilled down.
wash everything down with soap and water, then rinse in bleach solution, the rinse with clean water.

Hope this helps.

nolaegghead · February 2015

Nice job, it's a learning experience. Good advice above.

The KA stuffer tube is a two person job. One of my best investments in sausage making was a LEN piston stuffer. One person job.

Romain · February 2015

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5017260/uploads/editor/e4/gq78ibyaq2dx.jpg

@nolaegghead I would say that making sausage solo on the KA can be a little difficult but you can get the hang of it pretty easily. I rarely have help from wife or kids. Wife because she thinks it's gross, kids because....well they just think they have better things to do.

Venison on the left, hot Italian on the right. Made yesterday by yours truly.

fishlessman · February 2015

the problem with coarse ground sausages and the kitchen aide is the grinding plates. the small one is useless, the bigger one is fine for breakfast sausages. go to ebay, there are aftermarket plates there with big holes for coarser grind. you need these plates even for chili grind. the stuffer is a pain, i usually stuff half and use the rest for patties

Cookinbob · February 2015

@Romain, Thanks for all the advice! A few things I did do right:

The meat was ground from partially frozen. I cut it into strips rather than dice, but the grind worked fine. I mixed the spices in after the grind. Between grinding and stuffing, I set the bowl of meat in the garage (15 deg last night) so it sure stayed cold.

What I did not do was freeze the grinder. I also did not grease the stuffing tube

Other comments, I tried grinding with the mixer on 4 per the instructions, and also on 2 as you recommend.

The problem I had was getting the ground meat down into the auger. It just did not want to feed. Without the pusher tool, nothing went in, and if I pushed the tool way down in (which did feed the meat in), when I pulled back out it created a vacuum. pulling meat back out. I would say the auger was cavitating if you know what I mean. not sure why it did not work for me.

I did make sausage with a group a couple of months ago where we had a piston type stuffer, it was much easier to stuff.

moving forward, I will watch CL and ebay for a sausage stuffer and larger grinding plates.

Lastly, @theyolksonyou, here is a link to the Bratwurst recipe I used. http://thepauperedchef.com/2009/06/homemade-wisconsin-style-bratwurst.html I looked at several, some which had cream and eggs, which I did not think I wanted. Have not sampled it yet

Romain · February 2015

@fishlessman I've really never had a problem with the KA grinding plates although I don't use the smaller one all that often. Maybe this is a case of ignorance is bliss. My wife certainly says that I am ignorant.

I'll have to order 1/4", 3/8", and 1/2" plates and see how those work.

Romain · February 2015

@Cookinbob I understand what you mean by cavitating. Subs and high speed props and what not.

You'll always have to use the plunger to force the sausage mix down the feeder tube to the auger. Try keeping the hopper full of the sausage mix (even if you have to turn off the mixer and reload) so that the feeder tube is always full and you're only plunging an inch or two at a time. Also, try rotating the plunger as you pull up. This seems to help me break the vacuum. I will say that I really only experience what you are when the sausage mix is starting to get warm and emulsifying.

I've found speed 2 works best for me when stuffing solo.

Greasing the tube helps the casing slide on and off. In order to avoid cross contamination I take a paper towel, fold it into thirds, and drag it through the shortening/lard/butter so that there is a bit on it. Then I use this to lube the tube. I can fit approximately 10' of hog casing on at once and this works perfect for me as I typically do 5lb batches.

I'm about to order a set of plates from Amazon or eBay and should have them in time for the next batch.

Methinks I may record the process and broadcast it.

Cookinbob · February 2015

I am looking at this on CL, may spring for it. Looks like it would be fast and easy. Anybody with experience with one of these?

Cookinbob · February 2015

Never mind the CL one, I just read reviews on Amazon.

georgia boy · July 2017

@Cookinbob Can you post the recipe you used for the Andouille sausage?

Homemade Andouille - Lessons learned

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