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Quick Italian Sausages (food processor recipe)

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Submitted by Naja
Even if you don't have a meat grinder or fancy sausage making attachment, you can make quick, delicious Italian sausages in your food processor. Freeze a big batch in small portion sized freezer bags and pull out what you need


Date Added:	February 25, 2009	Season:
Category:	Pork	Prep. Method:
Calories:		Dish Type:
Serves:	0	Cuisine:
Prep. Time:

Ingredients:

60% to 70% by weight lean pork, cubed, all fat and tough
connective tissue removed. You may also add or substitute
other meats such as rabbit, venison, pheasant, duck,
chicken, lamb, etc, to make differently flavored sausages.

30% to 40% by weight good quality hard pork or beef fat with
no gristle or connective tissue. I have also used lamb fat
and deer fat successfully, but lamb fat has a distinct
flavor and deer fat can be a bit hard to come by. 

Spices to taste: Salt, fennel, sage, oregano, thyme,
marjoram, garlic, rosemary, onion powder, cinnamon, juniper
berries, black pepper, crushed red pepper, etc

Some good spice combinations I like: fennel, garlic, thyme,
oregano and a little red and black pepper for a basic
Italian. Cinnamon, sage and onion powder with a little
fennel make an excellent breakfast sausage. Rosemary and
juniper berries are strong flavored and pair well with game
meats. A teaspoons of each spice per pound of meat works
well, but you can adjust your quantities by frying up small
patties and taste-testing before deciding to add more spice.


The salt is not optional. You can omit it, but the end
product will not taste recognizably like sausage and may not
cook up as well or hold together properly. Otherwise,
experiment with spices as you like them.

Directions:

The lean meat should be cut up in roughly 1" to 2" chunks, and any remaining fat, gristle or tough connective tissue completely removed. You may want to make a "stew meat" pile for the pieces that cannot easily be separated from connective tissue.
Place the lean meat into your food processor bowl. Do not fill the bowl more than halfway. Pulse in 3-5 second bursts, checking the consistency frequently, until you get coarsely chopped sausage meat. Do not overprocess or you will have a meat puree with no texture. Turn the processed meat out into a large bowl. You may have several batches of meat depending on how much sausage you are making and how large your food processor is.
Repeat the same procedure with the fat, but grind it somewhat more finely. Turn the fat out into the large bowl with the meat. Add your spices and mix thoroughly with your hands. Start fairly light on the spices as it is easier to add more than to subtract them once they're in the mix.
Fry up a small "test patty" to see if you like the spices. Add more of your favorite flavors to taste. Garlic and onion powder in quantity improves almost any sausage. Be careful when adding dried rosemary in whole leaf form as it can be gritty - the fresh product is worth the extra expense if you like this spice. Sage is very strong-flavored and should be added a little at a time. Sage is a classic breakfast sausage spice; fennel is traditional for Italian type dinner sausages.
If you want to get really creative and adventurous (like trying a Thai spiced lemongrass sausage with chicken, or making a lamb curry sausage), make a very small batch first and test it in the frying pan. It is possible to overspice or to use a bad spice combination and ruin some expensive meat.
Enjoy your no-hidden-carbs homemade sausage! Your nutritional data will depend on what you put in the sausages in what proportion. Spices do have some carbs, but most of them are fiber. Even a heavily spiced sausage should end up with less than 1 net carb per serving.

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Added On: February 25, 2009

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