Campfire Sausage Links
Stuffing your own sausage offers tremendous control over your food and your menu. You know what's in your stuffing blend, and can craft your own unique flavors, seasoning intensity levels, and you have your choice of additional ingredients. When you stuff sausages, leave a little room inside the hog casings. This gives a little bit of room to twist links, and it will allow the meat to puff up during cooking without bursting the casings. You can also avoid burst casings by pricking the sausage all over before cooking. This prevents steam from building up inside casings. You can buy a special tool for pricking, or use a sharp knife or toothpick and poke each link several times.
We’ve found that roughly two pounds of meat will fill one casing, but this is dependent on several factors. We just used ground pork in our filling, but if you put additional ingredients into your pork—if you grind in additional pork fat, or include ground onions or peppers or apples—that will change the amount of bulk product going into your sausage. Keep working with your sausage until you find the ingredients and stuffing tube size that works for you.
1 hog casing – 32-38 mm size
2 pounds ground pork
3-4 Tablespoons Campfire Sausage Seasoning
1 teaspoon cooking oil
Equipment:
Sausage stuffer
18mm stuffing tube
1. Assemble sausage stuffer if necessary.
2. Rinse casings inside and out with cool water, then soak in lukewarm water for at least 10 minutes prior to using.
3. Mix ground pork and Campfire Sausage Seasoning together until thoroughly blended. Put it in the feeding chamber of your sausage stuffer. Make sure it's stuffed in tightly, with as little air in the stuffer as possible.
4. When you’re ready to begin stuffing, run water through the casing one more time to help it stay open. Wet the stuffing tube with a little bit of water, and slide the entire casing onto the tube. Leave a two or three inch tail hanging off the stuffing tube; you will knot that off in a moment. Keep the bulk of the casing near the front of the stuffing tube; this will make feeding the sausage easier.
5. Slowly push a bit of stuffing into the casing. It will push any air in the stuffing tube out through the casing and prevent an air pocket from forming right away. Once that happens, make a knot in the end of the casing.
6. Start stuffing. Let the sausage fill the casing so it’s full, but not packed tight. Fill the sausage in a steady feed and let it fall onto a baking sheet or tray, until all the meat has been fed into the casing.
7. If there is still casing on the stuffing tube, pull an inch or two off the tube and cut it, then tie it into a knot. If there is any casing that remains on the stuffing tube, refill your stuffer to make more sausage, or pull the casing off so you can disassemble your machine and give it a thorough wash.
8. To make links, create pinch marks in your sausage every four inches or so. Grab a knotted end and the first pinch, and twirl the sausage like a jump rope, toward you. That will cause the casing to grab together tightly and form the link. Go to the next pinch, and twirl that like a jump rope, but away from you. This will create the second link. Move down the length of the sausage casings, alternating twirling directions, until it is all linked.
9. Prick sausage links all over with a pricking tool, a small knife, or a pointy toothpick.
10. Put cooking oil in a pan, over medium heat.
11. Arrange sausages in pan so they do not overlap. Cook thoroughly, turning as necessary, until brown on all sides with an internal temperature of 165°F.
12. Let rest for 5 minutes off heat.
13. Enjoy!
