A while back, we talked about Bruce Aidells and his book on sausage. Now here's a quick note on a really essential and wierdly beautiful piece of equipment you'll need if you're going to do anything much with sausage except put it up in bulk.

Sausage can, of course, never get any further than force meat, the ground up and mixed together meats, fats, seasonings, and other ingredients. That's what "bulk sausage" is. But somehow, if it doesn't have that tubular essence, that ew, gross stuffed-into-guts sausageness, about it, it isn't quite there. And to get there, you need some more gear.

Obviously, you have to have something to grind the forcemeat with, and this review skips over that -- we assume that you have an attachment for your stand mixer or a hand grinder or something like that. What we're talking about here is a stuffer, a small-volume (3 to 6 pound) device whose purpose is to jam the loose force meat through a tube and out into sausage casings. We went looking for such a thing and found one that was not only effective but a piece of genuine kitchen art.

The sleek chrome beauty itself, available from The Sausage Maker, a source of many wierd and wonderful things.	A pound or two of your force meat goes into the hopper, and with some forcing from your left hand ...
... and thickness and flow control going on with your right, the medium hog casings you've threaded over the fill tube get turned into these shining examples of charcuterie.	There they are. These are sweet italian sausages, with fennel and so on. With a couple of practice runs, we can turn out a three and a half pound batch of these in an hour or so, including clean up. Make a few that evening, freeze the rest, and you're laughing. Or e state ridendo, if you prefer.

What doesn't show up well in the photos is the sheer industrial revolution style of this thing. All of it is massive, over-engineered, held together with giant bolts and box joints, and meant to be bolted down (we use C clamps to hold it down in practice). It looks and feels like something the guys in the Engine Room on the Virginia put together on the evening before their fight with the Monitor (and that worked a whole lot better than the Virginia did.)

Cleanup? Get the stainless version we show here, and the whole thing can go into the dishwasher (with a bit of prep -- one thing you'll note is that it's not possible for the entire load of force meat to go through the tube. You'll always have about a quarter pound of bulk sausage left in the bell of the stuffer tube at the end of the run. Not a bad thing, but you do have to remove it and package it before you clean up.)

And what about those casings? There are several kinds, and you can get 'em from, duh, The Sausage Maker and many other sources. We bought a small quantity of medium hog casings, and they've lasted us throughout a long batch of experimenting with sausage. The natural casings come salted, in a plastic bucket, and keep virtually forever in the regrigerator. You haul out an approximate length for a batch, soak 'em to remove the salt, and you're ready to go. There are also collagen casings and synthetic casings, each with their own applications, but if you're primarily interested in traditional sausage styles, a $25 bucket of medium hog casings will start you off and keep you going for a good long time.

CII Rates: The Sausage Maker's #51300 Sausage Stuffer 3 Lb. Stainless Steel
The Sausage Maker
1500 Clinton St, Bldg 123
Buffalo, NY 14206-30992000
(888)490-8525

	Usefulness	Extremely useful. The right price, right scaling for the home sausage dabbler, the right thing.
	Snobbery	"What's that? Why, it's a sausage stuffer. What do you use to stuff your sausage? Oh, you don't make your own sausage? Oh, my. Here, let me send a package of my duck and contreau breakfast links home with you." This is snobbery, defined.