[Sca-cooks] Sausage stuffing

[Michael Gunter]

This weekend I finished my period produced sausage
by adding some more spices to the forcemeant and
re-mincing the lot. 
 
Then I went the distance and used the sausage stuffing
funnel that was loaned to me by Mistress Clara. This is
a large ceramic funnel with a smaller hole than I expected
with a rim around the bottom spout to hold the casing.
 
This definately took some practice. At first I threaded 
all of the casing onto the funnel as I do when using the
Kitchenade. I discovered this didn't work well because 
gravity worked against me. This is why all of the mechanical
stuffing devices I've found have the feed tube positioned
horizontally. The meat would enter the casing and start to 
push everything down. It was impossible to keep a tight
fit. The other problem was the casing would slip over the
part being stuffed so everything would get tangled.
 
The feed tube also felt small and sometimes forcemeat would
get jammed. Luckily the size of the feed tube was the same as
my wooden spoon so that was used at times to push the meat
down.
 
After some rather un-Christian comments and experimentation
I found that leaving the casing laying on the counter and 
then forcing the meat down the tube worked much better.
A lot of air was added to the casing but it could be pushed
out by the meat. Period recipes instruct to "pour" the meat
into the casing and this is more true than I expected. Although
it didn't exactly "pour" into the casing it is much easier allowing
gravity to work with you.
 
I got about 3 lbs of links with the funnel and was happy to
put it away. Still, it is nice to know that I could now make
sausage on site using just a funnel and a couple of good 
knives. The handmade sausages are a bit lumpy and not
nearly as even as my machine created sausage, but with
more experience I'm sure I could fix that.
 
The handmade sausage will be displayed alongside the machine
ground and stuffed sausages to show the basic differences 
between the two.
 
Gunthar
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