When Cafe Linnea‘s chef Kelsey Johnson wanted to learn more about butchery, she spent a summer at ACME Meat Market in Edmonton enhancing her skills. Today, the custom mustard sausages she serves at the restaurant are so popular they’re available not just on the menu – but also for take away. While stuffing sausages can seem intimidating to some, at her Christmas in November session at the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge, Kelsey showed how grinding and seasoning custom sausages at home can be simple and rewarding. For those who don’t have all the equipment or the time to make their custom minced meat blends at home, Cafe Linnea sells Kelsey’s handmade custom mustard sausages for takeaway.

What you’ll need…

Makes approx. 16 sausages or sausage patties

2 kg pork meat (about 25% fat content)
32 g salt
10 g ground mustard seeds
10 g whole mustard seeds
14 g garlic, chopped
2 g cayenne
12 g brown sugar
3 g caraway seeds

Directions:

Dice the pork meat and fat into pieces that will fit into your grinder attachment. Keeping both the meat and the equipment as cold as possible (Kelsey likes to partially freeze the diced meat in one layer on a tray as well as fully freeze the equipment attachments to keep meat and equipment as cold as possible), grind all the pork and double grind about 1⁄3 of the mixture again. Add all your spices and a splash of water to help incorporate everything and mix very well until the mixture feels tacky on your hands.

Now you are ready to either fry up your mixture loose, form into patties, or stuff your sausage casing with it. You can always play around with the spice mix too and really customize your sausage mix to your liking using this recipe as a rough template.

If you have a Cuisinart Sausage Making attachment, Cuisinart recommends:

1. If you have purchased dry casings, they must be soaked in cold water or a mixture of 2 cups water and 1 tablespoon of vinegar until they become soft and pliable.
2. Soak for approximately 1 hour, changing water 3 times to rinse salt off.
3. Place custom sausage meat in the die-cast hopper and turn the unit on. Push the meat into the die-cast hopper opening with pusher until the mixture appears at the end of the sausage attachment. Turn the unit off and tie a knot at the end of the 2-inch casing overhang.
4. Turn unit on and feed the meat into the diecast hopper opening until all the meat have been used or the casing is approximately 2 inches from being completely full.
5. Turn unit off, remove the end of the casing from the sausage attachment, and tie a knot in the open end of the casing. If air bubbles have formed, use a knife or needle to burst.
6. Sausages can be made to the desired length by twisting the casing at intervals. NOTE: To avoid over-stretching and splitting the casing, do not make the sausages too thick. The meat mixture will expand slightly during cooking. Keep casing moist; water frequently by dipping the sausage casing into a bowl of water or vinegar