Sausage Making Class

One of the greatest things about being back in the Bay Area is that it serves as home to a large community of do-it-yourself food enthusiasts that love getting up close and personal with their food. From home-brewing to whole-hog-butchering, if you can think of it, you have a great chance of finding a class out here that will teach you how to make it. I have seen countless classes that I would love to be able to take, unfortunately, time and budget are two obstacles that I encounter frequently. Two Sundays ago, the wife and I had the good fortune of attending a sausage-making class run by sausage-maker extraordinaire Frank Felice. Frank’s family has been making their own sausage for generations and he happily passes along his wealth of knowledge to small groups of eager students a few Sundays a month, operating his classes out of a small annex of his Alameda house.

Over the course of a few hours, Frank shared his sausage making know-how and enthusiasm with the class, going over the sausage-making process in depth and allowing students to try their hands at sausage stuffing. After the hands-on portion of class, the students, Frank and his partner Marilyn sat down and enjoyed a traditional Italian style family dinner featuring many different home-made sausage creations and some excellent red wine. You can find more information about the class by checking out their web site but I will say that both the wife and I left the class feeling like we were eager to try making our own vareities of fresh sausage at home and would highly recommend taking one of Frank’s classes if you can.

Good sausage begins with freshly ground meat.

Frank begins by slicling a small section of boneless pork shoulder into strips. He then feeds the strips into his industrial-strength meat grinder, which makes quick work of the pork. Pork shoulder is a great cut to use for sausage making purposes because it contains a fair amount of fat, which is just what a good sausage needs.

After coarsely grinding the meat, the seasoning mix is added.

Here Frank is making a batch of his tasty linguisa sausage. The next step is to mix everything thoroughly by hand.

For some sausage recipes, it is customary to pass this coarsely ground mixture of meat and seasonings through the meat grinder again, this time passing the mixture through a finer die. This optional step obviously makes the meat pieces in the sausage smaller and also helps to mix the meat and seasonings together. Satisfied by the coarse-grind obtained in its first pass through the grinder, Frank didn’t pass the meat through a second time. As a side note, Frank also let the pork/seasoning mixture sit in the ‘fridge for some time before embarking on the next steps in order to let the let the flavors marry a bit.

Now comes sausage stuffing time.

The meat is loaded into the sausage stuffer (which is actually bolted down to the counter), the sausage stuffing tube is screwed into place, then the pig intestines are threaded onto the tube.

While not necessary available at your local megamart, pig intestines are available from a number of speciality retailers. The ones that Frank purchases have been thoroughly cleaned and packed in salt as a preservative method. All they need is a rinse and an hour-long soak in cold water (to wash away the salt and make them pliable) before they can be used. Yes, I can totally appreciate the fact that pig intestines might make some folks squeamish and yes, I will admit that they are a little slimy, but really, handling them is no big deal. They’re totally clean and no more slimy than something like raw chicken or a fish fillet.

A few cranks of the machine is all it takes to actuate the piston that forces the pork/seasoning mixture into the casing and viola, we have sausage.

This particular operation is best performed in teams of two; one person cranks while the other person helps to control the speed at which the casings move off of the sausage stuffing tube while also helping to form the emerging sausage into tight spiral.

This process definitely takes some getting used to. It is important to not turn the crank too slow or allow the casing to move off of the tube too quickly or else the resulting sausage will be full of nasty air pockets. Conversely, it is also important to not turn the crank too fast or restrict the free flow of the casing or else the sausage will burst as the casing is strong but also somewhat delicate.

A nice, tight sausage spiral.

Freshly stuffed sausage makes everyone giddy!

In addition to being quite the sausage maker, Frank also dabbles in curing his own meat. Here is some of his homemade prosciutto that he let us sample.

It was quite tasty. He’s got another one hanging in a small, climate control wine room along with coppa (basically, cured pork neck meat) and some other salumi.

The happy couple after stuffing about 50 lbs of fresh sausage.

There were five people total in the class and we each got to take home about 10 lbs of sausage. For us, that means a freezer full of both hot and sweet Italian sausage ready to be deployed at a moment’s notice. Many thanks to Frank and Marilyn for letting us in to their home for a few hours, feeding us an incredibly delicious meal and for showing us all some really cool new things. Well, not that there’s anything really new about sausage-making, but at least now I have a much better understanding of the process and I look forward to crafting my own sausage-based treats sometime soon.