Evey spring Mom makes a trek down to Hopedale to get 50 - 70 cute little Cornish cross chickens. Over the course of the next 6 - 8 weeks these little critters will transform into the ugliest, smelliest eating machines you have ever seen. When this time is up they will typically way 6 - 8 lbs and be ready for slaughter. I will spare you all the gory details! In addition to freezing them whole or in pieces this year, we decided to make chicken sausage. After the usual scalding, gutting, etc...we took the carcase and cut off the breast, the thighs, and the legs. We also threw in some of the skin for a bit of extra fat. In addition I threw in the chicken hearts. Waste not, want not! After the meat was all cut of the bone I ran it all through a meat grinder. Then I added the ingredients from the following recipe found on www.lets-make-sausage.com:
2 tablespoons kosher salt
2 teaspoons fine ground black pepper
2 teaspoons ground or rubbed sage
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon thyme
1 cup cold chicken stock or broth
This was enough spices for about 5 lbs of meat.
After mixing thoroughly with my hands Mary and I then ran the meat back through the Kitchen Aid attachment....this time into the casings! I'm sure my ancestors were proud...although twisting the sausages was much more difficult that it seemed it should have been.
The results:
The reaction from the Beutel Family: Our kids seemed to love the "chicken hot dogs". Mary and I also thought they were quite delicious. The one big drawback was that if was very time consuming. However, I'm not sure I would have been quite as impressed with the final product if we had not put it in casings. Since chicken is typically lower fat I think it would have stuck to the grill and dried out much easier. Will we do it again? I think so!
2 comments:
Sounds and looks great! We are thinking of getting some freshly butchered chickens soon, you could get some practice perfecting your recipe! :o)
Tvahey were yummy! Mom B.
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