The Country Life of Dlewis

This weekend I decided to processed the rest of the meat in my freezer to make room for my hubby to fill it back up.

I planned to make:
50 pounds sausage links using my recipe and another recipe
25 summer sausage using my recipe and another recipe
25 pounds of ground meat
ground turkey
breakfast sausage

I started on Friday night working 5 hours (with hubby helping 3 hours) deboning the meat. I started working at 6:30 Saturday morning and worked nonstop until around 12:30.

During that time I made ground turkey, 25 pounds of ground meat, breakfast sausage, 25 pounds of sausage links using another recipe. 25 pounds of summer sausage using my recipe and another recipe (12.5 pounds each). I didn't get around to using my recipe for the sausage links because I was worn out. My legs were hurting like crazy. But the meat is ground with the right about of pork trimmings in the freezer.

I'm making old fashioned summer sausage where you have to cure the meat (so that you'll be able to leave it out at room temperature - I won't be doing that but that will be for the boys when they take their fishing and hunting trips). Anyway, that's still curing in the frig.

This morning I woke up at 6:30 to started cleaning the grills to get ready to smoke the meats. I started smoking the summer sausage and (using the cold smoke method) sausage links. I finished the links, the summer sausage are still on the grill.

Here are some pics:

Summer Sausage and Sausage Links ready for the grill.

Grills used.

Meat on the grill.

Meat coming off the grill.

Packaged meat.

What I would have paid to have this done:

$7.99 per summer sausage stick - $79.90.

75 per pound for ground meat = $18.75

$2.99 per pound for sausage links = $149.50

Total cost $265.53

It cost me approx. $60 plus my valuable time. But at least I know what's in my meat. The grinder has already paid for itself during the previous grinding sessions.