Tiger Sauce-age. Inauguration of My New Meat Grinder/Sausage Stuffer

My birthday is coming soon so the lovely and ever generous wife procured for me a Cabela's meat grinder/sausage stuffer. Here it is-



See here for Cabela's selection of grinding/sausage making products. This is one of their mid range models, it was recently discounted to almost half price! The discount enticed me to request of the wife an upgrade from the KitchenAid mixer attachments I have been using previously (for past sausage making experiments see Bacon Sausage and Red Wine Pistachio). Something that amused and excited me about the Cabela's grinder is that it came with a Kibbeh making attachment (see here for my kibbeh recipe). Kibbeh is a distinctly middle eastern (national dish of Lebanon for one) food, so it is pretty funny that the down home, outdoorsy, Cabela's brand slapped its name on it. You figure that they would have balked at associating their name with a maker of "terrorist" food (that is a joke lest you think I am being serious).

I decided to christen the new appliance by making some of what I call Tiger Sauce-age. Tiger Sauce is one of my favorite hot sauces. It has a spicy, tamarind fruitiness that is absolutely delicious. Look for a bottle at Hannaford's, I think they have it.



The tiger sauce will provide much of the flavor and spice for this sausage recipe. For the meat I am using about 5 pounds of cubed pork loin.



Pork loin is a rather lean cut of meat for sausage, so to bring some fat to the party I am going to also use about 2 pounds of pork belly.



It is important that all of the meat be very cold, almost frozen, before grinding so the fat does not melt. I passed all of the meat chunks through the grinder with the coarse plate installed. I seasoned the approx. 7 pounds of meat with an entire bottle of Tiger Sauce, 2 table spoons of hot paprika, 1 table spoon of sweet paprika, 6 or 7 teaspoons of salt, lots of cracked pepper, some red pepper flakes, 4 table spoons of sugar, and a can of chicken broth.



For just a little more fat and flavor, I am going to throw in my sausage secret. I partially freeze and than finely dice (not grind) about another bound of fatty salt pork. This gets mixed in by hand prior to stuffing. I find the fatty little chunks add a nice textural component to the sausage



I attached the stuffer tube to the meat grinder and filled up some 32 mil. hog casings. I didn't do links here, I kind of like the looks of a giant sausage coil on the grill.



I was very satisfied with the performance of the Cabela's grinder. I would say that it cut about 25 to 30 percent off the prep time as opposed to the KitchenAid setup. It has much more horse power and can grind partially frozen meat with no problem. I love making sausage, so I don't mind putting out the dough for something that is purpose built. I think when all is said and done, the 70 dollars I paid for the new grinder is cheaper than what the KitchenAid rig cost anyways.

I love this sausage recipe. It produces a nice, spicy product that is equally good grilled or smoked. You can replace the Tiger Sauce with your hot sauce of choice to mix it up a little. I am thinking of doing a green chile pork sausage using some of the green Tabasco that I have been seeing around.