Cooking Tip: Sausage Making and Stuffing

I think I need to start a new series called "China Hacks." Don't you just love it when you figure out how to make life and eating here better?! So I have always made my own sausage here--this has never been something that has intimidated me because my dad usually made our own when I was growing up. I had a simple family recipe I could use. I began to branch out and make my own Italian sausage 5 or 6 years ago as well. We love making sausage biscuits, breakfast casserole, using Italian sausage in Baked Ziti or Lasagna, and having sausage to top pizzas and things with. It helps that here in China its SO easy to get pork already ground with a good amount of meat to fat ratio.

But here's the story--We're from Louisiana. I've tried making some cajun dishes in the past but even with a decent Cajun flavored spice mix for my sausage, I was still just using ground bulk sausage in the recipes and it wasn't quite right for my husband. What we really need is sausage stuffed into casings so it could be sliced or even in whole pieces in the dishes. Here in the winter cold where we live, all the pork sellers in the markets are stuffing and drying local style sausages. I decided to make my Cajun-style sausage mix (recipe coming!) and take it to my pork seller and see if they would stuff it. They didn't bat an eye. The first time I took less than 2 pounds of meat. He just stuffed it by hand with a little funnel type thing--didn't even charge me anything! After we saw how easily this worked and how good the sausage worked in our red beans and rice, I mixed up more like 6 pounds of meat and took it. They tried to use a machine to stuff it, but the mix of meat to fat was a little off (needs about 2/3 meat and 1/3 fat--not more than 1/3 fat for sure). It didn't work very well to use the machine so they stuffed that by hand, too. It took awhile so they charged me a small amount--but totally worth it. Unfortunately I don't have a way to smoke them! (So glad my friend Allison just sent me 4 bottles of liquid smoke!) But they cook up okay in a skillet on the stove. I had a friend who jumped on this idea and took it a step further--she just mixed up the spices for a certain amount of meat and sent that to the market with her helper and then the helper had the pork seller mix it in to meat and stuff it in the casings. I'm sure many of you have tried this before, but just in case you haven't I thought I'd share!