One thing I find difficult to find at the grocery store is a good, solid sausage.  There just aren’t many options when it comes to sausage spices.  Sure, there are the traditional go-to sausages, like Jimmy Dean or Johnsonville, and don’t get me wrong, those are fine and they definitely get the job done when necessary.  But they are just that: fine.

I guess you could call what I am talking more about is a specialty sausage.  Sure it might be labeled as Italian or chorizo, but it is a specialty sausage because it has its own unique twist.  And while I think you can go to a butcher’s shop and find a great selection of sausages, you often times can’t beat simply mixing up your own batch of sausage.

And so, in the quest to have a good, solid sausage, I decided to start the adventure of making my own, home ground and blended elk and deer sausage.  I think I will call it the Sausage Wars, and will include a couple of different posts on my blog with all the different varieties and tactics I am going to try over the next month.

To start this quest, I decided to start with pre-packaged mixes I ordered from different companies.  The first…mmm…victim is Frisco Spices.  Frisco Spices is located in La Vista, Nebraska and started in the garage of E.G. Fransiscus in 1928.  They carry spices, cures, marinades, mixes, and more at the stores and are easy to purchase on-line as well.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

I purchased four spice mixes from Frisco: Italian, Hot Italian, Chorizo, and Cajun.  For this round of sausage making, I followed the instructions and recommendations on the package, just to keep things easier on myself when deciding if I liked the mixes or not.  For my sausage base, I ground elk chunk with bacon ends.  I like to use the bacon ends because it adds a good fat flavor to the sausage, but it doesn’t come out quite as greasy as using just pork fat.

To create the sausage, I used a Cabelas meat grinder with a #8 plate and quarter inch holes.  I wanted to have an even playing field, so I ground a large batch of meat and then rationed the spices.  I ground nine pounds of elk, eight pounds of deer, and three pounds of bacon ends and pieces to make a burger of roughly 90% lean meat if you count the meat in the bacon.  I like my sausage and burger lean as it is easier to use in different recipes without having to drain a bunch of fat oil.  Also, I use the Wright brand 3-pound pack of bacon ends and pieces because it is cheap and has a very high fat content.  I then mixed the hole batch by hand.

After that I mixed four five pound batches of sausage following the instructions on the packages.

Loved This! Give me More!

The Italian Sausage mixture was my favorite.  The mixture contained what I consider to be the defining flavor of Italian sausage: fennel!  I could really taste the fennel in the mixture and it gave the sausage a subtle sweetness but also that great black licorice punch that is so good in many Italian dishes.  I also thought this mixture was not too salty, which can be a big turn-off with many sausages.  I plan on using this Italian Sausage to make meatballs, lasagna, and a really big pot of zuppa!

It’s Growing on Me

Eating the Cajun Sausage was one of those experiences where at first I didn’t think much of it, but the second bite actually changed my mind.  I didn’t really feel like I was chewing on a mouthful of Cajun flavor at the first bite, but I did immediately notice the heat.  It was a good heat, the kind that lingers for just long enough but not the kind of heat that ruins your ability to taste other foods.  By the second bite, I was becoming a much bigger fan of the Cajun seasoning.  It is not an overly salty sausage, in fact I would consider even adding a little salt to this mix if I made it again, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing either.  The flavors are subtle, not overpowering, but it actually seems to work when combined with the heat in this mixture.  I know it would be great in a breakfast scramble or burrito you were looking to kick up a notch.  I added it to some homemade hush puppies, and it was a fantastic little bite!

I Could Take It or Leave It

The Chorizo Sausage didn’t quite hit the mark for me.  The sausage came out extremely salty, and behind the salt flavor I could pick up hints of chorizo flavors.  There were small flecks of spicy heat mingled in with a touch of light smokiness, but overall it just wasn’t quite right to me.  It was not a bad sausage, but something just wasn’t quite right for my liking.  I do think the sausage I made will work well in a breakfast burrito though.

Not my Cup of Tea

The sausage I won’t be making again is the Hot Italian.  The mixture was very uneventful.  It didn’t really have a significant amount of heat to it, nor did it really have much of an Italian sausage flavor as they didn’t add the fennel.  Nothing really popped with this sausage.  I will use it as a filler in recipes where the sausage plays a minor roll.