Yesterday was the day of Easter, and we showed up in the church as the sun rose over the horizon. It was cold. My jacket wasn’t enough to keep me warm, but it had to do. I consoled myself with made my own sleeved shirts while I was using them. After the rising of the sun, the company went into the hall to have lunch.
3 a. m. cooking breakfast for the crowd. What a wonderful breakfast it was! It was bacon, ham, and home made sausage. The soup was out of this world! When I inquired about the sausage, I learned that it was made by one of the men of the church; The man is a farmer, and raises pigs, and gives meat and sausage from several pigs at every spring to raise money for the church and to help feed some of the less fortunate.
On the table were two huge bowls full of scrambled eggs, and large cacabulas full of homemade grits. There was a platter of cheese and fruit, and a platter of homemade biscuits. After breakfast was over, I helped to clean up, and the cooks told my shepherd and I to get everything we wanted and go home. I had two plates loaded with bacon, ham and sausage. I wrapped more than a dozen cookies as well. O! That was the best meal I ever had in my entire life!
This Easter breakfast reminded me of the homemade sausage that my father used to make. We didn’t have pigs, but my uncle did, and my father and my uncle used to make sausage for our families and have it for sale. I don’t think the sausage tasted the same as my father and uncle made, but I remembered the sausage we ate yesterday.
I’ll give a really short version of how my father and uncle would breakfast for breakfast. You must have a meat grinder to make good sausage. Dad made the sausage hotter, because that’s how they liked it, and the customers who bought it.
Here’s what you need to make homemade sausage;
6 pounds of pork shoulder
1 pound of fat back
5 teaspoons kosher salt
1 tablespoon of sugar
1 teaspoon mace
Chopped 2 cloves of garlic
2 tablespoons of red pepper
1 and 1/2 teaspoons of pepper cayenne
2 tablespoons sage
2 teaspoons of thyme
2 and 1/2 teaspoons of black pepper
1/2 cup sherry vinegar
What are you doing here?
Cut the pork and fat into pieces and feed it to the meat grinder. After grinding the meat, add all the other ingredients and mix together until the meat and spices are completely infused with the meat. Divide the stuffing into packages of about 1 pound; but before you do that, make sure your sausage tastes the way you want it. Sample some of your sausage in the hot pan. The stuffing should have a good balance of heat, texture and spice.
Enjoy!
