Unity
Executive Chef
This week's Washington Post Food section has a front-page article about making sausage, including several recipes. I thought the sidebar piece about stuffers -- in the paper but not on the Web site -- was worth passing along.
--John
(Pretty soon everybody's gonna be doin' it.)
WashPost's David Hagedorn said:Stuffer vs. Stuffer
A KitchenAid meat grinder attachment worked just fine to process the filling for the sausace that chef Jamie Stachowski taught Michelle Harriger how to make. But the sausage stuffer attachment did not pass muster.
The KitchenAid relies on the grinder's auger to push forcemeat through the filling tube and into the sausage casing. In doing so, it breaks down the fat too much. When Stachowski compared sausage filled using his manual filler with sausage filled using the KitchenAid the difference was clear. The manual machine yielded a rosy and visibly chunky product; the KitchenAid sausage was much more homogenized and looked almost white. "It's worth investing in a manual machine for sure," the chef stated firmly.
Manual sausage stuffers can be purchased online. Here are two we recommend:
At www.sausagemaker.com : a three-pound, cast-iron stuffer with a push handle and two plastic stuffing tubes (3/4 inch and 1 1/4 inch). $59.99.
At www.northerntool.com : a five-pound stuffer with a hand crank and piston, a stainless-steel cylinder and three plastic stuffing tubes (1/2 inch, 7/8 inch and 1 inch). $79.99.
--John
(Pretty soon everybody's gonna be doin' it.)