Pork, sausage, and the benefits of being frugal

 First, if you are a vegetarian, please be warned, the pictures are quite graphic!

Anytime we find pork roast on sale, we snatch up a few and grind it! We purchased our meat grinder years ago, and it has more than paid for itself in the long run.  We've made many different kinds of sausage, from Spicy Italian to Brats to Chicken Sausage, but our favorite is plain breakfast sausage.  The stuff you buy in the store is tasty, but it's high in sodium, has lots of preservatives and added ingredients that we don't believe should be in our food.  And this just ends up cheaper!

Take the roast, and trim away as much meat as you can, cutting it into workable chunks that will fit into the grinder. Whenever we find a boneless roast on sale, well, BONUS!

 This is the meat grinder we bought years ago.  It's been through alot!!

 Grind up the pork, either once for a chunkier grind, or grind twice for a finer texture. We like chunks.


We trim away most of the fat, but not too much, because that fat helps keep your meat moist.

 Now that you have some beautiful ground pork, you can freeze it just like this:

 Or you can make sausage.

Breakfast sausage

For each pound of ground pork, use
1 clove garlic, crushed
1-2 teaspoons red chili flakes. (as hot or mild as you like!)
2-4 TABLESPOONS rubbed sage
Salt and/or pepper to taste

1/4 cup vegetable oil (optional, but if you trimmed your pork of its fat, this vegetable oil will help moisten your finished product)

Mix this all together. I mix all my spices into the vegetable oil first, then mix into the meat, it seems to mix easier that way.  Cook up a small sample to test but keep in mind that the flavors will blend and mellow a bit if this is frozen.


We make 5-10 pounds at a time, depending on what we find on sale, and freeze them in packages.
Which brings me to our other nifty gadget, our FoodSaver.  We purchased this years ago. and it has paid paid for itself several times, allowing us to buy in bulk, freeze and not worry about waste. 
 
You can also freeze these in regular zippered freezer bags, just be sure to squeeze out as much air as possible.