Sausage Day

Over a period of time, usually months, I collect pork on sale and freeze it. the goal is to find time to make sausage. Last year, I made some Medister for my darling husband. We fell in love with this sausage while on vacation and can seem to find it for sale anywhere. So we decided to learn how to make it ourselves.
The first batch, last year, was really tasty. This batch is even better. And I made more. 14 pounds (almost 7 kilos).
Sausage is an all day event. It starts with cleaning out the refrigerator so there is room for the frozen pork to thaw. Then, on the actual day of sausage making, there is a bunch of fussy sterilization of tools. I have a large industrial grinder/stuffing machine, and all the parts have to be sterilized before use. I make sure it is really clean before putting it away, but I often wash all the parts again before I sterilize. I use a boiling water bath to sterilize so this take a bit of time (1 hour).
While the pot is boiling with the tools, I am getting the meat ready. Everything is cut into 1" wide strips so that it is easy to feed to the grinder. 11 1/2 pounds of lean pork, 2 pounds of salt pork, 1 pound of lard. This is now ready for grinding.
Onions- I use fresh onion about 3 pounds for this batch. After trimming them, I cut them into smaller pieces and use my Food Processor to chop them very fine. Then with a couple of tablespoons of butter, I saute the onions until they are starting to sweat and become transparent. Not too long. When the onions are cooled a bit, I put the spices into the onions- 2 tablespoons fresh ground cardamom, 1 tablespoon fresh ground pepper, 2 teaspoons ground cloves. Then 2 tablespoons salt. The onion mix is set next to the bowl of meat.
After grinding all the meat the first pass, I add the onions and lard and mix by hand. This goes through the grinder again (second pass). I like to stop at 2 passes on the large grinding blade because I like a bit more texture.
Now for the Casings. I purchase my casings from 99Ranch market here. They are frozen in a small bundle and I have no idea how many there are or how long. The first bundle I made about 7 pounds and had more than half the bundle left. I stored it buried in salt until the next use. I thawed the casings when I thawed the meat and set them to soak for two hours while the tools were sterilizing. There is a second soak in warmer water. They went in while I was grinding the meat on first pass.
It took E and I a long time to figure out how to slide the casings onto the stuffing tool, but we worked it out doing this in water in a pan. We got pretty good at it after about 4 casings.
Stuffing- it took us about 2 1/2 hours to stuff all the mix into the casings. The remaining casings were again packed in salt until the next sausage day. And the beautiful sausages were waiting for steaming. I like to steam them cooked then store them in vacuum bags and freeze them. I don't have to worry about spoilage that way. But they do lose a bit of fresh flavor.
It is not time wise to try to make a small batch of sausage. And we tend to eat all of them within a couple of months. So for me, 14 pounds of sausage is a good day. Now I need to make more pickled cabbage. We ate the last of that last week.
The kitchen never stops.