Meat for sausages

Meat for sausages is either pork, or a combination of pork with beef, veal or poultry. People living in off beaten track areas, (ie: Central Alaska) might use wild game meats like moose, bear, elk, reindeer, or rabbit to make sausages. The extremely religious will only use beef or lamb. However, it is still recommended to mix these lean meats with pork to achieve better texture and flavor.

When it comes to sausages, pork is king. The fat binds the meat together and makes it tender and juicy, no fat, and the meat is dry. Try to fry a hamburger that is 95/5 (5 % fat) and one that is 80/20 (20 % fat), and you will see the difference. We are not talking about what your doctor says, but how to make high quality, tasty sausage. If you use a cut that is too lean, your sausage will definitevely be healthier and cleaner, but you will miss out on the taste. Venison is very lean meat, definitely healthy, but then why does every recipe beg for pork fat? To make it taste good . Not enough fat makes it dry and hard to bite. Sausage needs about 25 – 30 % of fat in it and pork butts lend themselves as excellent choices. The pork butt (sometimes called Boston butt) is a great all around choice. It has an ideal fat to lean meat ratio for sausage making. Another added bonus is its bone is extremely easy to remove.

It might come as a surprise but the main ingredient in meat is water 40 – 75%. The fat content varies widely – 1 – 40 %, younger animals have less fat . Veal meat is considered the leanest, and pork the fattest although some cuts like pork loin or ham are very lean. Bear in mind that pork fat is unsaturated fat (good cholesterol) and pork lard (melted fatback) is much healthier than butter which is saturated fat (bad cholesterol).

To make the very fine textured sausages known as hot dogs or wieners, a great deal of poultry is used. However, the technology used in their production requires bowl cutters to emulsify the meat. A food processor with some cold water might help produce the level of emulsification acceptable for production. Grinding the meat a few times, each time through a plate with smaller holes, will also leave a finely ground product.

The age of the animal is an important factor in meat quality, but it’s not the only one. The older the hog, the fatter it is. The type of food it consumed, and even how much time it spent in open air also contribute to its final taste. The fame of some of the best hams in the world depends not only how they are made but on what they ate most of their lives: American Smithfield Ham – peanuts, Spanish Serrano – oak acorns, Italian Parma – chestnuts and whey (from the parmesan cheese making process).

If you are like me, living in a large city, raising our own hogs will not be tolerated for long, so we are forced to depend on buying meat from a local supermarket. The best advice we can give you is to make friends with a local butcher. As mentioned before a butt is an excellent choice but nothing prevents you from using meats from different parts of the animal

There are many sausage recipes that require that some beef will be added to pork. Some are made entirely of beef. Beef when finely ground has excellent water binding qualities. Beef like pork needs some fat to taste juicy and to have good flavor. Beef is tougher (the animal is older), its meat and blood are darker and the fat is of little use in sausages. Beef liver is ill suited for making liver sausages but up to 50 % of it can be mixed with pork liver. Pork liver is fine, veal liver is excellent. For blood sausages pork blood is also preferred to beef blood as it is much lighter in color. Beef has excellent binding qualities; a fine grind can hold up to 30 % of water. That means all the natural juices will be entirely contained within. About 10 – 20 % of beef is added to pork to make certain types of sausages (ie, Hunter’ sausage), but nothing stops you from going 100 % beef (Thuringer, Pastrami), using lamb and beef (Merquez), or pork and veal (Bockwurst). In Muslim areas, lamb and beef will be used, whereas in Christian parts pork, beef, veal, and lamb are the meats of choice. Some people even claim it was the reason they never chose Islam as their religion.

When it comes to selecting pork meat for sausages, the majority of books and recipes mention the same word : "use a pork butt". Sure, it has the right lean meat to fat ratio of 70/30 and the sasuage will be fine. But when you go to buy a car from the dealer do you look only for Mercedes or do you consider other cars as well ? What about a guy with a big family who buys the whole hog - there are two pork butts totalling 15 lbs in weight and he certainly can make some sausages but what about the remaining 250 lbs of the meat ? He should have nothing left, some of it will be eaten right away : ribs, chops, loins and the rest can be processed to make all kinds of fresh and cooked smoked products like hams, butts, Canadian Bacon, smoked bacons, back fat, blood sausage, liverwurst, headcheese and dozens of different sausages.

Then comes a second advice: "Good cuts of meat make good sausages. Trim out all all gristle, sinew, blood clots, and excess fat". Trim them out but save them for later. When you eat a five course meal in a classy restaurant you are not going to drink the same type of wine with a soup, fish, chicken, steak, cake, ice cream and coffee, are you? Everybody will immediately figure out what an expert you are. If you will use only lean meat to make sausages, you will also be a very poor sausage maker. Emulsified sausages (hot dog, bologna), headcheeses and liver sausages need lower class of meat (sinews, tendons, gristle, skins, deboned meat) that is very rich in collagen. This meat when emulsified (made into a paste) will hold a lot of water, will bind fat and once when heated will form a natural gelatin which is crucial when making headcheeses. For those applications pork skin or pork hocks are superior to any lean meat. All pork meat is well adapted for making sausages, you just have to know which sausage needs jowls (cheeks), when to use fatback or headmeat and skins. And those seemingly inferior kinds of meats are # 1 seller in the USA as the whole nation consumes hot dogs, frankfurters and bologna on every day basis. Specially designed de-boning machines are scraping off every bit of pork, beef and poultry bones to recycle every particle of meat and tendon. Then soy protein comcentrate is added to boost up nutritional value as a lot of water was added during emulsifying. In some countries situation is so rampant that a hot dog contains only 15 % of meat and the rest are fillers, binders and flavor enhancers. But it looks presentable, has an acceptable taste and most important is reasonably priced.

There is a little problem here in the USA with the classification of pork meat. The problem is that there is no classification nor any meaningful grading system. Pork meat is classified into two groups

2. Utility grade - used in processed products and not available in supermarkets for purchase

The USDA does have four quality grades for pork, a carcass is cut up into prime cuts - hams, loins, picnics and butts. The weght of the lean prima cuts compared with the total weight determines the carcass grade : #1 grade, over 60.4 % lean cuts, # 2 grade, 57.4 % to 60.3 % lean cuts, # 3 grade, 54.4 to 57.3 % lean cuts, and # 4 grade, less than 54.4 % lean cuts. The system is not very popular and meat processors are buying hogs using their own grading system.

Pork is divided into 5 prime areas :

1. shoulder butt (Boston butt)

2. shoulder picnic

3. loin

4. leg (ham)

5. side (bacon, spare ribs)

Look for cuts with a small amount of fat on outside and with meat that is firm and a grayish pink color. Meat should have a small amount of marbling.


boneless blade roast, ground pork, sausages	smoked picnic, arm picnic roasts, smoked hocks	smoked loin	pork chops, smoked chops

ribs	roasts	spareribs, slab bacon, sliced bacon	bome-in fresh ham, smoked ham, ham roast, leg cutlets

There are seven USDA Beef Grades : Prime, Choice, Select, Standard, Commercial and Utility, Non-graded beef and Natural beef. In addition there thirteen major steak names and a number of beef roasts.

To learn more about how professional sausage makers choose meat for sausages go to Meat Classification


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