Brats at Home

OK, that’s ‘brats’ as in bratwurst, not ‘brats’ as in me!  I had been looking high and low for simple sausage attachment for my KitchenAid stand mixer for nigh on a year with no success.  I even tried to have one ordered into Sur la Table in Vegas for when my husband was there on a business trip (yes, he swears it was business) but struck out again.  For some odd reason it is available on Amazon but not for shipping to Canada.  I mean, it’s just a couple of pieces of plastic – what gives??  Anyway, I came across it at Home Outfitters recently and pounced! (I already had the grinder attachment)

So the adventure could finally begin!  I scurried off to the butcher for some pork butt and casings. I stupidly asked my husband what kind of sausage I should make first.  I was thinking of spicy chorizo or Italian or a creative pork with herb & apple but he wanted bratwurst. Really?  Bratwurst.  I’m not a fan of bratwurst but since he had humored me with the pasta roller attachment and let me make pasta to my own delight, I figured it was only fair.

Now what I don’t like about bratwurst is the texture. It’s denser and more processed than its Italian counterparts and therein lies the trick to making it.  I dug around about a dozen different sites and combined what looked promising to make my brats.

I used about 3:1 pork to beef ratio (ensuring that the cuts are not too lean – you really do need some fat) and put that through the finest plate on the grinder.  Then I added nutmeg (surprise!), mace, salt & white pepper, some powdered skim milk, whole milk & eggs and pulsed it all in the food processor until it was almost a paste.

Next, and this is an important step, take a small patty and fry it up to taste and adjust seasonings.  At this point I added a bit more white pepper and some paprika.  Now chill it all while you get the sausage stuffing step ready.

I chose to use a natural casing, which means you need to soak them in cold water for 30 minutes or so and then rinse thoroughly.  Then you need to load it onto the sausage attachment and tie off the end with a piece of string as in the photo.  This step is kinda gross but also kinda cool!

Now the tricky part is stuffing the thing!  You really need 3 hands for this step OR a much bigger meat hopper than is standard on the grinder attachment.  Anyone know if there is such a thing?  What I found was that I had no problem pushing the mixture into the machine but needed help in loading more meat into the hopper since I couldn’t really put the sausage down at that point.

So dear old hubby helped out by refilling the hopper for me.  It’s also a bit of a trick to keep the sausage at a uniform thickness but you get the feel after a bit.  It’s about making sure that the pressure you apply with the pusher is consistent.

You can tell I wasn’t quite perfect at uniformity but for my first time I was pretty pleased.  The next step is twisting the sausage to make individual links, which can also be a bit tricky at first too – twisting each one without untwisting the previous one!

Then you simply snip between each link!  Immediately refrigerate or freeze whatever you aren’t going to use.  I then boiled mine in beer, onion and peppercorns for about as long as it took the grill to heat up.  Remember to pierce them with a sharp knife several times so that the casings don’t pop while they boil.  Take them directly from the pot to the grill for some browning and that’s it!

To me, they still tasted like bratwurst – albeit some of the best I’ve ever had – but they still aren’t may favorites.  Hubs really enjoyed them though!