Making Goat Sausage: Recipes From the Farm

Try These Easy Sausage Making Recipes Using Farm-Fresh Meat

Making Goat Sausage: Recipes From the Farm

By Pat Katz – A basic goat sausage recipe is simple enough, just like any sausage recipe. It’s just ground, seasoned meat. But there are so many ways to cook, cure, air dry and smoke the different kinds that making sausage becomes an art. If you raise goats for meat and do butchering at home, fresh-made goat sausage is right at your fingertips.

Easiest to make is breakfast sausage—ground seasoned meat made into patties and fried. Stuff this meat into casings and you have breakfast links. Change the seasonings and the size of casings, maybe add another ingredient or two and you have fresh Italian sausage or a kind of German summer sausage, etc. Some sausage is cooked slowly in water and eaten cold like liverwurst. Bologna is smoked and then cooked in water. Some sausage is smoked at temperatures high enough to cook it through while it smokes. Hard salami is carefully cured and dried as you’ll see in the recipe that follows. The variations are endless and the possibilities for making sausage at home are fascinating.

Goat Sausage Recipe: Sausage Casings

Usually, sausage casings are the cleaned intestines of lamb, pork, or beef. They can be purchased from butcher supply houses. Synthetic casings can be purchased also. Muslin casings can be made. These are dipped in melted lard or paraffin. But if you butcher animals, you’ll probably want to make your own casings as follows.

Preparing Intestines As Casings

If you’re raising hogs for meat, don’t forget that you can make your own sausage casings from the intestines when it’s time to butcher. Remove all fat and membranes from the outside of the intestines. Turn them inside out and clean thoroughly. You may use borax water for this. (Optional: bleach intestines by soaking for 24 hours in water containing 1 ounce of chloride of lime to one gallon water.) Scrape away or tear off all slime and inner lining until they are as thin and transparent as possible.  They may be packed in salt for storage and rinsed before use.

To be safe from trichinosis, all sausage using pork must be heated to an internal temperature of 152°F either by hot smoking, cooking in water or cooking before it is eaten. Some sausage recipes do not include such cooking, and sausage made this way should not be eaten raw unless the pork is trichina-free.

Goat Sausage Recipe: Hard Salami

Good color, no yeasty or rancid surface flavor, a slightly moist texture at the very center and a minimum of surface crusting will satisfy the art of a good dry sausage. The pork used must, of course, be of stable quality and “trichiny” free. Prague Powder is a must in this type sausage. (Note: These recipes originally used salt peter, which is no longer recommended. Check the label for the proper amount of Prague Powder to use for your recipes—normally one level teaspoon for every five pounds of meat.)

• 20 pounds Chevon
• 20 pounds chuck beef
• 40 pounds pork jowls (glands trimmed)/pork shoulder
• 20 pounds regular pork trim including some hard back fat
• 3-1/2 pounds sugar, Turbinado sugar or white (honey takes a lot of adjusting)
• 3 ounces white ground pepper (black pepper can be used but it tends to discolor in splotches in cure)
• 1 ounce whole white pepper
• Prague Powder
• 3/8 ounces garlic powder (fresh garlic can be crushed and used but it will take at least 1 quart of good bulbs to equal the amount given.)

Here good curing trays are important. Tight hardwood, unfinished trays are the cheapest and best, especially if homemade. Porcelainized steel is next best. Stainless trays are the most expensive and least functional. Anything else will leave a taste unless absolutely all contact surfaces have been covered with wax paper. This can be awkward on the intermediate mixes required during open pan cure.

Grind Chevon and beef through a 1/8” plate. Grind pork through ¼” plate. Bulk mix until a good distribution of lean and fat is reached. This is the aching arms and back part.

Spread on trays to a maximum of 3” thickness, any thicker will not effect a good cure. Distribute pre-mixed spices and cure formula over top of spread trays. Store the trays at 38° to 42°F for approximately four days, three at minimum. Remix each tray at least three times each 24 hours for the first two days, and at least once each day thereafter.

Stuff into casings and thumb ends tight. 12” to 14” is a good length. Beef middles, large size collagen, or pure lard-dipped muslin make the best casing for this type of sausage. Lightly salt the outside of casings after stuffing. Beef middles or collagen casings really should be tied with butcher twine, four around and four lengthwise to make a good B.C. identity. Otherwise a stockinette of some sort should be used during the first half of the drying cycles.

Now to the drying and the secret to good hard salami. The best temperature for drying is 40°F (38° to 42°F as variable limits), with 60% relative humidity. If the salami develops mold, the relative humidity is usually the factor needing correction. If mold occurs wipe each sausage thoroughly with food oil (olive oil, of course, to be true Italian style).

Dry 6-8 weeks under these conditions. No smoking or forcing should be tried or you wind up with leather. Commercial sausage makers expedite the process by using a carefully controlled room with 15-20 complete air changes per hour, and it still takes 12-14 days. So persistence and patience are the watchwords here.

And that’s B.C. salami, the hard one.

Salami (Regular or Goat Meat)

• 10 pounds pork
• 10 pounds Chevon (or other red meat)
• 1-1/2 pounds onions
• 1 tablespoon powdered garlic
• 8 ounces salt
• 4 teaspoons black pepper
• 4 teaspoons white pepper
• 40 ounces dry red wine

Dice onions and cut meat into chunks. Mix all ingredients except wine together. Run through meat grinder twice.

Add wine and mix thoroughly. Refrigerate for two days. Smoke at cool temperature (85° to 90F) until a rich brown color. Freeze to keep for long periods. Cook before eating.

Goat Sausage: Pepperoni

• 7 pounds pork
• 3 pound lean Chevon
• 9 tablespoons salt
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• Prague Powder
• 1 tablespoon cayenne
• 3 tablespoons paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon aniseed
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder

Grind meat. Knead spices into meat for 15 minutes. Keep meat as near 38°F as possible. Put in pan and cure for 48 hours at 38°F (in refrigerator). Mix meat again and stuff in casings. Hang at 48°F for two months. Be sure to let this one hang the full time.

Goat Sausage Recipe: Chevon Bologna

• 40 pounds Chevon
• 8 ounces brown sugar
• 1 ounce red pepper
• 2 ounces black pepper
• 2 ounces celery salt
• 8 ounces regular salt
• 1/4 ounce garlic powder
• 1/2 ounce oregano

Mix all ingredients, put in casings (1-2” is best) and smoke. Extra brown sugar may be added if desired.

Goat Sausage Recipe: Goat Salami

• 5 pounds ground Chevon
• 5 teaspoons Morton Quick Salt
• 2-1/2 teaspoons mustard seed
• 2-1/2 teaspoons coarse ground pepper
• 2-1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon hickory smoke salt
• 1 teaspoon celery salt

Mix all ingredients together well. Cover the container and place in refrigerator for three days; remix well. On the fourth day make into cylindrical shapes the size preferred. Place on broiler pan in over and bake at 140°F for eight hours, turning every two hours. Cool.

One of the best parts of self-sustaining farm living is making your own fresh sausage from animals you raise yourself. Do you have a favorite goat sausage recipe you’d like to share with us? Post a comment with your recipes, tips, and advice for turning regular sausage recipes into a goat sausage recipe.

Originally published in the September/October 2005 issue of Countryside & Small Stock Journal and regularly vetted for accuracy.

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