How to Make Homemade Irish Sausage

Author:

John D Lee is a chef and restauranteur living and working in Chiang Mai, Thailand. He's always loved to cook.

Irish sausage is a delicious meal that can be eaten all throughout the year.
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Making your own sausage is a cinch. So, next time you’re in the mood for some Bangers, or Italian sausage, or for this Irish sausage—forget that trip out to the supermarket, and make your own!

Why make your own sausage?

4 Reasons to Make Your Own Sausage

Why pay double the price when homemade sausage is as easy as making meatloaf or meatballs/Buy your own ground pork for half the price of a deli counter fresh sausage
Season the sausage exactly to your tastes
Make sure that nothing goes into that sausage that you don’t want to eat
Have any kind of fresh sausage, any time you want, without having to search out specialty retailers (I don’t know about your neck of the woods, but Irish sausages aren’t super common around mine)

A lot of people are intimidated by the thought of making homemade sausage. But if you buy ground pork, all you have to do is mix that pork up with a few spices, taste for seasoning and than stuff it into a sausage casing—hardly rocket science.

And you don’t need any specialty equipment either. Since I generally only make sausages for home consumption, I don’t have a lot of expensive gear—I buy ground pork, so I don’t need a grinder, and I just use a funnel and a wooden spoon to stuff the meat into sausage casings—pretty easy—pretty cheap.

So if you’ve never made sausage before, here’s your chance, with this very easy recipe for Irish sausage, to give it a try.

Irish Sausage Recipe

2 lbs of ground pork (if you can get a butcher to grind it for you fresh, ask for pork ground from the shoulder butt, otherwise, just use regular ground pork)
1 egg
1 cup of bread crumbs
¾ cup of cold water
1 and ¼ tsps of salt
1 and ½ tsps of dried thyme
1 tsp dried marjoram
1 tsp freshly cracked black pepper
½ tsp or dried rosemary
4 cloves of garlic, flattened and finely minced

Sausage casings (these are generally sold salted and refrigerated. To use, for small batches, just take off a couple of strands, rinse out well with cold water two or three times and then stuff, twisting as you go to form links.

Mix together all ingredients (except for the casings!).
Take a small amount and fry or microwave it up and then taste for seasoning, and adjust seasoning if necessary
Once seasoned to your liking, use a wide mouthed funnel (I often cut a water bottle and use that as a funnel) stuck into the end of a sausage casing, and then press the meat through the funnel into the casing.
Divide the casing into links by twisting at intervals, and then refrigerate for a day or two (Ideally) before cooking.