I swear by my KitchenAid grinder attachment. Based on cost versus replacement, it is by far the most cost effective tool for home charcuterie. Also, it is small enough to easily slide into your freezer so it can properly chill before any grinding occurs. I've used it to grind meat for fresh sausage, but I've also ground my own meat for hamburgers or tacos. At a cost of $45, it is well worth it.
The opposite is true of the Kitchen Aid stuffer attachment. If you are an occasional sausage maker, you can get by with it (however, any softer sausage like a chicken sausage or turkey sausage were a real pain to stuff through the narrow tube that feeds into the stuffer). The main drawback with the stuffer attachment is time. Sausage making is a lengthy process, so by the time you are actually ready to stuff the sausage, you find yourself waiting for the machine to catch up. Plus the filling tube and top reservoir are very small, so you have to constantly add meat from your mixing bowl, onto the reservoir, then use the stuffing tool to push it down the tube, while holding and guiding the casing with your other hand. I used mine for the first three or four times I made sausage, but once sausage making became a regular occurrence, I knew I had to upgrade. I purchased a 7lb vertical stuffer (about $115 on sale from Cabela's) and am extremely happy I did. I can now stuff 7lbs (I actually think it holds closer to 10lbs) in no time.
I've been making fresh sausage for almost three years. I started off with basic sweet italian sausage recipes and a chicken sausage from Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn's
Charcuterie. They turned out fantastic. I had never had such a juicy and flavorful sausage from the supermarket. The flavor convinced me that the time, effort, and money were well worth it. I've made about five or six different sausages from
Charcuterie, along with a few others. I've also designed a couple of homemade recipes based on the 70/30 ratio of meat to fat (the "chili" sausage was a huge hit).
Reading
Charcuterie made me realize that I was only scratching the surface of the art with fresh sausage making. I've also made one attempt at smoking sausage with a friend of mine and it turned out ok (I will be attempting a second round in early April). But ever since I picked up the book, I've wanted to cure and air dry meat and sausage. I've read Ruhlman suggest that you could cure meat in a standard mini-fridge, and I always kept that in the back of my mind as I made excuses for why I couldn't do it. "I don't have the time" or "We just don't have the room" were the two most common.
As I was shopping one day at Costco, I saw that they had a Vinotemp 27 bottle wine fridge for $200. I always thought a wine fridge would be perfect for home curing because it has a built in thermostat, and optimal wine storage conditions are usually ideal for drying meat as well (think basements and cellars). Still, I was reluctant until my wife finally encouraged me to do it, plus she cleared a space for the fridge in her crafting section of our small dinner table nook. After we got some extra money from the our tax return, I finally made the leap and purchased the Vinotemp fridge.
I plugged it in and set the thermostat for 60 degrees Fahrenheit. I then purchased an indoor/outdoor temperature and humidity meter and placed it inside the running fridge to gauge the temperature but also to get an idea of the relative humidity. After thirty minutes in the fridge, the gauge measured 60 degrees and 70% humidity-the ideal environment!
Now let the fun begin!
