Homemade Brats!

Cliff and I took a much needed trip to Bass Pro Shop this past weekend. We wanted to try and make bratwursts- sausage within the casings. It sounds pretty difficult, but since we have a meat grinding machine, (which comes with the sausage stuffer), we knew we could at least attempt some brats!

Instead of mixing the wild boar with bacon fat, we mixed it with beef. We tried to find pretty fatty beef since, again, the wild boar is super lean (almost inedible). We bought some ground beef  which was a 73/27 fat ratio. That was the fattiest we could find so we gave it a go!

The casings we bought came with some bratwurst spices so it was pretty easy to prepare. We decided to throw in some garlic and onion too. We wanted to make sure we had terrible breath for Saturday night.

Check out the color difference between the commercial beef versus the wild boar:

Can you tell which one is which? The boar is on the left…much more “alive” looking…versus the beef on the right..kind of a bland color. It’s not just because it’s beef either. We made some chili with commercial pork and it’s much lighter too.

We mixed the two meats together then added the spices and onion and garlic.

I guess Cliff couldn’t resist sticking his handprint in the meat….gross.

Time to make the sausage! This was sort of gross looking…..but we made it through since we knew the final product would be delicious.

Our apartment has basically felt like a butcher shop this past month. At least we haven’t been buying much meat at the grocery store!

We obviously had to make a few for lunch….we cooked a couple on a frying pan with some onions to give them a little more flavor.

We served these babies up on wheat buns with pickes, ketchup, and mustard. They were pretty darn good. Even with the beef added to them, they were much leaner than a brat you might buy at a baseball game. So, at least I got that goin’ for me.

Pretty good lunch! It will continue to be a pretty good lunch for about 2 weeks. Good thing we like sausage and brats so much…we basically have a lifetime supply at this point!

In other news, Cliff and I are going to attempt to make a light box today for my pictures. I’ll update you with new pics later today (hopefully better ones!).