Making sausage with rib meat?


 

Dave L.

TVWBB Pro
After trimming my spare ribs I thought of using the meat for making sausage. Would that make good sausage? Has anyone done it and could you share some recipes. I never made sausage before so something easy would be nice.
 
Dave,

For spares that you take to St. Louis style trim, trim is similar to belly, but it's also chock full of cartilage that you need to remove which is a pain in the butt.

If you can get a piece with no cartilage in it it's still going to be very fatty for general sausage making. It will taste good but most sausages come in at about 20-30% fat and belly/spare ribs are more around 40-50% (eyeball it).

Generally I'd just smoke your trimmings along with the ribs. They'll cook faster and make good cook's snacks.
 
I saw an episode of Man vs Food where the trimmings are ground up by a restaurant to make sausage burgers. They are famous for their sausage burger sandwiches.
I use my trimmings for beans and a snack.
 
Thanks guys. I might still give it a try. I've done everything else with the trimmings so this will be something different. Anyway, how bad can it be?
 
I usually make a big batch of sausages right after christmas. Then I have the world's largest deep freezer right outside my door for storage during making, and also, the rib side/belly of the pig is very cheap.
Oven roasted ribs are a traditional christmas eve dinner here in Norway, and the ribs that are not sold before christmas eve are then sold at huge discounts.
Now, rib sides sold here in Norway are different than yours. They are not trimmed at all, the skin, and obviously all the fat/meat is intact. On norwegians pigs, about half the size than yours, that makes a fat content on about 30%. I try to find the less wanted pieces, the ones with less bones and a lot of belly on them. They are great for sausage- making.
In fact I have almost never used anything else.
 
Dave, I worked in a BBQ joint for four years in high school and they took the flap meat off of all of the slabs and ground it into burgers. Alot of people ordered them all the time and then were surprised when they found out it was pork. The place is still in business and still serve the same giant flap meat burgers. 25yrs since I worked there and they were doing it before I started so someone feels it makes good patties anyway, Ken
 
gotta make sure though that you have enough fat mixed in with the meat.

Eye of round was on sale here the other week. Great, I'll have real lean ground round.

Yuk.

Everytime I use it, I have to add 4-5 T of (olive) oil to make it palatable.

BEST meat for sausages is pork butt as it has the perfect amount of fat already there--usually steaks as it's a lot simpler trimming.

I don't know the percentage of fat needed (as butt has the perfect amount) but I've read it's about 25-30%.

If you only use the skirt and trimmings, it'll be very dry.
 

 

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