I'm making sausage this weekend.... never done it before.

once you grind and stuff.....how do you cook?   dehydrate?  smoke?  oven

I'll keep looking but thanks for any input

(pork,beef and jalepeno with some vinegar)

probably gonna use a dehydrator...but still reading about it...

update:

thanks! you bet I'll PM you for that pdf...nice.

great morning so far....

1. I de-silvered some top round beef and pork then ground in grinder along with some brats.
2. chopped some jalapenos
3. mixed and added cure and seasonings for 7 pounds of meat

the batch is sitting in fridge now while I clean the grinder and add the casing stuffer apparatus to grinder

might use the jerky cannon on dehydrator for some of it...the rest goes into casings (but I've gotta read up on that part right now)  winging it....hopefully I don't kill anyone.

found this page for curing and nitrites, etc...

http://www.meatsandsausages.com/sausage-making/curing

I'd season it, smoke it, and freeze it. Then enjoy when you want to.

Smoke it, always smoke it. I think the dehydrator would dry it out too much.

What kind of sausage do you want? Breakfast? Kielbasa?
I'm using a kit from Cabelas this weekend for bratwurst.
I'm mixing pork and deer 50/50.
Then using hog casings. Vacuum pack it, then into the freezer until needed.

I'll try to get pics....

Read about the various cures.

Sodium nitrates are used in long curing processes like dried salamis where the sausages may cure for several weeks.  Nitrate breaks down into nitrite over time.

Sodium nitrite is used for shorter duration curing or when the sausage is going to be at a temperature where bad bugs thrive for any amont of time. Like when lightly smoking a sausage for flavor.  Polish, keilbasa, cooked salamis, etc need something with sodium nitrite in it (prague powder 1, tender quick, 'pink' salt)

Fresh sausage that is going to be frozen right away doesn't require sodium nitrites.  Fresh breakfast sausage, patti sausages, and the like are good with just salt in the mix.

Cure no 1 contains sodium nitrite.   Cure no. 2 contains sodium nitrate.

Pure sodium nitrite will kill you dead in very small amounts.  Cure no 1(prague #1, tender quick, etc) has a very small amount of sodium nitrite in it.  The rest is salt.

OP - I make a fair amount of sausage (just for my family, not commercially or for a co-op or anything)  I've collected a lot of information on cures, procedures, and recipes and put it in a word document. It's about 35 pages of 'stuff' in a pdf file.  If you want a copy of it PM me your email and I'll send it along.

thanks John!