Home-made Italian sausage

Every Autumn we participate in the local Rib-Fest and Pie contests that are part of the Village of Northfield's "State Fair".  Our friends Phil and Marsha usually chip in and help us get it together and this year they bought a case of babyback ribs.  I trimmed those ribs and saved the scraps, freezing about 5 lbs of pork fat and lean meat for later use.  Sausage!

A couple of months later Mike and I give it a go with my Grandpa Tony's sausage maker, a meat grinder with a sausage stuffer attachment. The Sausage stuffer is basically it is a tube that helps you stuff the casing. Casing is pork intestine lining that is cleaned and washed and used to give the sausage its tubular form. 

So lots of mashed garlic, Kosher salt, fresh ground black pepper, fennel seed and hot red pepper flakes get mixed into the ground pork and about 45 minutes later we have some pretty tasty hot Italian sausage!