The great sausage catastrophe occurred one evening last spring. Alex, Owen, and I had gathered for a typical bout of culinary revelry and had set our hearts (and our stomachs) on homemade sausage. With minimal experience in the art of porcine entrail stuffing, we set out a’sausaging with no special equipment and no learned technique.

Feeling inventive, we fashioned meat funnels out of the tops of 2 liter plastic bottles. Our plan: slide the tubular porcine intestine over the neck of the plastic bottle, fill the halved bottle with our homemade sausage stuffing, and using the handle end of a wooden spoon as a plunger, force the stuffing through the bottle neck and into the intestine waiting on the other side. 

No sooner than we began, two PROBLEMS became immediately clear:

Firstly, without a plunger of the appropriate diameter, forcing the sausage stuffing through the neck of the bottle and into the porcine intestine was nearly impossible.

Secondly, without uniform pressure pushing the sausage stuffing through the bottle neck, the porcine intestine often ruptured mid-plunger-thrust, precipitating a failed sausage. The sausages that did result were generally misshapen, bloated in some areas and scant in others.

Undeterred by our significant technical difficulties, sausages fit for a king were eventually produced, grilled, and gleefully consumed. Please learn from our mistakes, and post your sausage recommendations here.