We have been making sausage for personal consumption for more than thirty years.  Breakfast sausage, Italian sausage, Bratwurst, and Kielbasa.  It is a carryover from my competitive barbecue days.  Sausage is one of the five major categories in a barbecue competition.  After experimenting with different commercial products, most barbecuists believe they can create something better.  Over time we tweaked the spice recipes to develop the perfect flavors for us.

We did improve our Sausage scores in the barbecue contests.  More importantly, we made the terrific sausage that we love to eat.

Why is our sausage better?  We grind a great cut of pork for the base.  All of our sausage is made from quality ground pork shoulder. No scraps or spare parts.  No additives or preservatives.  When you order pulled pork, you are feasting on smoked pork shoulder.  All we add are spices.

Following a key barbecuing philosophy (never accomplish with mere words something that can be achieved equally well with a flame thrower),  I purchased a small commercial meat grinder capable of grinding 600 pounds of pork in an hour.

So for many years, every two months or so, I would grind up some pork shoulders, make a variety of sausages, vacuum seal them and put them in the freezer.  Friends would join us for a spaghetti dinner with a fine Italian sausage sauce or we might serve smoked kielbasa and bratwurst as an appetizer for a barbecuing feast.     

Over time, I would get requests for sausage from my friends.  “The next time you fire up the behemoth grinder, could you make a couple extra pounds of breakfast sausage for me?”  “Absolutely” I would respond. 

After a half year I was getting requests from more friends and the demands were less polite.  “Hey! I need six pounds of Italian in three pound lots and six pounds of breakfast in ¾ pound lots.  Can you get them to me by Saturday?  I’m having a brunch for twenty friends.”  Now my response was “Bad news!  I’m not making sausage for anyone anymore.  We are going to make sausage.  If you want any, be at my house at 7:00 PM next Thursday and we will make all the sausage you care to eat.  If you can’t be there, you don’t get any sausage.”        

Surprisingly, three friends showed up on Thursday for the first sausage production session.  We ground, seasoned and vacuum sealed forty five pounds of sausage.  Everyone helped with all aspects of the process, including cleaning and sanitizing all of the equipment and pressure washing the kitchen.  It was a great social gathering and we were all rewarded with a cooler full of made to order sausage.  Start to finish it was less than a three hour effort. We rekindled a couple hundred thousand years of hunter-gathering instincts and it felt great. We planned to hold another session when the larder dwindled in six to eight weeks.

About five weeks later, as supplies ran low, everyone was ready for another production run.  The team found that it really was not difficult to make sausage.  It’s always fun to get together with your buds.  But the real bottom line was we all enjoyed eating really great stuff. 

After a few months, we were getting a little blowback from health conscious spouses.  “Sausage is one of the worst forms of protein you can consume!  You are killing yourselves with all of this fat laden, ground pork!” 

We mounted a defense that would make the National Institute of Health proud.  One of the team members is a cardiologist, another is a world class tax attorney who has argued 100 million dollar cases in the highest courts.  We noted that this was not ordinary, commercial sausage.  We were not grinding up leftovers from slaughtered pigs.  There were no udders, snouts, or pork bellies in our sausage.  It was all pure pork shoulder.  Pork shoulders have a fat content of 25% which is far less than the average 35% of commercial sausage.  Because we had perfected the quick freezing process, we were able to ensure a very fresh product without any preservatives.  Absolutely no additives.  The cardiologist said that moderate consumption of this form of protein was actually helpful to all of our muscle masses, including the heart.  The third team member was an ex-navy fighter pilot and a 747 jockey.  He pointed out that his blood tests had improved significantly after he replaced his frequent consumption of commercial Polish sausage with the fine cuisine we were creating.  Finally, I pointed out that, after years of consuming all of the home made sausage I desired, my total cholesterol level, with no medication, was 131. Of course, the talented lawyer baked all of this information into a brief that would have stunned F Lee Bailey.    

Needless to say, the spouses were non plussed.  “The sausages are going to kill you all.” 

The four of us averaged more than forty five years of marriage.  We know what hills we should die on.  This one was worth the fight. 

So we have continued to make sausage every six or eight weeks.  The group has expanded to seven or eight master chefs.  It is not uncommon to produce 60 or 90 pounds of output in a single session.  All of our friends and family, including most of the health conscious spouses, enjoy eating the sausage in spaghetti sauces, pasta Faggioli, greens and beans, and a spectrum of smoked barbecue formats.  Breakfast sausage is a staple.

Early on, I warned the team that this was not an activity that should be performed in a white dinner jacket.  “Wear a shirt that you may have to toss after each session.”  After some thought, I provided Tee Shirts that captured the spirit of our endeavor.  We all have black shirts that say “Death Bomb Sausage Company” on the front and “Eat what you want.  Die happy.” On the back.

So thirty years after we decided that we could make better sausage than we could buy in the meat market, the Death Bomb Sausage Company is alive and well.  So are all of the brave team members who grind them out every six weeks.