how difficult is it?

How difficult is it to stuff sausage with your grinder? I have the #8 lem grinder. It comes with the stuffing tube. I shot a buck and want to make some link sausage. Am I gonna have heck stuffing with the grinder? I don't have a stuffer and can't afford one right now. If you have any tips please let me know.

Only way to find out how it works for you is to try it. There is a reason most that make sausage use a stuffer.

that's the only way we ever did our link sausage ...

we would season and grind the meat, then remove the cutting plate, install stuffing funnel tube, slide casing on the tube, turn on grinder and start feeding in the ground meat letting the screw feed it into the casing.

Pmk, do you have any problems with air pockets doing it that way?

nope, we used to slide a full length casing (gut, buy fresh ones!!) with a knot tied in the end, 10-20 feet long. Works best with two people, one feeding the grinder and one feeding the casing as it fills. We would use a large round pan, and merely do a continuous feed of sausage (looked like a snake coiled in the pan when done). once the entire casing was filled, we would tie off the other end. we would determine what size links we wanted (bun size or looped length) and merely twist the casing to length to form what size link we were going with.

We use PMK's method, except I make the twists as we stuff, not once it's all stuffed, then we throw on two ring-crimps per twist once the whole run is through. Back when my parents made boudin all the time my dad built a dedicated stuffer from a hand-crank grinder with an ice-cream maker motor chucked to the handle shaft. He had a foot-operated rheostat so he could control the speed or even stop it with a foot, leaving both hands free.

It's a giant pain and slow to use a grinder to stuff sausages.

Well it was a pain but I got it done. Made some polish and some chipotle jalapeno sausage.

Get a stuffer, thank me later.

X2

Its definitely doable. But you will eventually want a sausage stuffer.

couple of air pockets but poped um with a needle. Not to bad for my first time. About 40 links all together. Mix of polish and some japaleno chipotle.

It will work, but its slow. For large volumes I would say no.

Air pockets are only a problem if your drying the sausage. If it is going to be cooked or frozen then cooked it shouldn't hurt anything.

yep, it can be a pain if doing large amounts at once. I recall making 250 pounds of link feral hog sausage for a benefit fund raiser and the grinder stuffing method was all we had to use. It worked but took some time. by the end of it we had a pretty good system going that worked very well with 2 people (one feeding the grinder, one handling casing and filling).

I just used my new vertical stuffer for the first time. It beats the pants off using a grinder and the elbow stuffers.

I've used the grinder a few times since I don't have a stuffer. Ditto what others said. I'll probably be buying a stuffer in the next year or two.