Sausage making 101

One by one, Rob Dutkiewicz pushes cold, three-inch chunks of cured pork down the chute of an electric meat grinder. Beautifully marbled meat noodles slowly emerge, dropping into a stainless-steel bowl below. I plunge my gloved hands into 20 pounds of ground pork shoulder and start squeezing the pink meat and bits of white fat between my fingers, scooping and kneading to mix in the freshly ground black pepper, juniper and garlic cloves.

As we work, Dutkiewicz (pronounced doot-KEH-vitch), a father, real estate agent and home sausage maker based in South Bend, tells me he started this yearly all-day sausage-making extravaganza when he was a teen as a way to connect with his Polish heritage. His grandfather was Polish and grandmother half Polish, half German.

He pulls out an impressive cast-iron stuffer and places it with a thud on the counter in front of us. This is when it becomes a “fun team-based game,” Dutkiewicz says. He fills the stuffer with meat and loads slimy opaque casings onto the pipe where sausage will come out. On command, I start slowly cranking. I’m using both hands; it’s hard work. As I watch him expertly guide the ground sausage into the casing, he says, “You have to work closely with the guy that’s cranking the press. If the guy cranking goes too fast, you break the casing. You have to communicate back and forth.”

Pressure’s on. It’s my turn to sit down and stuff casings, while Dutkiewicz cranks.

My right hand regulates how quickly the casing leaves the pipe, while my left guides the sausage, testing tension to make sure it’s just right as it moves along. Once a six-inch sausage has miraculously materialized in my hand, I twist off the end while Dutkiewicz simultaneously stops cranking, just for a moment, before we continue cranking out beautiful sausage after sausage.