How to Twist Sausage Links

Jonathon

How to Twist Sausage Links - Meat Hacks

Learn How to Link Sausage with Walton's and Meatgistics. Watch the video, read the guide, and post your questions or comments below.

Meat Hacks

How to Link Sausage
So, you’ve gone through the process of making some fresh sausage, ground the meat, seasoned it, and stuffed it, and now you are getting ready to link it. Well, if you’ve never done it before, we will show you how to do it with a few different types of casings and show you three different techniques.

I will go over the most basic way to link them first. Grab your rope by the very end and pinch it down where you want the casing to begin, then with your other hand, grab the casing about 5 inches down from that. If you like a little shorter brats, then keep it closer, or for longer, move it a little further down. Now pinch the casing down at that point and start rolling the casing towards yourself with your finger. How many times you will need to spin it depends on how tightly or loosely you stuffed your casings.

If your casings are popping after just a twist or two, you have overstuffed them. Next, fold the now-formed sausage down your rope and start a new pinch where the first one ended, this will help you keep some uniformity to your lengths. Now begin to twist it in the opposite direction as you did the first one. So if you started by twisting your first one towards you, then twist the next one away from you. Continue this process until you have made it all the way down your rope. If you are using collagen, I like to freeze them at this point before I cut them as this will help the collagen stay in place a little more, and you need to freeze them before vac packing them anyway, or they will get crushed. If you use cellulose casings, you need to tie them closed.

A slightly quicker way to do this is to skip a link. So start as you would above, but when you move on to the second link, pinch it where the first link ended but then fold it again and pinch it where that link will end, all while still holding that first pinch you made. Now, you twist them in the opposite direction as the first, and you will be making two links simultaneously. Just continue this down the rope until you are done. This is the method I generally use.

The third one is a bit advanced, but it gives you nice uniform links and looks pretty impressive. Just like the first two methods, make your first link and then fold it over the rope so your second link is the same size. Then pinch this area down and wrap some of the casing at the end of the first link around where you have pinched. Then spin the two links that are now making an oval shape a few times. Next, take the rope hanging down from the two brats and bring it up to the top of them, where the twist is. Pinch this down, fold it over and through the oval at the twist, and then pull the rope through the oval. Now fold the rope down along the oval and pinch it, pull it up, and at this point, your oval should be hanging below the link you just pinched. Now let the rest of the rope hang down and pinch that where it meets your previous oval, now twist the new oval you have just created and pull the rope up to the top of that, where you will pinch it and then fold the rope over and through the oval again, creating your second link. Continue this process until you have done the entire rope.

So those are the three ways we hand-link sausages here. Each gives you uniformity which is important for appearance and packaging. Another nice thing about hand linking is if you have under-stuffed some casings like I have here, you can give it a few extra twists to tighten it up. Remember, an under-stuffed casing is preferable to an overstuffed casing as it is easier to give it a few extra twists than to deal with a blowout after your stuffing has been completed!

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