Sausage: Go Big or Go Home

CostCo.  Need I say more?  CostCo is headquartered in Issaquah, WA.  Anyone that has ever visited always comments, "What's with everyone here and CostCo?"  It is not uncommon to be at a party and overhear (or have) the following convo:

Guest:  "Wow this artichoke dip is awesome!"
Host:  "Oh I know! CostCo!"
Guest: "AHH CostCo! I love that place!"

We are out of Italian Sausage and pizza sauce.  Naturally, we get the main ingredients at Seattle's obsession, CostCo.  [sidebar - I also got a 10 lb tube of ground beef, you read right, to make a gagillion meals with for my expecting sister].  Anyway, the first two times we made sausage we used 4-5 lbs of pork.  Since CostCo has pork shoulder we decided to get it there [it is what we used to make sausage with Em and her family in Ritzville, WA]

We get home and realize this baby is over 13 lbs!  WHAT?!  Ok calming down... we have a freezer it'll be ok.  You've seen most of the sausage making process here so I won't repeat.  Really this time there were four differences, we used a scale to weigh the spices (Merry Christmas to us), we added more spice in general, we used red wine mixed with pomegranate juice as the binder, and we make a boatload of it.  [yep Em non-farming kids use that phrase too!]

This post is pretty much about the pictures of the ridiculous amounts of sausage we made.  In case you are wondering we do not stuff it into casings since it will almost all go on pizzas eventually.  As an experiment half has a red wine/ pom juice as a binder and half has no binder.  I'll let you know the verdict eventually.  Sampled cooked and plain, the batch without the binder is much stronger tasting since the sweet juice isn't there to tone it down.

Pork in strips getting slightly frozen

Yep, ALL this seasoning is for the sausage!

So is this garlic!

Coated with seasoning and ready to grind