Creative Sausage Making Participants with Coolers of Sausage

The fourth annual Creative Sausage Making class, a joint venture between  the Meat Science Section of the Department of Animal Science at Texas A&M University and Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service, was held on January 13-14, 2017 at the Rosenthal Meat Center.  Thirty participants, representing barbecue companies, foodservice distributors, retailers, corporate chefs and backyard enthusiasts came to learn sausage production from start to finish.

Participants were given basic formulation recipes and allowed to add ingredients to their individual sausage batches!

During the program, participants learned the science of basic sausage production, differences in casing types, sausage cooking/smoking and food safety.  With the assistance of Meat Science graduate students and faculty, and with additional help from Rick Fitzgerald (A.C. Legg) and Greg Mueller (World Casing Company), participants formulated their own batches of fresh and cured/smoked sausage, stuffed them in natural casings and prepared them for packaging or cooking.

Dr. Wes Osburn lending expertise during grinding

Former Animal Science student and Meat Science assistant Jessica Steger attended the workshop with her coworkers. Clay Eastwood and Dr. Chris Kerth were helping as well.

Kaylee Wall and Martin Wu assisting with sausage stuffing.

Courtney Boykin assisting with sausage stuffing.

Fresh sausage made by CSM participants.

Students packaging each participant’s product.

Packaged sausage

Dr. Wes Osburn and Dr. Davey Griffin led and coordinated the program, respectively.  A tremendous group of Meat Science graduate and undergraduate students started preparing for the course earlier in the week by making example batches of each of the sausage products available for participants to make during the workshop.  Students involved included Chi-heng (Martin) Wu, Wade Hanson, Blythe Beavers, Kayley Wall, Melissa Bamsey, Hillary Martinez, Andrew Orozco, Hannah Laird, Ali Ochoa, Anderson Cabral, Adrian Ortega, Clay Eastwood, Aeriel Belk, Spencer Tindel, Adam Murray, Drew Cassens, Jill Jobe, Courtney Boykin, Madalynn Kainer and Hayden Bloomberg.  The students served as team group leaders during sausage production, they cooked the cured/smoked products in our smokehouse, packaged all of the products and did all of the cleanup during the program.

TAMU Meat Science graduate and undergraduate students served as instructors and aided in hosting the 2017 Creative Sausage Making class.