Freezing meat for sausage later

[MuleyFever]

I like to make different sausages so I have froze chunked meat to later grind up for sausage. Wondering what others do. Grind and freeze or just freeze whole muscle groups? Or do you freeze smaller pieces ready for the grinder?

 

[Rs3003]

I freeze smaller cut pieces ready to be ground up. I have to just add pork or grind up as is. A little less mess at the grind time.

 

[robby denning]

I freeze smaller cut pieces ready to be ground up. I have to just add pork or grind up as is. A little less mess at the grind time.

Same here on freezing the smaller pieces until I have time to process


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[squirrel]

I get 3 gallon buckets of food grade plastic with lids. Holds 21-22 lbs of small cut chunks perfectly fill with grinder ready chunks all I have to do is thaw and add 4lbs of fat for each 25 lb recipe Buckets are a little inefficient in the freezer but that is the only down side.

 

[Tod osier]

I don’t do anything special. If you can thaw it in a fridge (slow thaw to have it devenly cool) to the perfect crispy cold and cube it, it works well. That way you don’t have to thaw and then rechill to grind.

 

[Brendan]

I Just finished doing about 45 lbs of ground meat, with 25 pounds of it going into sausage. Almost all of it was from older cuts that I didn't use, freezer fossils, or bags of cubed up meat that had been vacuum sealed waiting for a time to grind it. Best advice I have - cut into cubes, and freeze in 2 lb bags, pressed as flat as you can (helps for defrosting later). Buy your pork fat in advance, and do the same.

Then when you're ready to grind, you can grab 4 bags of meat, a bag of fat, and lay them out and they'll be thawed enough to break apart and throw in the grinder within a couple hours. Helps to pre-mix all your spices the day before too so you're not realizing you're out and doing a frantic run to the store...

 

[camping1601]

I freeze in chunks ready to go in the grinder. I fill each pack to an even weight and label.

 

[EastMT]

When I cut up an animal, I now freeze everything in chunks.

Back strap in about 6-8” pieces, I can then take it out, make steaks, stir fry, or roast

Rounds I cut into the individual cuts by the seams, freeze them in decent sized pieces too.

I write what it is on the package, wrap in plastic, double freezer wrap it. I can bone and wrap a deer in less than an hour this way, instead of cutting and portioning steaks, stew, roasts.

I just pull out the piece in want to use, cut it before cooking and save a lot of time.

For trim that I don’t want to do right at that moment, I put 5lbs in zip lock bags,squeeze the air out, freeze just like that. I can then pull out 5lbs at a time for an experiment or test, or 20lbs if I’m doing an old recipe.


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[danarnold]

I use 1gal ziplocks and keep chunks as big as possible, many days before I want to grind they're put in a cooler to thaw .
I do about 50# like that at once, large chunks don't freezer burn very easy

 

[Azone]

I freeze in big chunks or whole muscle groups depending on the animal then slice into chunks for the grinder as soon as I can get a breaking knife through it. I choose the whole muscle way most of the time incase I decided to dry cure some or roast one. For bulk sealing zip locks or double wrapped in plastic wrap then wrapped in freezer paper is the method I run with.