How sausages are made

Sausage is trimmed meat and fat, salted, spiced and stuffed into a tube that often used to be an intestine.

stations: 6
things upstream: 6
raw sources: 4
steps from the ground: 3

The short version

Meat and fat are cut or ground, mixed with salt, seasoning and sometimes a starch filler, then stuffed into a casing. Casings are traditionally cleaned animal intestines, though factories often use collagen, cellulose or plastic. The links are then cooked, cured, smoked, dried or frozen, depending on the style.

Trim and grind the meat

Pork, beef or poultry is cut into pieces or ground, with fat added to reach the planned lean-to-fat ratio. Premium sausage uses choice cuts, while cheap sausage may use meat recovered mechanically from carcasses.

Goes in
Pigs
Mix in salt and seasoning

Salt and spices go into the ground meat. British-style sausages often add breadcrumbs or grain as filler, up to about 30 percent of the ingredients, which soaks up moisture and fat as the sausage cooks.

Goes in
Table salt
Stuff into casings

The mixture is pushed into a casing, which gives the sausage its shape. Natural casings come from the cleaned submucosa of pig or sheep intestines. Industrial lines often use collagen or cellulose casings made by extrusion.

Goes in
Sausage casing
Twist into links

The filled tube is twisted or tied at regular intervals into separate links.
Cook, cure or smoke

Some links stay raw and others are cooked. Curing, drying and smoking preserve sausage, and some cured or smoked styles keep without refrigeration.
Chill and pack

Most fresh sausages must stay refrigerated or frozen until cooked, so they are chilled and packed straight away.

End of the lineSausage Next it goes into frozen pizza.

Worth repeating

An Akkadian cuneiform tablet records a dish of intestine casings filled with some sort of forcemeat.
Natural casings are sold by the hank, a bundle of casing strands that measures 91 meters.
The meat percentage on a British sausage label can exceed 100 percent when the weight of meat before cooking is counted.