Since I started trying my hand at making sausages, one of the things I’ve wanted to try is homemade brats. While you can find fresh brats almost anywhere in the midwest, they are harder to come by in New England.
Fortunately they are just a fresh sausage that get their flavor from good meat and a certain set of seasonings. Most recipes call for a mix of pork and veal, but veal is tough to come by and even tougher to come by if you are looking for a humane option. Plus it doesn’t add much to the mix other than a certain creaminess. Certainly most of the actual meat flavor comes from the pork.
So I just made all pork brats, using some wonderful pork shoulder from Jericho Settler’s farm and some fat back. Here is the result, both just after stuffing and on the grill. They turned out great, although I will certainly be tweaking the seasoning mix a bit.
