Smoked Sausage
My Kitchen-Aid stand mixer came with a grinder and sausage stuffer attachments.  Everyone loves smoked sausage.  The sausages at Black's in Lockhart are my favorite, although I stopped at this old barn looking joint in Georgetown once and got some really good sausages.  Anyway, I started with a ~4lb beef shoulder roast cut into grinding sized chunks and a couple of pounds of fat trimmings the butcher gives me for free.  Ground course once with just dry rub for seasoning.  I went a little overboard on the seasoning, too much salt.  Sausage is tricky.  Too much seasoning is salty, too little and the sausage is bland.  Trial and error is my motto.  Central Market had hog casings for $1.69.  I rigged up a sausage rod out of a coat hanger and plant stake.  Like an asshole I left the vinyl/plastic on the rod and it melted during the cooking process.  Back to the drawing board on that one.  The texture is just right, but stuffing sausage with the little grinder/stuffer on the mixer requires a prehensile tail.  I'm going to invest in a 5lb stainless steel stuffer and go for a more visually appealing product.  Other than being too salty it turned out pretty tasty.

And just for fun I made some pork sausage out of a butt I'd ground up for breakfast sausage.  Not enough fat to fry up into good breakfast patties; the patties actually came out tasting like a fried pork chop.  But stuffed in a casing a cooked after the beef sausage over a real slow heat with almost no smoke it's as good as any sausage I've ever tasted.  I'm definitely investing in a better sausage stuffer.

The best part - sausage cooks in an hour or two.  I burned three sticks of oak for the cook.  This is going to become a habit.