Homemade Chicken Sausage (Grind Your Own Recipe!)

Every so often I get an email asking if I have any recipes for sausages that don’t contain any pork.  There are a lot of folks out there who simply don’t dine on swine. 

This post will show you how to make chicken sausage.  I’ll give you the basic recipe and you can make endless variations to suit your tastes.  These sausages are delicious and worth trying even if you do eat pork!

This batch of sausage used five large chicken thighs (a little less than three pounds).

Start by taking the bone out of the thigh.

While you are taking out the bone go ahead and take out the large vein.  No need putting that in your sausage.

Here is what you are going for.

Now that the bone and vein are out you can cut the thigh into fourths.

And then into eights.

Repeat the process for all five chicken thighs. Discard the thigh bones.

This batch of chicken sausage was seasoned with roasted red bell peppers and basil.

Chicken Sausage Recipe

• 5 large chicken thighs with bone removed
• 1/2 cup loosely packed roasted red pepper
• 2 tablespoons basil paste (or 3 tablespoons freshly chopped)
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon black pepper

Combine the ingredients then run them through your grinder.

If you need instructions about grinding and stuffing you can catch up with my post on How to Make Sausage at Home.

After grinding and mixing (no extra liquid was needed for these) fry up a test patty to test the seasoning.  Make adjustments if needed.

To make sure that there wasn’t any pork in these sausages they were stuffed into casing made of beef collagen.

There are multiple types and sizes of collagen casings available.  You will want to use the 32 mm Fresh style from LEM. (The link takes you to the 21 mm size casing.  Select 32 mm from the drop down menu.)

Collagen casings make sausages that are very straight with no bends.  They are also impossible to twist into links.

Use some twine to tie a knot at the end of the casing.

After you stuff the casing to the desired sausage length use another piece of twine and tie it off.

I like to add a new piece of twine before every sausage so I can cut them apart for individual storage.

They came out looking pretty nice!

Grill these chicken sausages with indirect heat (or bake in a 300F oven) and turn often.

Cook the sausages until an internal temperature of 165F is reached.

These chicken sausages brown up wonderfully but will pop if left unattended (just like that little sausage hanging out in the back of the picture).

You can use the seasoning blends for traditional pork sausage and apply them towards your chicken sausage.  You can make spicy Italian Chicken Sausage, Chicken Bratwurst, etc.

If you need recipes for Bratwurst and other sausages then you can find some in the post on How to Make Sausage at Home.

I hope you found this article on how to make chicken sausage useful!