I don’t know what the “official” answer would be, but I just recently made 25 lbs of andouille sausage (from scratch) in 5 lbs batches as I am mixing by hand. I ended up putting all of my seasonings + binder in a bowl and added 1.5 cups of ice water and mixed it all together. I then poured half of the mixture into the meat an mixed thoroughly. Once completely incorporated, I added the rest of the seasoning mix. At some point in the process, I added between .5 and .75 cup of ice water to help with the mixing. I have found that a little extra water doesn’t hurt as it will be cooked off during the smoke period. Not to mention it makes it a little easier to crank through my 3l stuffer. The end result was amazing; by far the best sausage I have ever made. I usually use a soy binder, but the carrot was way easier to work with and I believe the end product was much better. I hope this helps with your question.

I just picked up 30# of boneless Boston Butt at Aldi (gotta love a $1.29 per # sale) and I plan on making 15 #'s of fresh brats and hot Italian sausage. I have recently used the Carrot binder on some Cajun smoked sausage with great success but was wondering if a binder is needed or recommended for fresh sausage. I apologize if this question has already been asked and answered 100 times on this forum and I was not able to find it. Does anybody have any thoughts on the matter?

Austin Thanks Austin. I was leaning towards no binders (I have never used them in the past, but then again, I didn’t have a few packages laying around either - lol). I just wanted to double-check. Thanks again!!

I have the Blue Ribbon Maple Bacon Cure that I mistakenly used as a pickling brine the last time I made bacon (which turned out amazing - my family said it is the best bacon they have ever tasted). I just picked up 30# of fresh bellies yesterday and was getting ready to repeat the same process and when I looked on this site to see how much cure/water I needed to use, I realized that I was supposed to inject this instead of using it for pickling. If I were to use it again for pickling, do you have any suggestions on how much to use per gallon of water and how long to let it sit in the brine?