With love, from my little kitchen to you...: bangers and mash

If you don't know what the title of this post is, then I am very sorry for you. Because you should.
But for those of you who don't know what bangers and mash are, I will be nice and explain them to you.
Bangers and mash, also known as sausages and mash, is a dish consisting of sausages on top of mashed potatoes. This is as far as my description goes. If you want to know more, Google it.

Anyways, back to my post.
I made bangers and mash.

You see, I have been wanting to make my own sausages for some now. But since I was so unfamiliar with this process, I figured I would start with something easy and cheap, like chicken. And I though, chicken sausages with apple, onion and fennel would be so good. So that is what I decided to make.

So Sunday morning I woke up, headed to the market, got what I needed, came home, and let the fun begin!

Step one- prep the casings.
Before you read any further I should warn you... if you do not know what hog casings are, and are uncomfortable seeing or reading about them, you may not want to finish this.
But if you can handle it, then all you need to know is that they came out really good.

Ok, to prep the casings, first I rinsed them in cold water a few times, then soaked them, then ran warm water through them to get them ready for stuffing.

While they were soaking though, I prepped my sausage mixture.
Now, in all my research, all the websites I read had a recurring theme- add plenty of fat, plenty of flavor, and plenty of liquid to your meat. So I did.
Chicken thighs (skinless, but not trimmed of their fat), apple, onion, fennel (root and some greens), chicken broth, and apple juice. I would have used beer, but I didn't have any on hand.
Now, normally I would have run all this through my meat grinder, but I think I had too much for it to handle, so I just pulsed it all in my food processor.

Once it was all nicely combined, I got ready to make the sausages!!! And I used my new favorite toy for this one!

Ok, here goes... insert the meat mixture into the tray on top of the food grinder attachment, put the casings onto the extruder thing, and get to stuffing! Oh, and here's another warning for you all... this is not a pretty process either. And I don't have a lot of pictures of this step because my hands were dirty and busy, but you get the gist...
Oh, and I twisted them as they came out, but a friend of mine told me that doing it this way is wrong. You should make one long link, then twist it when its done. That will help the links be nice and tight and not full of air. Makes total sense.
Anyways, the stuffing...

When they were done, I laid them on a rack then popped them in the oven to cook and crisp up.

After about a half hour I pulled them out. Then I got started on dinner.

Mashed potatoes, chicken gravy, apples and spinach.
I'm pretty sure we all know by now how to make these things.
For the apples, all I did was cuta couple up, boil them for a couple minutes (you can also pop them in the microwave for like 2-3 mins), then I sauteed them in a pan with some onions and the sausages. And as they browned, I added a little apple juice to the pan.