What Is the Easiest Sausage Casing to Use: Collagen or Natural?

Collagen is the easier of the two. It comes pre-loaded on tubes, needs no soaking, and slides onto the stuffer funnel straight out of the pack. Natural casing is packed in salt, has to sit in water for at least 45 minutes, gets rinsed inside and out, then has to be threaded onto the funnel by hand.

Both fill a good sausage. One of them is ready in under a minute.

What makes collagen casings easy to use:

Collagen casing is manufactured rather than harvested, so it's extruded to one fixed diameter. Every link comes out the same width, and the first sausage of the batch matches the last. There's no salt to rinse off, nothing to untangle, and no dried-out section waiting to split as it fills.

It arrives already shirred onto a tube. You take a tube out of the pack, slide it over the funnel, and start filling. Fewer steps mean fewer places for a first batch to go wrong, which is why it's the casing we point beginners at.

Collagen comes six tubes to a pack in every size we stock. The 26mm is the one most people settle on, because it fills a standard fresh sausage: $49 a pack. Collagen Casing Med 26mm Fresh 6 Tubes

Where using collagen casings are the wrong choice:

Fresh collagen is for fresh sausage, eaten within a few days or frozen. It is not for anything that hangs. Dry work needs a casing that breathes and shrinks with the meat over weeks, and that's a job for fibrous or natural.

The second limit is bite. A natural sheep casing gives a snap when you cut into a snag that collagen doesn't give you. That's the one thing collagen genuinely loses on, and for plenty of people it's worth the 45 minutes of soaking to get it back.

What you need to do to prepare natural casings:

Natural casing is packed in salt, so it keeps without refrigeration. Before it can be filled, it needs at least 45 minutes in lukewarm water, the salt rinsed off the outside, and water run through the inside as well.

Flushing the inside matters more than most people expect. It lubricates the casing, so it feeds off the funnel evenly, and a casing soaked all the way through is far less likely to burst as the meat goes in.

Then it has to be threaded onto the funnel. That's the fiddly step, and it's the one that turns people off natural casing for good. Gathering a soaked length onto the funnel without tearing it takes patience the first few times.

Whatever you don't use goes back in the fridge between 1 and 3°C, re-salted and sealed. Never store it rinsed and wet.

The two natural casing sizes most people buy

Sheep 22/24mm. The thin snag: breakfast sausages, chipolatas, thin Italian. $45 for 45m, or $75 for 90m. Natural Sheep Casing 22/24mm 45m

Hog 28/32mm. The thick one: pork sausage, bratwurst, anything you want to hold on a barbecue. $40 for 20m, or $70 for 90m. Natural Hog Casing 28/32mm 90m

Start on the 45m sheep or the 20m hog. If you're filling every few weeks, the 90m packs cost less per metre, and the casing keeps in salt.

Tubed natural casing also exists. It arrives already loaded on plastic tubes, so the threading step disappears, though you still soak it. It's sold in bulk packs, so it suits someone filling 20kg at a time rather than a first batch.

Sizes and what each one suits

Three things that get blamed on the sausage casing

Not soaking the casings for long enough. Twenty minutes instead of 45 leaves the casing stiff in patches, and it splits at the first tight fill. Give it the full time in lukewarm water, never hot.

Filling them too fast. The casing has to feed off the funnel at the same speed the meat goes in. Push harder than the casing can travel, and it tears where it's still gripping the funnel. Let it pull itself off.

Overfilling before you link. A casing packed hard has nowhere to go when you twist it, and it bursts at the link. Fill it firm but not tight, then twist.

So which one should I buy?

If this is your first batch, buy collagen 26mm. No soaking, no threading, one fixed diameter, and a usable result on the first attempt.

If you want the snap, buy natural sheep 22/24mm in the 45m pack and give it the full 45-minute soak. That snap is the reason butchers still use it.