Bringing Home the Sausage
If you are a regular reader of this blog, you already know that I don’t mince words and I am passionate about local foods, homesteading and knowing where your food comes from. So here it is, in living color. If you are disturbed by these images all I can say is you should be more disturbed about what goes on in your local chain grocery or within the FDA and what they allow to go on in your local chain grocery store or CAFO farms where most of this country’s meat comes from.
For those of you who follow me on facebook, you know that last week I started my studies this week at Sterling College’s Vermont’s Table program. It is a mix of culinary arts, food entrepreneurship and agriculture studies. If you follow my farm blog, Got Goats? you will have read about my thoughts on Whole Farm Thinking and Traditional Farming methods and more on why I want to be a farmer.
Well yesterday was my first all day culinary course, Value-Added Products. It is all day on Thursdays and is a practical skills hands -on course. The day before I read several articles on charcuterie , the glories of sausage making and meat in general – how it is produced, the various muscles and how they develop into meat and primal and retail cuts.
Cole Ward
All that reading in no way replaces spending 4 hours with a real expert. Yesterday that expert was Cole Ward aka The Gourmet Butcher and a person that I am honored to know, learn from and be inspired by. Cole knows his stuff. He was recently featured in the book Primal Cuts, published by Welcome Books about the 50 best butchers in America. Cole has been a butcher for almost 50 years. He has seen the changes to the art of butchery over his long years of expertise, and frankly is not at all impressed by the current trends in butchery, especially that of grocery stores. If you haven’t seen his blog, I would suggest keeping an eye on it. He mentioned to us that he is going to be writing many more posts about what goes on behind the scenes in many grocery stores across the country that consumers really need to know about. Let’s just say he wouldn’t feed ground meat from the grocery store to his dog. Everyone who eats and buys meat needs to be informed.
Yesterday Cole was a guest teacher in our class of 5 students. We butchered a 270 lb local, pastured pig. He did the first half through demonstration, and then we, the students butchered the second half. I had the honor of butchering a lamb with Cole this past fall, and it was an unforgettable experience. If you want to learn from this master butcher, you can! He is holding a 2-day workshop at the end of the month . We will be butchering another pig and part of a beef cow. Participants will learn the skills, and the meat will be divided between all attendees. Lunch is included. This is a really great opportunity to learn more about the art of butchery from the best. Cole is immensely entertaining, un-untiringly patient and full of so much knowledge. He is a real integral figure in the local food movement and an ally to homesteaders and small farmers who really need a lot of help learning these skills. Simply put, Cole is AWESOME and deserves all the accolades one can muster.
Natural hog casings, ground sausage, pork shoulder with wine soaked cranberries and spices, grinding the sausage
After Cole left, we set up to process a lot of the meat. We were divided into two groups, and each group made one kind of sausage and set up curing another cut for smoking next week. My group cured the pork belly for maple bacon, and made a cranberry-sage link sausage, using natural hog casings. The other group made brine for the 2 loins and made Loukanika sausage, flavored with orange zest, bay and coriander. Next week we will focus on the smoking and make some other products.
Cranberry-Sage Sausage and Loukanika Sausage
Roberto and I had the sausages for breakfast this morning and they were both delicious. We particularly liked the cranberry-sage and feel it complements a breakfast meal, perfectly. The rest of the sausages will be feeding the Sterling College population at their barbecue tonight for dinner. Since I live off campus, and don’t eat my meals there, I get to take home my portion.
We were on our feet for 8 hours, with a 40 minute break for lunch. It was a long day, but very satisfying. I loved the communal labor involved to turn what was essentially a freshly slaughtered animal into a variety of food items, in a short period of time.
One thing we did learn though, is, if you are ever in the market for a whole pig that you plan to butcher yourself, make sure you do not wrap it in plastic, until it has been cut up to your liking and going into the freezer. Our pig was delivered in plastic and because plastic makes the flesh sweat, we were not able to use the skin or the head and many of the exposed bones, because of the moisture, those areas were beginning to take on an unfavorable characteristic. So we had to take extra measures to clean the exposed surfaces of the pig with salt and also soak other parts in a salt water brine for several hours. Not to mention having to throw away nearly 30 lbs of what should have been useable stuff.
Many farms are new to farmshares, and sending out whole animals vs. nicely vacuum sealed pieces to their customers. This is information that years of industrial farming, and consumers buying meat at the grocery store, has allowed our culture to lose. But thankfully demand for whole animals, and on farm buying has gotten bigger in the past few years. This is a GOOD thing. But your farmer may not be used to it, and may appreciate a gentle reminder that whole animals should be wrapped in cheesecloth or paper. They would much more prefer you telling them this, than having dissatisfied customers on the other end.
Sue - June 3, 2011 at 11:43 am
Hiya Jenn,
I really admire your grit and you certainly can’t get any fresher than what you were doing. I don’t expect to be dealing with a whole animal of any kind, but that is interesting about the plastic.
jayne - June 3, 2011 at 12:07 pm
Oh, I wish I could come to the Butchering workshop, but the timing doesn’t work for me this month. Some day!
Rosa - June 3, 2011 at 12:11 pm
Wow, that must have been so interesting! I would have loved to have been there. My dream is to make my own sausages. I really have to get equipped…
Cheers,
Rosa
Arlene (MOM) - June 3, 2011 at 12:50 pm
Fascinating. Actually the photos were not nearly as bad as I expected. The brining and soaking must have had a hand in that. I agree with you about not wanting to eat ground meat from the store – unless you can see the butcher grind it from a piece of meat that you can identify. Jamie Oliver had a bit to say and show about this very thing. It would make you gasp to see the junk scraps they put in it that is then washed in ammonia. Hey, burgers or tacos anyone!
5 Star Foodie - June 3, 2011 at 2:28 pm
What a great experience, so neat to make the sausages from scratch!
Donna - June 3, 2011 at 5:54 pm
The photos were not bad at all, this was super interesting. I just know how much better the meat is. What a great workshop.
Kristina - June 3, 2011 at 6:08 pm
Wow, what a great post! I’m so jealous of your class. It sounds like a lot of hard work, but fun too. I really want to take a butchering class someday. And thanks for the tip about the plastic. Who knew?
bellini - June 4, 2011 at 7:52 am
I applaud you both as always for getting back to the land, learning more and more each day about sustainable farming and managing your own life.
Angela@spinachtiger - June 4, 2011 at 9:39 am
Yeah, now this is what I’m talking about when I say I want some homemade sausage. So proud of what you are doing. Good tips about that plastic. I hate plastic for a number of reasons. Also makes bread just horrible. But, it’s a little scary to have less than fresh meat. We love sausage in this house, as we are believers in eating fat. And, I want to learn to make my own.
LeAnn - June 4, 2011 at 11:00 am
I agree. Any meat eaters who are disturbed by this need to rethink themselves or turn vegetarian. I respect honest vegetarians, just don’t happen to be one. Making sausage is inspiring. We have a local butcher who makes delicious brats.
ValleyWriter - June 4, 2011 at 11:20 am
What a great experience! And as for the photos – they’re the cleanest butchering I think I’ve ever seen – very much a PSA for artisan butchering!
Pam - June 5, 2011 at 12:58 pm
That looks like a job, but good clean wholesome food! Hugs!
Walter Jeffries - June 5, 2011 at 4:43 pm
I’m so glad you had a chance to work with Cole. He is a wonderful butcher and teacher. Working with him is a wonderful opportunity for anyone interested in meat.
My wife, our eldest son and I spent eighteen months apprenticing with Cole to learn how to butcher pigs in preparation for opening our own on-farm butcher shop that we are in the process of building.
Cole also has a set of DVD videos that are priceless although not pricey at all. If you can’t make his workshops, or frankly, even if you can, then get the DVDs. See my write up at:
http://flashweb.com/blog/2011/03/cole-ward-dvd.html
and follow the link there to the order site.
toontz - June 5, 2011 at 7:18 pm
I grew up visiting my cousin’s butcher shop, and my father thought it important to for us young’uns to know how that pig eventually ended up roasting in our backyard. We witnessed the pig being shot, throat slit, etc, etc. I have to say I wasn’t horrified at all. The taste of that roasted pork wiped out any misgivings I had (if any). My parents usually bought a half of a cow from him every year. Every few years the relatives had a pig roast. It is still one of my all-time favorite meats.
Peter G @ Souvlaki For The Soul - June 5, 2011 at 7:19 pm
Absolutely brilliant Jenn! What a wonderful class…especially that you made Loukanika! I’m thoroughly enjoying all your articles related to the farm and all the techniques you guys are using to maintain your lifestyle. It’s only natural that you would butcher your own meat….keep them coming!
vanillasugarblog - June 10, 2011 at 2:57 pm
wow. you’ve got it going on. i wonder if i could muster this up?
Walter Jeffries - June 16, 2011 at 10:13 am
I’ve been thinking about your note of the plastic making the pig skin sweat. We do pigs every week. The cuts they are vacuum shrunk wrapped in plastic and the back fat with skin on is great, no sweating at all. With the roaster pigs, wrapped in plastic but not vacuum shrunk wrapped, the skin is also great, no sweating at all. The skin makes great cracklins, roasts wonderfully and we have rendered the lard from it for years with much delight.
So I’ve been wondering why the difference. Why is it working for us? The guess I’ve come up with is that our pigs get fully cooled and aged prior to being wrapped. This allows the carcass and skin to dehydrate just a little bit so there is no surface moisture. That prevents the “sweating” you saw on your plastic wrapped pig. The result is there is no waste with ours and the head and skin are fully usable even though we plastic wrap them to keep them sanitary for delivery to the customer.
Cheers
-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project:
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/butchershop
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/csa
Alta - June 27, 2011 at 4:51 pm
I would love to experience this. Sounds incredible.
icare - February 5, 2012 at 10:55 pm
Vegetarian here and stumbled upon this, I should have left but for some reason stayed. I have compassion and a deep love for animals so needless to say I was disturbed and sickened by the pics and by those who say they support all of this and especially the one who said they saw a pig shot, throat slit and had no problem with it. I guess to each their own but I found it very disturbing.
The Leftover Queen - February 6, 2012 at 12:31 pm
As I said at the beginning of the post: “If you are disturbed by these images all I can say is you should be more disturbed about what goes on in your local chain grocery or within the FDA and what they allow to go on in your local chain grocery store…” I too am an animal lover which is why I care so much about sourcing where my food comes from. We are definitely on the same side. Unless you are growing your own veggies and not consuming any soy or corn products you too are participating in the destruction of animals, and their habitats through big ag farming practices. I was a vegetarian for over a decade and tried to be vegan – it only lasted 6 months before my health began to deteriorate. So I do understand where you are coming from. But sadly in this unsustainable food system, we all have blood on our hands. I just prefer to be responsible for the blood on mine.
Lana - February 6, 2012 at 1:03 pm
I applaud you on the adventurous path you are taking (but it does not surprise me, after all the other gutsy moves in your past:)
I was raised in Serbia, and I take my three daughters there every summer. everything we eat comes from people we know and I feel grateful that I can expose my girls to real, natural food.
We just moved to SoCal, and I am really happy to be able to find pasture-fed beef and poultry, and cage free eggs. We eat much less meat, but we eat good meat:)
One of my wishes is to take a sausage-making class, so I truly enjoyed your post:)
Good luck!
Kristine Johnson - February 6, 2012 at 2:50 pm
I grew up on a farm (still in the family, not actively growing anything at the moment) and we did all of this stuff ourselves, raised cows (milk and beef), chickens, and pigs. It was a great experience and the food was amazing. When you appreciate that another being gave its life to sustain you, you are also discouraged from overeating.
“Fresh” food from the grocery store is largely repugnant to me, and I get as much as I can from other local sources. I find myself allergic to corn, wheat, and soy. I attribute this to coming off of the farm and commencement of consuming non-farm produced meat and grains. I value this blog and the information that it provides. Thank you.
Kristine Johnson - February 6, 2012 at 2:52 pm
We also had a huge garden and fruit celllar. We did a lot of canning and freezing. Canned sausage is awesome! It is cooked once before canning, and then again to be warmed. It is so lean and delicious, and tastes just as fresh as when it was canned.