Sausage making
The Wee ‘Un and I worked from 0900 to 2000 yesterday as we made another of our large batches of sausages. We spent most of the morning skinning, trimming and mincing almost 20lb of pork. The Wee ‘Un loves mincing. It’s hard work for a small boy, but he has big muscles and a very determined attitude. There’s also the reward, too. A few left-over strips of pork, crumbed, fried and served with bread for lunch.
We spent the afternoon making the sausage fillings and then stuffing them into casings. It’s a long, cold job, especially as we do it by hand with the central heating off all day, the windows open (and we were getting snow showers), and the meat kept par-frozen unless it’s actually being used. It’s worth it though as we made 24 breakfast sausages, 24 pork and sage sausages, and 24 continental sausages (flavoured with garlic, bay, thyme and white wine vinegar). We also had enough mince left over to make three batches of sausage meat for use in sausage gravy. All up, that’s enough for 18 meals. It’s not quite a sausage meal a week for the 26 weeks that a whole Berkshire pig lasts us, but it’s still lot of delicious eating to look forward to.
Bless the lad…that’s a long day that is! I hope, after all that, he likes his bangers and mash!
He had a pork chop, mash and chow-chow (pickled cabbage, onions and peppers) for dinner. Then he slept very well!
Note, I don’t work him constantly!! One of the reasons, aside from the amount of meat to be processed, it takes so long is hygiene. Everything, including the table, gets cleaned after each and every batch is made. We start by cleaning everything. Then it’s trim and skin the meat, cut it into strips, chill it to get the temperature down, and clean everything while it’s chilling.
Then mince, mince, mince and mince again. Chill the meat. Clean everything again.
Have lunch. Make sausages. Clean. Make sausages. Clean. Make sausages. Clean. Make sausage forcemeat. Clean.
And by clean, I mean scrub everything in very hot soapy water, rinse in hot water, scald in freshly boiled water and then chill in the freezer (we don’t want the meat to par-cook on contact with hot metal or crockery). The freezer was defrosted the day before, scrubbed, sprayed with vinegar, dried with clean cloths and then brought to temperature.
If it sounds obsessive, it is. Scrupulous attention to detail is vital to maintain food hygiene when preparing large amounts of raw meat, especially pork, that’s handled several times.
That’s settled it, Stoney. I’m gonna skip the muesli, banana and yoghurt this morning and have some of our sausages. Though I’m afraid the butcher made ours from wee Jack the ‘old spot’ runt. He might be small but he sure is tasty!
And then there is supermarket meat….;I worked as a shelf stacker for about 6 month and I know how long cold stuff can spend on the floor waiting to be put onto the shelves and it certainly isn’t the recommended 20-30minutes.
I bet that lot taste divine. The closest I get is mincing pork and beef to make my own burgers. The home made variety juts tastes so much better than anything processed and that’s with shop bought meat, your home produced pork must be so much better.
My respect to Wee ‘Un for his mincing, I chickened out and got an electric mincer – I remember using my mother’s hand one when I was a child and it was hard work!
What will you do when the WeeUn is sucked into the school system? More to the point lol, what will he do?
Seriously, I think it’s great that he helps you out like this and doesn’t spend his time fixed to the TV.
Paul’s and Deborah’s comments have been edited to correct spelling and missing words, at their requests.
Sarah, funnily enough we received the school nursery report for the Wee ‘Un on Thursday. His teacher expressed disappointment that he didn’t engage in role-playing in the “home” area.
In other words, the nursery wants the children to play at doing domestic things like cooking, washing the dishes, cleaning and the like. The nursery staff think he doesn’t take part because of gender stereotyping.
What they fail to grasp as that he doesn’t play housekeeping games because he does it for real at home regularly and wants to do different things at nursery. Why play at baking a cake when you make real ones? Why play washing the dishes when you dry the plastic, wooden and non-sharp metal dishes and utensils? Why play cooking sausages when you get to make real ones? Why play with a toy washing machine when you can sort clothes, load them into a real washing machine, set the cycles and then unload the machine?
The Wee ‘Un has the same problem in art and craft. It’s all too basic and fluffy to hold his interest as he makes much more involved things at home. He’d much rather make something with wood, nails, glue, paint, and real tools, than stick a couple of pieces of wool and ribbon on a paper plate and call it an Easter bonnet.
I’m afraid he’s been spoiled for school!
So do they think you are gender stereotyping him into to be ‘THE MAN’ of the house who sits at the table and demands his dinner etc?
Oh what a sheltered life they must lead.
I have seen the wee ‘un and his imaginary play, he plays at being the pirate, the hunter, the explorer…exciting things!
Right, I’ve kissed my husband and kids goodbye. I should be with you around supper time. Put the kettle on.
That sounds fantastic – nothing like home made sausages, really hard to eat store bought ones after that though.
Wee “Un is learning such great skills. I really appreciate how boring it must be for him to play act at all the things he actually does. We had a similar problem which actually eventually led to both boys being put onto distance ed for a number of years, but that is another story.
Back to the sausages – we were lucky enough to be given a really simple hand operated sausage maker from a retired butcher friend of ours. If you are interested in having a look I am happy to send you either a photo or some plans for it. It would be very simple to make and it has saved us loads of time while still fitting into our ‘hand operated where possible’ philosophy.
Cheers
Mauzi