It's the first time we've tried making sausages, and was prompted by the new half-pig order. We had loads of sausages with the last pig, but they were all basic pork & herb. As well as wanting a variety, we also thought it would be fun to try. It was.
Mincing the pork was rather tedious (dicing 7kg of pork, and then feeding it through a blade-and-plate grinder took an age), but making the sausages was actually really easy. We took 1.5kg of minced pork, added oatmeal (rusk substitute), water, salt and pepper, and then one of four 'flavourings'. One batch of apple; one of juniper & apple; one of leek; one of Welsh Dragon (leek and chilli). Once mixed (by hand: messy work!), I fed mix into the stuffer, while Liz guided the hog casings. Apparently, the trick is keeping a consistent size, and avoiding tearing the skins or introducing air—but we didn't have any problems.
We tried a bit of each mix before stuffing, and they all tasted good, and they looked very convincingly sausage-y once made.
We made up a big bucket of brine on Friday night, and set it to chill overnight, before adding the pork belly (about 3kg) and seven shoulder/leg joints for ham. I'd boned and skinned the belly on Friday, so it was just a question of dropping the meat into the brine on Saturday morning.
That took us quite late into Saturday night, but waiting for us in the morning was the newly salted bacon, which only needed 24 hours to pickle. It was from a small chunk I'd put to one side, and I think its size meant it was saltier than the rest (and a little too salty, in fact), but it tasted great.
The rest of Sunday was then filled with a trip out on a canal boat up the Rochdale canal, to celebrate Liz's sister's birthday.
Lock on the Rochdale Canal (© Ian (2011)).
We were very amply fed, and had a really good day. Neither of us have worked locks before, although I consider them an engineering miracle, so that was fascinating. And I only bumped the bank a few times.
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