SC - sausage and ham smoking

[Mordonna22 at aol.com]

In a message dated 7/17/98 10:06:12 PM US Mountain Standard Time,
stefan at texas.net writes:

<< 
 Since you have had some experience in actually making sausage and ham and
perhaps
 other meat preserving techniques, I would love to hear more details. 
  >>

It was a complex and daunting undertaking, our extended family (6 or 7 adults)
always invited another family to help, and we went to their "butcherings" to
help.  There are several specialties involved.  

We always began in the pre-dawn hours of a winter day, at least a month after
the first killing frost.  The young and inexperienced (watched by an elder)
built and tended the fires (at least two).

If we were killing swine, his head was placed in a yoke with a bucket of feed
under him to prevent him from being afraid.  Then the "knacker" would give him
one short, hard rap between and slightly above the eyes with a hammer,
dropping him where he stood.  A good knacker could kill most swine with one
hit.

For beef, we usually depended on a rifle bullet, as a steer's head is a bit
thicker than a boar's.

The throat was immediately cut, and the animal hung by it's back legs to
drain.

While the carcass was draining we gutted it and removed the entrails, being
VERY careful to remove the bile duct without rupturing it.  (Bile can defile
an entire carcass)

We then removed the hair by pouring boiling water over small patches of hair
at a time and using dull knives to pull the hair out.  Using a sharp knife
tends to shave the hair and leave the roots in the skin.

Then we broke up into three crews.  One to deal with the entrails and sausage
and one to cut and portion the meat and one to tend the fires and the cook
pots and lard pots.

Meat was portioned into pretty standard cuts:  Hams, shoulders, ribs, hocks.
The neck bone and tail were special cuts to be saved for feasting later.  With
Pork, we usually also cut a section about six inches wide from the length of
the backbone.  This was known as "white meat" or "Preacher meat".  It is
especially pale and tasty.  Any meat scraps were put in container for sausage,
and we usually cut the meat from the skull and one shoulder for sausage.
Sometimes, (if we had a lot of friends wanting to buy sausage) we would cut
the entire pig up for sausage (saving the backstrap for our selves)

All the fat that could be removed was placed into a large pot over a
moderately hot fire and stirred often until it was rendered.

The entrails crew would clean the liver,  heart,  "lights" (pancreas), lungs,
"tripes"(stomach),kidneys  intestines, and the hooves. The liver, lights,
hooves, and lungs were thrown into a pot along with what remained of the
skull, and some salt, pepper, onions, cayennes, and a bit of coriander.  This
pot was allowed to boil over a hot fire, stirred constantly with a boat paddle
specially reserved for the purpose.  

The tripe and intestines were especially difficult  to clean, and took a LOT
of scraping and clear water.  We also often bought commercially prepared sheep
intestines for our sausage making, which are sold salted, and had to be soaked
and rinsed in clear water several times before being used.

The tripe and the heart were sometimes thrown into the pot with the other
entrails, and sometimes reserved to be fried for special treats at a later
date. 

If the hams were to be frozen, or eaten immediately (within a week)  they were
iced down then refrigerated.  If they were to be hung they were packed into
salt before they cooled.

All the scraps, and the shoulder and head meat were ground fine, then mixed
with a combination that included salt, pepper, cayennes, coriander, brown
sugar, sage, and other savory spices according to our tastes.  We had our
specialist herbalist to spice the sausage.  She is the lady I have spoken of
before.  My foster-mother-in-law/great-aunt-in-law/fourth-cousin-in-law.  She
was seventy when I met her in 1965, and Corwyn met her last summer.  She still
spices the sausage for most of the community.

Sorry about the extended use of bandwidth.  There is much more I could tell,
probably, but my memory needs jogging by your questions.  It has been thirteen
years since I left there.

Mordonna DuBois
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