[Sca-cooks] Pork fat

[Robin Carroll-Mann]

On 14 Sep 2002, at 6:57, Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamant wrote:

> Also sprach Robin Carroll-Mann:
> >I made some sausage earlier this summer, using ordinary ground
> >pork from Costco.  The sausages were tasty, but a touch dry.
> >Recipes on the web call for pork fat to be added to the ground meat
> >(which already has a fair amount of fat in it).  What kind of pork
> >fat should be used, and where do I get it?  In my supermarkets I see
> >salt pork, fatback, and lard.  Would any of these work?
>
> Salt pork probably wouldn't work, not because of the type of fat it is
> (commercial salt pork is usually from pretty high up on the side
> "bacon", similar to what Americans call bacon) but because it's brined
> and pickled,

It was not at the top of my list.  Thank you for confirming that.

> Lard, OTOH, is supposed to refer to kidney fat (the piggy equivalent
> of beef or veal suet), but, since what most people think of as lard is
> rendered lard, it's possible you may run across any old fat suitable
> for rendering being called "lard", and if it isn't actual
> kidney/internal loin fat, or some other "hard" fat, you may have
> problems.

I meant rendered lard, the stuff in the green-and-white cardboard
box.

> The deal is that sausages seem to require an absolute minimum of
> 10-15% fat, and can even go as high as 30% or more without serious
> character flaws. One way to do this is to mix certain fatty cuts of
> pork with lean ones to get the mix you want.
[snip]
> By meat standards, though, it's still fairly cheap
> (ranging, around here, from $1.29-$1.79/lb, at the most; shoulder butt
> is about the same, as I recall), so if you have time and the
> inclination to trim and grind this meat yourself, it has more fat than
> shoulder meat, and so provides a moister sausage.

I can get ground pork at Costco for $.99 a pound, so adding more
fat to it seems to be my easier and cheapest option.

The other possibility is that it doesn't need more fat, but that the
cooking method was at fault.  I brought my first and only batch of
this sausage recipe to a populace meeting in a park, and grilled it
over charcoal.  Because I am not experience with grilling, and am
nervous about undercooked pork, I may have overcooked it.  My
only previous taste had been a small amount of the loose mixture,
hastily microwaved, to be sure that it wasn't horrible.  Another cook
in my barony suggested parboiling the sausages, then grilling them
briefly.  I also understand that sausages can be frozen after
parboiling.

Thank you for the information and advice.  I have very little
experience cooking pork, other than the usual smoked/cured
products.


Brighid ni Chiarain *** mka Robin Carroll-Mann
Barony of Settmour Swamp, East Kingdom
rcmann4 at earthlink.net