The Barefoot Kitchen Witch

Soppressata in the Works

Yeah, that’s sausage hanging in our music room.

Yesterday Bill and John mixed up a batch of soppressata, which is a dried sausage similar to salami. 

Right now it’s hanging in our music room, which is closed off and has a space heater keeping it toasty warm so it can incubate for about 48 hours.  This will kick start the good bacteria into producing lactic acid.

After that period, the sausages will hang at John’s house to cure for around 3 weeks at about 60 degrees with 60-70% humidity.

Pretty cool, huh?

Lobster Sausage

Yes, that’s right.  Seafood!  In sausage form!  Is there no end to the sausage madness?

Not yet.

We decided to make a batch of Lobster, Shrimp and Leek Sausage (from Charcuterie) to serve as part of the appetizer segments of both Christmas Eve and Christmas.  Not a ton of it, because we didn’t know how it would be.  But enough for everyone to taste.

And so everyone could say “Wow!  I’ve never had lobster sausage before!”

We live for praise.  We live to inspire.

Making Sausage – The Stuffing Part

Here it is.  The stuffer.

And I’ll say right up front that one day we will have a better one.  This one gave us some problems, but we are new to the business of making sausage, and we figured this would be nice and simple to use.

It is, but it takes superhuman strength to operate.  Fortunately we had John with us, who, thanks to carrying around his small children, has massive biceps and the strength of ten men.  Or five, at least.

Anyway…

Making Sausage – Grinding the Meat

We’re using an old meat grinder that belonged to Bill’s mom.  It’s old school, burly, and simple.  There are three dies – coarse, medium and fine.  We started with the coarse grind.

Making Sausage – Part 1 – Cleaning the Hog Casings

Hog casings.

Just a fancy, in-polite-company, not-for-the-squeamish way of saying pig intestines.

These are packed in salt and need to be rehydrated and rinsed.  Rinsed a lot.