The Pig Weekend - Making Sausages

The pig weekend is one of the food highlights of the year for me which is why I wanted this to be my first official entry. 

Every year we dedicate a weekend to making Italian sausages which we dry cure along with capocollo, pancetta and a number of other delicacies all from the pig. I will detail some of those other processes in other entries and just focus on the sausages in this one. 
 

 

So with much anticipation I picked up my Dad at 7am on a cold Friday morning and headed to the pork wholesaler we source our pigs from.

 

We have been using bacon pigs for the last couple years and have found them to be ideal for our sausages. There is very little sinew in them which saves time in trimming and reduces waste. 

But prior to starting the day we kick off with a strong drink of some homemade nocino (walnut liquor made with grappa) followed by an espresso. Then we are ready to get to work and start deboning the pig.

The first job is to break down the pig into pieces small enough for the mincer. Of course keeping some of the better cuts like the ribs for the BBQ. Every year we debate how much to keep and how much to mince as the meat looks so good we want to eat everything.

We ended up with about 40kg of meat to put through the mincer. This was from an 80kg pig plus an extra 11kg leg. Keeping in mind we kept out the collars (for capocollo), the pork bellies (for pancetta) and ribs plus another couple kilos of meat for BBQ.
 

Next comes the mincing which ironically is always the quickest part of the process.
 

 

We then add our secret ingredients to the meat which includes (but not necessarily limited to) salt, chilli, paprika, capsicum paste and wine. We have this down to a science these days. In the old days our grandparents knew how much to put just by looking at the meat. A pinch of this and a handful of that, but we aren’t as clever as they were. We weigh everything and have our recipe down to grams per kilo. This has enabled fine tuning of ingredients to produce a consistent product each year.

With the exception of the one year when we switched from store bought chilli to home grown chilli which resulted in a fire burning sausage.

 

This needs to be mixed thoroughly to ensure an even coverage throughout the mixture. This is all done by hand but the final product looks and smells fantastic. This is a good time to fry up a bit in the pan to make sure it is to your liking.
 

We leave this to marinate overnight and should be mixed again the next morning prior to filling the sausages. Again, another good time to fry more up and taste for any last minute adjustments that might be required.

Day 2 is the filling and tying of sausages. This is the most tedious job as it is important to fill the casings evenly and firmly to ensure no air pockets are apparent which can allow mould to develop. However overfilling can result in the sausage casings bursting and at this point family members begin turning on each other. “You aren’t filling them enough”, “You are filling them too much”, “You are tying them too tightly” are all common phrases politely exchanged as is normal in an Italian family. 

Finally, after allowing the sausages to sit overnight we hang them on day 3.

The sausages need to cure for about 4-6 weeks and I will keep you updated on how they are progressing.

We didn't waste any part of the pig this year by making lard with the fat and smoking the bones to make our own bacon bones. I will put those in separate posts as well as progress on the capocollo and pancetta. 

And that concludes the pig weekend and all we can hope now is that the weather plays its role by staying nice and cold. 

Hope you enjoyed the read and I would love to hear any comments or questions you might have so feel free to add them below.