Hams
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This is the time of year to fan
tasize about hams! Killed hog (and a cow) Saturday
Got four hams in cure and hung in the smokehouse. I will touch those again in May. Tuesday I made two big long heavy sticks of hard salami and hung them in the root cellar to ferment. We will get to eat mid April. Then I ground thirty pounds of pork and fat from the primal cut butchering, skinning, and trimming. I made ten pounds each sweet Italian sausage, garlic sausage, and breakfast sausage. Nearly all of it caused. The first two in natural hog casings and the breakfast sausage half in sheep casing (I hate doing those) and half loose. My sweet (Italian) wife vacuum sealed it all. The rest of the hog is in primal cuts in the deep freeze waiting for me to be ready. The cow went away a few days to hang. [link text](```
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All I use is kosher salt, brown sugar, white pepper, and cure #2. Sometimes I take out the aitch bone and sometimes not. These four had two done each way. Salt to sugar was four to one. Have to calculate cure based on weight. Every spec has to be salted. I lost one to bacteria last year because I did not get enough cure in curs deep around aitch bone. In May I will scrub them clean and smoke them in net for two fays. Then they will age until January 2023, if we have that date! Just give it a try. Well worth it. Not overly salty. Sliced cheese him it could be sold as prosciutto.
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This is the time of year to fan
tasize about hams! Killed hog (and a cow) Saturday
Got four hams in cure and hung in the smokehouse. I will touch those again in May. Tuesday I made two big long heavy sticks of hard salami and hung them in the root cellar to ferment. We will get to eat mid April. Then I ground thirty pounds of pork and fat from the primal cut butchering, skinning, and trimming. I made ten pounds each sweet Italian sausage, garlic sausage, and breakfast sausage. Nearly all of it caused. The first two in natural hog casings and the breakfast sausage half in sheep casing (I hate doing those) and half loose. My sweet (Italian) wife vacuum sealed it all. The rest of the hog is in primal cuts in the deep freeze waiting for me to be ready. The cow went away a few days to hang. [link text](```
link urldaryl Alot of work for you, but will certainly pay off later. Sounds like you’re going to be all set with pork for quite some time. I’m jealous.
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OK, the hams look well on their way to delicious, but I spotted the shaper in the background of your third photo, and was wondering if you butcher in your machine shop? I would kill to get my hands on a shaper for my shop, I run into the need to make custom splines from time to time, and you cant beat a nice little Atlas or South Bend benchtop shaper for that!
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I did laugh when I read your post! No. I normally work outside for the rough stuff and in the kitchen for the finer work. But it was in the teens that morning and I am too old for that. By the time I was ready to grind, season, mix and stuff sausages on Monday my wife was using the WHOLE kitchen to can chicken. Since I had not taken the table back out yet, I just stayed.
It is a 1942 South Bend 7" shaper. I used it a lot years ago primarily to cut dovetails in muzzleloading rifle barrels. I have since gotten a Cincinnati Toolmaster C that has largely replaced the shaper. I like using it though. It is hypnotic. I used to get some of my best naps watching it work! I also have a 1942 South Bend heavy 10. Stick with the classics.
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Nice machines! I hear you on the too cold bit, I don’t spend any more time outside than necessary right now.
I can watch a shaper cut for hours. That’s good, since it takes hour to get anything done! But, when a shaper is the right tool, nothing else will get it done at the same cost and especially with the minimal tooling it needs.
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This is the time of year to fan
tasize about hams! Killed hog (and a cow) Saturday
Got four hams in cure and hung in the smokehouse. I will touch those again in May. Tuesday I made two big long heavy sticks of hard salami and hung them in the root cellar to ferment. We will get to eat mid April. Then I ground thirty pounds of pork and fat from the primal cut butchering, skinning, and trimming. I made ten pounds each sweet Italian sausage, garlic sausage, and breakfast sausage. Nearly all of it caused. The first two in natural hog casings and the breakfast sausage half in sheep casing (I hate doing those) and half loose. My sweet (Italian) wife vacuum sealed it all. The rest of the hog is in primal cuts in the deep freeze waiting for me to be ready. The cow went away a few days to hang. [link text](```
link urldaryl great job. Nice smoke house.
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This is the time of year to fan
tasize about hams! Killed hog (and a cow) Saturday
Got four hams in cure and hung in the smokehouse. I will touch those again in May. Tuesday I made two big long heavy sticks of hard salami and hung them in the root cellar to ferment. We will get to eat mid April. Then I ground thirty pounds of pork and fat from the primal cut butchering, skinning, and trimming. I made ten pounds each sweet Italian sausage, garlic sausage, and breakfast sausage. Nearly all of it caused. The first two in natural hog casings and the breakfast sausage half in sheep casing (I hate doing those) and half loose. My sweet (Italian) wife vacuum sealed it all. The rest of the hog is in primal cuts in the deep freeze waiting for me to be ready. The cow went away a few days to hang. [link text](```
link urldaryl Got your work cut out for you. But it is sure nice being able to put up your own.
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YooperDog absolutely. There are many fine small processors. My all-time favorite just closed shop. There are problems in the small processor industry today that there are limited ways to address. Capacity limits is one. I called to get the cow processed and nobody ( about five local slaughter.houses) could take it for months. A couple of them no longer take anything with horns. And two others have always seemed to extract a fairly high “butcher’s tax.”. Rather than pay that " tax" I can cut what I can and know I got my meat, all of my meat, and what conditions it was cut under.
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YooperDog absolutely. There are many fine small processors. My all-time favorite just closed shop. There are problems in the small processor industry today that there are limited ways to address. Capacity limits is one. I called to get the cow processed and nobody ( about five local slaughter.houses) could take it for months. A couple of them no longer take anything with horns. And two others have always seemed to extract a fairly high “butcher’s tax.”. Rather than pay that " tax" I can cut what I can and know I got my meat, all of my meat, and what conditions it was cut under.
daryl how right you are. I already do my own deer for some of the reasons you listed. Now it’s time to make myself do the rest of it. In September I took a 1400lb steer to my local slaughter house. I was not happy. Ribeyes were supposed to be 1 1/4in thick . I got 10 packages of 2 that were 5/8in thick. I took a package back to them and asked why they were so thin and where the rest of them were. They pulled my sheet and saw they messed up. They said if I was unhappy just don’t come back they have plenty of business without mine. I have lost faith in the slaughter houses here. They always give away sausage samples so I figured that’s where the rest of my steer went.
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