A couple butchering questions

[FallAirFever]

Just getting into butchering this year and a have a few questions for the experianced butchers out there.

1. When deboning meat for sausage making how paticular are you when triming? I seem to spend A LOT of time removing as much non-meat as I can, of course the tallow fat goes but how picky do I have to be about silver skin etc...

2. How much pork do you mix in your sausages, I am planning on some fresh sausage first, no smoker, yet. Where do you buy your pork??

3. How are the CTR mixes? I was thinking of trying one of these to start.

Thanks for any help you can lend me!

[75ft Arborist]

Well i am not a butcher, but i remove all silver skin and fat from all my cuts of meat! The more i get rid of, the more i enjoy eating it. As for sausage i don't get as picky, but my hamburger is pretty lean. I think the grinder does a good enough job about small pieces of silver skin, fat, tendons, etc.

[Rockymtnx]

1. Personally I am pretty picky and take out most of the tallow, grisel, or fat. My butcher always said our meat was really clean compaire to some of the trim he got in for sausage.
2. When making our own sausage or even when we had a butcher make it we use 1/3 pork. The pork we get from numerous places. The butcher who made our sausage supplied it, we buy ground pork from a neighbor or the grocery store, or buy pork shoulders from the grocery store and process it out ourselves.
3. Not familiar with CRT mixes.

[pitw]

I'm with the other posters in that I remove so much skin, gristle and fat, that I pretty much just have red meat left. We raise our own hogs and we use a different ratio depending on what we are building. 2/3 game to 1/3 pork is a great mixture for most though. We use our own mix's and some store bought ones so it becomes a user's choice thingy.

[Mulestalker]

I use to make my own sausage recipes but found that time you buy all the spices,etc it becomes very costly,as well,the spices become stale over time thus making the end product undesirable....so now I only buy CTR premix sausage and jerky with very good results.

[Mhunter51]

The more time you put into triming the undesireble parts out such as fat, grissle and silverside the better your end product will be. That would go for ground burger or sausage. You don't want any wild game fat in your sausage. The grissle from the lower legs is particularily hard to grind. As for pork I usually go with 30% pork but that depends on how fat the pork trim is. If it is quite lean I may use 35 - 40 % or add pork fat because if it is too lean the sausage will be dry. A lot of the time Sobbeys has fresh pork picnics ( front legs ) or pork butts on sale for 99 cents a pound. These work great.

[omega50]

Personal rule when trimming I ask myself would I be happy putting that in my mouth? If not I trim it off. But if making it for the in-laws. Well then that's a whole other story.lol

Good time to use up beaks , brains and *******s.

[FallAirFever]

Hey guys thanks for the replies!

I think I am on the right track, I am curious to see how the grind goes and get a better idea of what I can or cant put through should really speed up my deboning next time. 30ish% pork is what I will start with.

I have a line on some pork picnic shoulder from a buddy who raised his own pig and had it butchered this past fall, so hopefully that all comes together.

One more question I have is about casing what do you prefer and why?

Thanks again!

[omega50]

Natural pork or sheep casing if the sausage will ever see water , steam etc. They can be boiled etc with no harm to them.



However manmade Collagen casings can't get wet because they swell, turn white and slimy and peel off looking like an old rubber.

I use small diameter collagen for slim jims and pepperoni sticks that I will hot smoke and let air dry. inexpensive, shelf stable and readily available. Tough to find natural casing in small diameter like 18-20mm

[Helixed]

I have use the CTR mixes and found them to very good. A friend of mine went to Red Deer Meats? South of Calgary near Spruce Meadows and bought pork fat from them I belive it was a buck a pound. I'm not sure what the mix ratio would be for pure fat but it would take less for the same result.

[whitetailnut]

Originally Posted by omega50

However manmade Collagen casings can't get wet because they swell, turn white and slimy and peel off looking like an old rubber.

Glad we have that cleared awayLMAO

[WkndWarrior]

Originally Posted by FallAirFever

Hey guys thanks for the replies!

I think I am on the right track, I am curious to see how the grind goes and get a better idea of what I can or cant put through should really speed up my deboning next time. 30ish% pork is what I will start with.

I have a line on some pork picnic shoulder from a buddy who raised his own pig and had it butchered this past fall, so hopefully that all comes together.

One more question I have is about casing what do you prefer and why?

Thanks again!

I have worked as a butcher and If you have taken in a whole deer/moose and had him make any sausage you can bet he would remove only the tallow fat and easly removed fat between the seams of the meat. The rest was in your sausage guarenteed. It was likely a good product, providing the moisture, spices and doneness was all on track.

[6mmhunter]

The CTR mixes are excellent. Each seasoning package is enough for 25 pounds so my usual breakdown is 15 lbs game and 10 lbs pork trim. I would phone out to Red Deer Lake Meats and request pork belly trim in whatever weight that you would like. For casings it largely depends on what type of sausage you are making. Today I made two batches, one was Bratwurst using 29-32 mm natural casings and maple breakfast sausage using 75mm synthetic casings. For the breakfast sausage I then just slice off to make breakfast sausage patties. Very very good. Good luck.

[hwkirby]

Probably the most popular dinner sausage casing is the 29-32mm pork casing. Fresh sausage in larger casings works well to but they take quite a bit longer in the frying pan when you are cooking. The advantage of the larger casings is that you can get more lbs of meat in a bundle verses smaller mm casings. Picnics are okay for trim but they are also usually quite a bit leaner than butts. Unless you are very conscience about fat in your end product I would use pork butts or bellies, although bellies are usually much more expensive. 30% pork is okay as long as it is not to lean IMO.

[kayaker]

1) Take the time and trim the fat, muscle fascia ('silver skin') and other bits - you will have a better product, even when ground.

2) We just bought a skinless pork belly from Irvings http://www.irvingsfarmfresh.com/. He will bring it to the Farmers Market for you. Its a bit more expensive ($3.50/lb) as its organic but he is a great guy to deal with,very helpful and you are supporting a small family farm. Its very good quality meat too. He will also sell you casings in smaller quantities if you don't want to make a huge pile of sausage. He charged us $2 per 29/32mm hog casing (each one is good for at least 6-7lbs of sausage). We mixed about (no scale ) 1:4 pork belly with venison. Seeing as the belly is about 60% fat you could add more than that, in fact next time I probably will.

3) CTR spices are good, not the absolute best I have used or tasted though. This last weekend we used their Mild Italian binder ($4.25) and Breakfast Sausage ($ about $7). We made 142 full sized sausages and didn't use half the spices. Not bad for the cost.

[Springer]

I have been dabbling in my own meat cutting for years but making sausage for only about 6 years . We take the time and remove the silver skin etc ,I am quite fussy myself. I have been getting The Mad Butcher in Innisfail to make my spices according to the weight of each type , like 30lbs Brat or Chorizo, honey garlic or whatever. My biggest complaint though just like jerky mixes is " THEY END UP TO SALTY " !!! and its to late once you have used up your meat to start over. We will also mix our batch and then cook some but it seems like after it has been in the freezer awhile the salty flavor comes out. The casings have got a lot more expensive , $45 for enough casing to do 100lbs. I am now hoping to find some homemade recipes instead to get rid of the salt curse i run into.
Any of you Butchers know why this happens? I also get my jerky mix from the same place but have to use it lightly coated or its to salty but face the dilemma of not enough flavour in it.

My 2 cents.

[oilngas]

What we do is we have stoped shooting "bigish" buck 10 years ago, That was a big step to 'gee dad that's great how can we get some more'.

Now we shoot smallest buck or doe we can find and then; take backstraps, tenderloins and the first few sirlion tips, These are great if you do not cook them too much, salt and pepper, just a quick brown on highish heatand finish to MR in a 300 oven.
The rest of the meat we bone out, remove fat and silver skin and make sausage. We use about 1/3 to 1/2 Pork meat, as much fat removed as possible from the pork. We make about four kinds, with Brats seeming to go first and Andouie the last.
But we (extended family) try and eat the entire deer and sausage in about two months. It seems to go down hill quickly therafter, especially if there is a 'lot" of fat in he sausage.
Since we started to do our own, the leaner sausage and "good" cuts disapear quickly. daughter, newbys, grandkids all love deer nites.

[omega50]

Springer

Jerky mixes end up too salty because the salt is added to the correct proportion of fresh raw weight. As the product dries the water evaporates and dramatically increases the concentration of the salt by weight.

Correct proportion for most people's taste is anywhere from 16-22 grams of salt per kg of food. This is true of sausage, jerky, soup or even mashed potatoes. That is a good starting point at the low end. Pepper should go in at about 3 grams per kg.

The salty flavours you are tasting may be something unexpected, coming from a spice note that they add. I personally don't use commercial jerky mixes that contain cardomon as I find it is too prominent in the flavour profile. It bites the back of my throat like salt does.

Liability is always on everyones mind, so to give a little food safety leeway the spice manufacturers bump up the salt component. It is also likely the heaviest component of your spice mix and it is sold by weight. Go figure the quest for profit does exist with these guys.

Good luck with your quest for product that will be fitting of the flavours you crave