Annual Sausage Making

[SecretCode]

Getting together with Family and Friends every late Jan or early Feb for years now to process and our deer into smoked sausage, pepper sticks and make beef jerky. The last couple years we have also been grinding enough extra beef and a small amount of pork for the year as well.

There's always plenty of food and drink. The later has been really scaled back as of the last few years. Everybody is getting older and it's not as much fun getting up early the next morning and working all day.

Between everyone this year there was a bit less overall poundage this year, which really helped as we were down one special person this year. My Sister, she was hopefully going to be home a few day early but wasn't able to join. She was down in Rochester MN at Mayo. She had surgery to finally remove the last of her Cancer. Success at last! My Brother-in-law was down there the whole time but shot back up to basically run the show. We do all of this at his Mom and Dad's house.

[SecretCode]

They had gotten the same rain and ice we had gotten over Christmas if not worse. Plenty of ice still around.

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An old railroad x-ing shack was made into a smoke house years ago and has seen well over a few tons of meat.

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Stuffing. My Blake and Wife are stuffing pepper sticks. He's pretty sure his deer is in the pepper sticks. Ummm.....yeah.

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Pepper sticks end Saturday afternoon into night by getting them up to temp and shutting off the burner and smoke and left to hang til morning in the smokehouse

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Thought about putting this in the sunrise thread but we'll toss it in here.

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[Tom Kat]

nice!

[skipper]

That looks like a lot of family fun, and some good eating as well. What do we have to do to get an invite next year. By the way, those stuffed jalapeños look like they could cut the mustard here in Texas. We have a special love affair with jalapeño ANYTHING!

I'll bring some fried teal with creamy horse radish sauce and jalapeño hush puppies.

[SecretCode]

Well Skipper all that's needed is a strong back and a weak mind...that's why I get to keep coming back!

[skipper]

Right out of the Marines in'79, I shot a deer and decided to process it myself. Lesson learned. Now I send it to the local butcher to process. Call me whatever you will, but I would rather pay someone else than carve up a deer. Don't have the right tools for that.

On the other hand now, ducks get breasted in quick order. It doesn't take long at all. Dove is just a pull up on the breastbone and a snip with the scissors. Fish processing is a Shiner buzz induced fillet party. Watch the fingers, please. I can handle that any day of the week.

[Tom Kat]

I really like Shiner Boch...but I didnt like their Octoberfest.

[jsh]

I process my own. Had a good locker plant, they retired and sold out. The new owners did not impress me. Carried out a whole deer, sausage and all in three plastic bags. Weighed it when I got home, cost me around $5 per pound, that was close to 40 years ago.
Breaking a carcass down is not real hard, more so today with videos at your finger tips. If you can field dress, half the job is done.
I leave little for the varmints to chew on.
Blood shot and trim is what I grind, NO deer fat. I usually double line a 5 gallon bucket with bags and toss all the scrap in that, freeze and grind later.

The locker plant situation pretty much forced me into doing it all myself or quit hunting. Grinder,stuffer,vacuum sealer, meat slicer were picked up over the coarse of a couple of years when on sale. It has all paid for self several times over.
I “had” a small commercial Hobart meat grinder, I loaned it out two times, the second time it never came back
Have made lots of sausage over the years. Just made some boudin a few weeks ago, stuff went to $6 a pound here, a lot of money for some spice, pork scraps, and a bunch of rice.

[SecretCode]

Jsh

Bro-in-law did some Boudin for the first time last year. It went over pretty well.

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Cooking up the innards for the boudin in the cowboy wok I made for him.

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You're also right about the price to play. I wouldn't be able to afford to shoot a deer and have it processed let alone more than one.

We had to update a stuffer this year so it was a bit more than normal but splitting the cost helps alot. We must be doing something right, everything we give away to friends they always say they'll buy it. That's a big NO NO for processed game anything. In fact tommorow we have a Pot Luck at church tommorow and a crock pot full will never come home. Usually the crew setting up knocks out half before the main crowd even gets downstairs!

We also buy extra beef clods and grind and bag to freeze. Pork as well. That's our burger for the year and breakfast ground for jimmy dean sausage.

[jsh]

Man I like that big wok. Good use for rake teeth too.
I built a big wood fired grill. 3’ across, 1/2 is a big flat iron and the other 1/2 is a grill.

I have a local place here that has bulk spices, cost me a 100 dollar bill when I get with in a couple of miles of it.

Lots of variations of boudin. I am going to make another batch, this tim it will be boudin blanc (white) no liver. The one I made I used 1lb of chicken liver in it, I like it but others noticed it right off. I learned one thing, stuffing worked better at room temp than chilled with the boudin.

I would like to get a mixer at some point, but I just don’t make the big batches like I did some years back.

I and a few others got to goose hunting quite a bit. Well I hate to waste stuff off of edible critters. The pulled the breast out and left the thighs and legs. I started boning them out and putting them in a container in the freezer. Had 10 gallons of meat. We got together in the spring, thawed it out and ground all of it. Added some hamburger to it and made beef sticks. Man what a weekend that turned into. Went from what we thought was going to be quick and easy to finishing up about 10 pm. All of us had beef/goose sticks for a long while, lol. If I recall we added 20-25% beef and then threw some venison in for good measure. Ground meat before cooking was over 80 pounds.
Lol, Sunday turned into a fish fry as well.
Food brings folks together for sure.

[SecretCode]

Some also call it a Disco or Discada. Originated with migrant farm workers in the southwest. Now they are all over the hip thing for outdoor cooking. Have made a few for friends. One former coworker friend from Arizona called me up looking for a couple of old disc's. He was beside himself that I north northerner even knew what they were let alone had made some. He gladly paid the shipping for a couple to make for himself and dad.

My bro-in-law is a heck of a cook if you hadn't figured out by now from this thread. I like to as well but he really has a taste for all sorts of cooking. He loves using it for stir fry and pho when big family gets together on his side during the summer. I still want to try funnel cake in it.

[SecretCode]

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Took awhile to go back into old pictures and find these

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[skipper]

You had me so stoked for something different today. After playing at church, I went to see if I could find some mud bugs for lunch. No such luck. The weather has taken it's toll on this year's crop of crawfish. I'm looking forward to eating a few pounds as soon as they become available.

Mudbugs and Shiner Bock. Life doesn't get any better!

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[SecretCode]

Nice Skipper!

I did see a news story on crawfish numbers being at almost record lows throughout the south. This is just a crazy year for weather with the jet stream dipping down so low in the u.s. Sunday was a high of 41 in SW ND tommorow is supposed to be a high of 53! I wore shorts to go pick up my daughter from dance class last night and the sweatshirt I wore almost made it uncomfortable. I'm hoping there won't be be much wind. Usually we get a blast of south wind when we warm up. There's still plenty of winter left but dang I'm glad I don't have a snowmobile payment right now.

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