Hi everyone, I'm scrodumb and I am a retail butcher and sausage maker in Toronto, Canada.
My culinary experience extends far beyond that but these days my specific interests are mostly meat and meat processing. Starting to get into charcuterie and expanding my sausage repertoire into fermented, cured, smoked and emulsified products. Will be making my first coppa and pancetta this coming week. Have some Cantonese style lap cheong drying too.
I'm happy to help with any meat related questions or troubleshooting, feel free to ask here or message me directly. Love bouncing ideas back and forth especially with other foodheads.
A couple weeks ago I ordered a half hog of Meishan pork for myself and made a bunch of sausages for my friends and family. The pic is my personal versions of Barese sausage (coiled) and Chipolatas (breakfast sized links). Both are super popular and I'm happy to share the formulations if anyone is interested. I have dozens more sausage formulations too, just ask. I can turn nearly any red sauce pizza recipe into a sausage. Hawaiian absolutely SLAPS. Other dishes too. I created a Cubano sausage that tastes just like the sandwich.
I'll try to post every week or two but seriously if you have any meat related queries hit me up I'm always happy to help. Next post will likely be some tips and tricks I've learned and discovered in my journey.
Is it true I don't want to know how the sausage is made?
Hahaha. Not here. I work in an open shop so everyone can walk back to the window and watch us cut and work. Kids are fascinated watching me make sausage. We have milk crates I'll setup so the younger ones can see over the half wall.
I wouldn't trust a mass produced sausage. The amount of waste I remove...there's a reason we charge more than factory sausage.
What all is in the category of "waste" that you remove?
Skin, bone, excess fat, fascia and ligament, glands and lymph nodes, traces of organ meat, blood clots, hair...
Factory lines will add excessive binders, gluten fillers, potassium sorbate (I could be mistaken but it's SOMETHING similar) to increase water absorption...and thus excess water, all kinds of off cuts ("lips, hooves and assholes" is the meme but it's not quite that gross in reality). Plus they're grinding and combining meat from thousands of animals from dozens of sources which increases the need for treatment and preservatives. All my sausage meat comes from one farm and week to week it's all from one harvest. Much easier quality control.
So I'm generally in the camp of might as well eat it if it's there, use the whole animal and all that. I'm not suggesting you lower quality we already have plenty of cheap stuff, but isn't some of it still edible even if it brings quality down? Does stuff like organ meat and skin get sent elsewhere like maybe an in house broth idk? (Also not trying to say you're specifically being wasteful if you throw stuff out or anything. Used to be married to a chef so I know the efforts that go into reducing food loss but I don't know a lot about butchery in particular so I'm just curious)
When I process my own hog I use almost everything. I make bone broth using the collagen tissue, skins, bones. I render all the excess fat to lard.
Through work we don't have a solid market for pork broth or lard so it goes into the waste bin. A service picks it up every week and it's shipped to a sorting facility then on to rendering plants and processors for all kinds of applications. Pet food/treats, cosmetics, soap, fertilizer, all kinds of stuff.
I make my own dog treats with some of the choice scrap material such as beef ligaments and pig skins. I also make my own soap from time to time and I use plenty of beef fat.
Glands and lymph nodes are SUPER bitter so I try to remove them prior to grinding. They're usually edible and probably insanely nutritious but they ruin flavour like it's a full time job.
what about things like chicken hearts or giblets? They're delicious in pasta sauce or smoked, what about sausages?
Organ meat is more delicate than muscle and can easily overcook at much lower temperature/time.
Typically organ meats will go into their own sausage or adjacent product such as a pate or pudding or liverwurst.
Most small shops like my employer can't produce it at scale and can't afford to produce it in small batches. Those products are supplied by a wholesaler. The industry sends that meat directly to those producers and the muscle sections we get delivered are already clean of those materials.
I agree, chicken organs are delicious.
I tried making turkey pate this past January but I fucked it up royally. Luckily it was just leftover giblets from Christmas week we'd have tossed away so we didn't lose money. This season I'll try again but small personal batch at first while I hone my process.