Making Sausages

A couple of weeks ago, we had a steer homekilled.  I have so many aspects of this to write about there will be a heap of posts regarding this.

Today, however, I'm writing about sausages.  I've just spent two days making sausages, hating sausages, eating test patties and breaking things in my kitchen while making sausages. I've gotten through less than a quarter of the meat.

I'm running on about half the sleep I should have had in the last few days and have been collapsing into bed with everything hurting.  It actually became quite a vicious cycle, everything hurt to the point where I couldn't get comfortable enough to sleep, exhausted as I was, but I needed the sleep to refresh everything that hurt.

Anyway, enough of my whining.

I first tried making sausages several years ago when I found out that I was gluten intolerant.  I think it was about 7 or 8 years ago and gluten-free options were a bit thin on the ground.  I found a mincer with sausage attachment on trade me, I also found hog casing sausage skins on trade me so I started making my own gluten-free sausages.

Before becoming gluten-free, I didn't eat many sausages. In my time I've met far too many butchers who wouldn't eat their own sausages and have a tendency to tell the tales of what's really in them when they've had a few drinks.  Problem was, once I was unable to eat something then I really started to crave it.

Some of the sausages I made were lovely, some were dreadful and barely edible.  I had no idea where to even think about finding fresh pork fat - it's not something you see in the supermarket after all - so I did end up with some horribly dry attempts at sausages.  I found a few recipes that worked fine without fat - Cumberland sausages and Boudin Blanc were my favourites.  Although, one lesson I did learn is that most dry sausages taste just fine in lashings of gravy.

I threw away the last of my sausage casings about the time we moved to the farm.  They'd been in the back of the fridge for a few years and were starting to smell a bit funky.  That might have been partly because of the week or so without electricity after the earthquake.

After some discussion with the butcher for this homekill - separate from the homekill itself, he's independent - he gave me back two 20 litre buckets of meat for sausages.  For me to make the sausages myself that is.  I'm happy with this by the way, but I didn't really expect quite so much meat.

A hank (approx 90m) of hog casings in salt

I went and picked up some hog casings and a salami kit from Oskar's Butcher.  Kees is a lovely chap who is happy to talk for ages on the virtues of making your own smallgoods although he was a little horrified at how much of the offal I used for dog food rather than for smallgoods.  He emails out links and documents to all his customers that includes instructions for how to make several different cold smokers and a lot about the science of sausage making.

Soaking the casings in water

The first thing I went looking for however was recipes for sausages made purely from beef.  Most recipes contain pork as well.  Lets-Make-Sausage has a fantastic range as well as some valuable advice on sausage making.  I also loved this website - Hunter * Angler * Gardener * Cook for it's recipes, but also because some of the recipes work great for foods like bear meat and where he says venison, he is including elk, moose and other beasties that boggle a kiwi girl like me.

Kees from Oskar's Butcher also sends everyone to Wedliny Domowe -  a Polish site with a wealth of information, advice and recipes for not just sausages but almost every type of cured meat you can imagine.  The about us page is worth a look too.  I have no idea what the name translates to properly, but my limited Russian (which is often very similar to Polish) reminds me that Domovoi (close to how I think domowe from the title is pronounced) is a house spirit - similar to a Brownie from folklore, every house has one and it will only do bad things to those living in the house if they don't keep a good, neat and tidy house.

Sausage casings going on to sausage attachment

Again, I digress.

Firstly, I had to set up my meat mincer.  My benches are too thick for the clamp on the mincer, so I have to get a bit creative with this.

I also don't think it's possible to put the casings onto the attachment without a few teenage humour type jokes and innuendos, silly giggles and what not.  Yes, we all know what it looks and feels like and I think it's all right to laugh about it.

I made beef only Breakfast Sausages.  For 2kg of beef to become 30 sausages took me about 3 hours.  My little mincer was cheap.  I'm not sure if it's possible to sharpen the blades, but I think that's something we should look at.  All the stringy bits from the meat clog up the blade so it comes to a complete block and stop every second sausage.

I thought I'd try putting the meat through the food processor before I put it through the mincer.  That didn't end so well.  I have somehow broken it in such a way that the whole blade attachment will turn freely around and around on the central drive shaft (which it shouldn't do) but I can't take it off the central drive shaft.  Hubby tried and broke my favourite wooden spoon on it.

Dicing pork for sausages

Minced twice, seasoned, tested and ready for making sausages!

I've fixed that issue now.  I finely dice the meat and fat first.  I run it through the mincer, sometimes twice, without the sausage attachment.  Then I add seasonings and other stuff, test some (fried up as patties) and when I'm happy with the blend, I take the plate off the mincer before adding the sausage attachment.

The Science and Art of Sausages

Sausage making is both an art and a science.  The science is the mix that works best for sausages.  They require a minimum of 30% fresh fat.  It needs to be fresh and not cooked or rendered.  I have tried using rendered fat in my sausages - it melts very quickly and easily running out of your sausage through the holes you have pricked in the skin and leaves you with a very dry and unpleasant sausage.  Fresh fat breaks down more slowly, it keeps the sausage moist and carries the flavour.

Salt.  You may not use a lot of salt in your cooking or in your diet, but in nearly all meat dishes, it's importance cannot be overlooked.  In any cooking show on tv they are always pushing seasoning.  Season your meat, season this, season that.  For the most part, they are talking about salt.  Salt improves and enhances the flavours of your food.

Test patty cooking

It helps if you can keep the meat cold while working with it.  As with any form of butchery or working with meat that isn't cooking it. 

This is all that is really needed for sausages.  I've read a document (I'm not sure if I can share the document itself, it came with my purchases from Oskar's Butcher) in which a story is recounted.  The narrator had spent a lot of time making sausages with just the right blend of sage and thyme in them.  When he was happy with the way the herbs complemented the meat he gave some to his sausage making mentor.  "Sausage is nice," the mentor said, "but what's with all the perfume?"

To the mentor a sausage is meat, fat, salt and pepper in a hog casing.  Anything else is perfume and unnecessary.  But this is where the art comes in.  A plain sausage is fine, sometimes.  Other times I like different tastes, flavours and textures.  Different textures can come from finely mincing half the meat and only coarsely mincing the rest - as with a Kielbasa.

Kielbasa - Polish Garlic Sausage.

I look for recipes on the websites I shared earlier and anywhere I can find them.  But then I play with the blends, I taste test and quality control with patties.  Sometimes I get caught up making more patties because they're just so delicious.  One thing the patties can't do is let you know how the fat you use will go.  You can make a meat patty with a lean mince that isn't particularly dry, but using the same mince and recipe in a sausage will come out differently.

Vertical Gardening

A while back I wrote about my grey water garden.  It has gone through several incarnations, I think since Hubby got involved each has become less successful than the last, but we will get there.  Along the edge there was a cut or slipped wall of earth.  It looked dreadful, but was a fairly good spot for a garden.  It faced North and East, was sheltered from the South and West and was near where the grey water came out.

I came up with the idea of building a stepped retaining wall type thing along there with tyres.  Inside the tyres I would grow veges.  It would be a great place to move some of the strawberries that were threatening to take over every available spot in my other vege garden.  I would also fill some of these tyres with the large amount of stones we have and make them into steps leading down to this area.

Hubby couldn’t ‘see’ it.  I drew a picture, he kind of got it, but not really.  He’d brought most of the tyres he’d found up to a spot very close to where I wanted to do it, so I just started to do it.  I’ve spent months on and off, working at it.  I’ve filled tyres and gaps beneath the tyres with weeds, lawn clippings, pig and chook poo - every organic scrap you can think of.

 

 

I didn’t realise just how many stones are needed to fill a tyre.  That’s been quite a mission.  It took a few tyres before I realised that I really needed to make sure I also filled the rims of the tyres.  It can be quite disconcerting to have them move under you when you step up or down.  It got to the stage where anyone going down the paddocks would pick up an armload of rocks and stones on their way back up to toss into the tyres.

We opened up a new patch for the pigs and for some reason they dug this bit over - something they hadn’t done anywhere else.  This gave us plenty of easily accessible rocks and stones, but also a great patch to plant spuds.

 

The tyres I hadn’t used yet - although I haven’t finished building my wall - were getting to be a nuisance, so I made three ‘pyramids’ from some of them.  A 3 x 3 square on the bottom, 2 x 2 on the next layer and one in the middle on the top.  I filled these with pig poo and the fallen oak leaves from their paddock and threw a handful of pumpkin seed in each tyre.  In one I used watermelon seed.  Only two plants have come up in that one, but (I’m guessing through the pig poo) we have a couple of tomato plants popping up there too.  They’ve been simple but effective.  The pumpkin plants have been doing reasonably well, we have more than we expected so Hubby is keen to start more. 

 

He pointed out that (when we buy it) a bag of pig nuts is between $25 and $30.  This seed has cost us nothing as it came from last year’s pumpkins and the pigs love pumpkin.  The cattle will also eat it.

He also now loves the tyre wall and is helping me to work on it.  I noticed that I keep getting big healthy grass and weeds come up along the front at the bottom.  They can be quite a challenge to pull out and they drop seed all through my tyres.  So I decided we needed a path in front of the tyres.  We’d found plenty of weed-matting in all the crap piles and sheds and there was probably a couple of trailer loads worth of small rounded stones in a paddock.  I found that quite by accident - it was overgrown with sorrel and grass.

The hard thing about that is the soil we’re digging up for the path.  It’s clay with a disproportionate amount of stones.  It’s taken at least 6 hours so far to get about 4 metres along.  First it needs loosening with a pickaxe/grubber type tool.  Then I’m screening what we’ve dug.  The soil and small stones are going into tyres for veges, the weeds are going into a compost drum and the bigger stones are going into step tyres.

 

Pumpkin Pyramid

All the organic material that has been going in is settling too.  It’s an ongoing thing to top up the tyres with fresh soil and compost and try to keep them going.  I don’t think this is a project that will be finished any time in the near future, but we’ll get there eventually.

Although chances are, by the time it’s nearly finished, Hubby will have a new grand scheme and want to pull it all down and start again!

One Man's Trash ...

One big bonus with our little block (that at the same time seems to be a huge pain in the proverbial) is the amount of well, crap that was left lying around.

We’ve cleared sheds that were chock full of “other people’s treasures” and found more and more just lying around the place.
 

Hubby gets on a big neat binge every now and then and goes through it all, sorting and tidying while trying to be hard and throw away what isn’t going to maybe be useful someday.  We’ve found leftover rolls of chicken wire - mostly in 2 metre lengths that did get used in the chook run after I spent a painful and painstaking day tying all the bits together.  Bits of sheep-fencing mesh, one I found when it blew against a fence from Gods know where and my darling heifer Brownie got her head stuck through it.  Poor girl, I guess we were both lucky that she is so tame and didn’t panic when I was untangling her head and horns from three or four layers of fencing.

Some of the irrigation hosing (as far as we can tell it’s been partially set up but never used) has been useful, some of it has perished or been damaged by animals.  There are jets and sprayers and bits of every imaginable type and level of usefulness.

Pipes, tanks, tubs and hoses galore.  Enough corrugated iron to build a chookhouse and to go around the pigs.

And tyres.  So many tyres.  Every so often, Hubby gathers up more from the various spots we’ve found them.  I would have assumed that there was a huge silage pile at some stage, if only they’d all been remotely near each other.

We try to make use of these bits as much as we can.  We don’t have a lot of spare income and we do have a lot of grand ideas.  Being resourceful with this stuff is also part of our self-sufficient philosophy.  Why buy stuff new if we can make the old stuff work for a while?  Although the gates held shut with baling twine are a very temporary measure - especially since we’ve found the steers figured out which bit to pull on to open the gate!  Might have to go to proper knots rather than slip knots for a while.

Hubby also started to bring home pallets from work for firewood.  Every so often he’ll spend a day with the skill saw cutting up pallets and filling the woodshed.  It only takes a day or two to fill our small wood shed.  Although, with the storm a few months back, we have probably enough macrocarpa drying for at least one winter.

The pallets have turned out to be useful in so many other ways too.  I know there are plenty of sustainable living websites that show ways to make furniture out of them, but we’ve used them for pig fencing, building compost bins and some are being pulled to bits to make a bench seat around the deck.

For me it is a point of pride to be making useful stuff around here out of what would otherwise be rubbish.  I love that we didn’t need to buy a single thing to be able to build two chookhouses.  The only purchases for the farrowing shed were the electrical components.  We still have a number of projects in mind and the first place we look is at the crap pile!

Crochet Easter Bunnies

These cute little bunnies stand 10cm (4 inches) tall when made with DK yarn and a 4.0 mm hook.  I'm considering trying one with two strands and a 6.5 mm hook.

I'm using American terminology in this pattern.  Most of the pieces are worked in rounds, spiraled so that there is no joining at the end of each round, you just work on top of the first stitch of the previous round.  For the Body, Basket and Arms, I carry my start tail with the work and weave them in as I work.  For the other parts, the tails are needed for attaching the different parts - well, not so much with the ears, but it's difficult to carry the tail in the work for them.

Body and Head (Make 1)

For some reason loading this pic keeps rotating it.  Sorry it's upside down.

Round 1: Start with a magic ring, sc 6 into the ring. 
Round 2: Sc2 into each st (12 sts).
Round 3: (Sc 1, sc2 into next st).  Repeat for entire round (18 sts).
Round 4: (Sc1 into next 2 sts, sc2 into next st).  Repeat for entire round (24 sts).
Round 5 - 9: Sc in each st.
Round 10: (Sc1 into next 2 sts, sc2 together). Repeat for entire round (18 sts).

At this point, I find it easiest to stuff the body - not too tight.

Round 11: (Sc1, sc2 together). Repeat for entire round (12 sts).
Round 12: Sc2 together for entire round (6 sts).
Round 13: Sc in each st.
Round 14: Sc2 into each st (12 sts).
Round 15: (Sc 1, sc2 into next st).  Repeat for entire round (18 sts).
Round 16 - 18: Sc in each st.

Lightly stuff head.

Round 17:  (Sc1, sc2 together). Repeat for entire round (12 sts).
Round 18:  Sc2 together for entire round (6 sts).

Fasten off leaving long tail.  I like to use my yarn tail to stitch around the hole and pull up a little tighter.


Feet (Make 2)

Chain 6, join into a ring with first sc of next round.
Round 2 - 4: Sc into each st.
Round 5: Sc2 into first 3 sts, sc into next 3 sts (9 sts).
Round 6 - 7: Sc into each st.
Round 8: Sc2 together 3 times, sc into next 3 sts (6 sts).

 Fasten off, leaving long tail and stuff very lightly.  These feet look a little clumsy to begin with, but when sewn up and sewn to body seem to work quite nicely.

Arms (Make 2)

Chain 6, join into a ring with first sc of next round.
Round 2 - 4: Sc into each st.
From here, we change to rows.
Push hook through next st and through last st and sc the two sides together.  Do this twice more to make 3 sts on the row and single thickness.
Work 3 rows in sc.
Next row: Ch 1 (turning chain from previous row), sc 2 together (2 sts).
Work one row.

Fasten off leaving long tail.


Ears (Make 1)

Ch 6, turn and sc into 3rd ch from hook, sc 3.
Ch 1 and turn.  Sc 3, hdc2 and dc3 into next st.  Dc3 and hdc2 into next st. Sc 4.

Ch 8, turn and sc into 3rd ch from hook, sc 3.
Ch 1 and turn.  Sc 3, hdc2 and dc3 into next st.  Dc3 and hdc2 into next st. Sc 4.

Fasten off.



Basket (Make 1)

Round 1: Start with a magic ring, sc 6 into the ring. 
Round 2: Sc2 into each st (12 sts).
Round 3: (Sc 1, sc2 into next st).  Repeat for entire round (18 sts).
Round 4: (Sc1 into next 2 sts, sc2 into next st).  Repeat for entire round (24 sts).
Round 5 - 9: Sc in each st.

Fasten off leaving long tail.

To Make Up:

Stitch toe end of feet.  Run thread through foot and stitch in place to underside of body.

Stitch basket down the belly of the bunny and along both feet (as shown).

Stitch arms to body and to basket.

Stitch ears together - I go up about 2 sts.  Weave a line of stitching through the base of the ears and pull to gather lightly.  If you wish, you can also run a little yarn partway up one ear and pull to give the ear a slightly lopsided look.  Stitch ears to top of head.

Find spot for tail, sc 3 and use tail of yarn to loosely stitch it into shape.

Sew on eyes and nose.  For the nose, I've been doing one full stitch with long tails, then I tie a reef knot and sew the tails through the head.

Add an easter egg :)

If you try this pattern and something doesn't work - please let me know.  I've just been making these purely on improvisation and while I think I've worked the pattern out right, I may have made a mistake or 3.

It's supposed to be late Autumn... isn't it?

The weather last year had me a little concerned.  Our winter was rather mild - not that I'm complaining about that - I was worried when I started seeing things I associate with the first stirrings of Spring in early July.

There is an old English/modern Pagan festival called Imbolg.  Sometimes translated as "Ewe's Milk".  This is February 2nd (approx) in the Northern Hemisphere and August 2nd down here.  The festival is supposed to mark the first stirrings of Spring, not the full arrival of Spring.  Over the years I've seen various things work as markers for this - leaf buds appearing on fruit trees, spring bulbs poking their leaves up out of the soil and things like that.  Lambing (as is evident from the name) was once a marker, but as breeding is fairly well controlled by the farmers these days, it's not necessarily an accurate one anymore.

Most of these "markers" as I've called them, I normally start seeing and noticing in early August.  I may not feel much of a change in the air temperature, but the plants are noticing something.  Last year, I realised that most of these markers were occurring very early in July.  My big oak tree had old yellow and brown leaves that hadn't yet fallen and new green ones opening on the same branches.  I was afraid to prune my nectarine tree as it never quite made it to 'dying back for the winter' and I worried that cutting branches would cause it to bleed to death.

New growth on my potatoes

This year, it's even weirder.  It's almost as though the clock turned back after mid-Summer and we're having a second Spring.  My paddocks are still growing with that Spring flush type growth and speed of growth.  The lawn still requires mowing pretty much every week.  My tomatoes are still flowering and fruiting - although they're ripening a lot slower lately.  My potatoes are throwing up new plants and each decent sized spud I dig up has up to ten baby spuds hanging off it.  My pumpkins did nothing all Summer.  We were undecided whether we weren't watering enough, the soil (well, it was 90% pig poo) was too rich, or the distinct lack of bees was the problem.  Now, however, I suddenly have a heap of small (just bigger than apple sized) pumpkins that have appeared on the plants and the runners are finally doing their bolt across the paddock.  A neighbour has commented that her apple trees have started flowering again.

New Pumpkins growing

We've had 20 degrees Celsius this week.  Trying to find information on what the averages are historically has been interesting.  One website suggests the average high temperature throughout March, April and May in Christchurch (because Amberley is too small to count) is 18°C, another gives the May average around Christchurch at 8.9°C.  Niwa's website, based on 30 years of record keeping puts it at 14.7°C.

As I realised last year, there's not a lot we can do to change the weather right now.  I can't do anything about this new growth that will probably all be killed in a heavy frost next month.  All I can do is prepare for what may be coming and try to save what I can.

I'm not sorry that it seems we won't need any hay this year.  We still have plenty of feed around the place and with three cattle beasties going in the space of a week, we have a lot less demand for the feed we do have.

Amberley Craft Market

I decided about a month ago, to try having a stall at our local Craft Market.  I went down to have a look and to see what was already there.  I didn't want to bring in something that was already being done, aside from the potential for upset that doubleups can cause.

A wander around the market showed me quite a variety of  different crafts but little to no crochet.  I spoke to the lovely lady who organises it, found out what I needed to know and I've now had two outings.

It's nice to be able to spend my morning, sitting in the sun and knitting or crocheting without many other demands being made on me.  Any sales are a bonus.

My favourite response so far was when I was told that it was nice to see someone so young who could crochet!  I'm 41 - it's nice being told I'm not just young but *so* young. :)

Minion Beanies supervising the loading of the postage bag

After posting pics on facebook, I got two orders that kept me busy for the week.  One to go to the USA!

Field Mushrooms

Inspired (and somewhat motivated) by Anna Grace's recent blog post about her mighty haul of field mushrooms, I went looking.

I picked a rather motley handful.  Some were eaten straight away and some I fried and froze.  I kept thinking I should make the effort to go looking earlier in the morning, when they're first poking their heads up and before all the little mites and gnats and beasties have sampled them.

Then last night, we picked up a borrowed bull.  As I was driving him down to the paddock where my girls were impatiently waiting, I noticed some field mushrooms.  I stopped to pick some.  After introducing Munroe to my girls and convincing them all to go back into the paddock instead of running up and down the race, I walked back with Miss Eight considerably slower this time.  We made it back to the house with hands full of field mushrooms.

About a third of todays pickings

I had to work a little to convince her to leave some behind - I was trying to explain that you never take them all or they won't grow back.

Field Mushroom in the paddock

Hubby and Miss Eight had mushrooms with their steak last night and I was left with plenty to process this morning.  I'm allergic to mushrooms, so it's their thing.

This morning, while feeding the chooks, I spotted a rather large field mushroom poking it's head up beside the chook house.  So it was off into the paddocks with knife, bucket and dog I went.

While down the gully, I noticed quite a variety of interesting looking mushrooms and fungi.  For the sake of my own curiosity, I've spent a bit of time trying to identify some of them - and if some are edible then that's even better :)

Possibly a Shaggy Parasol Mushroom

Earthstar Mushrooms - inedible type of puffball

The Shaggy Parasol Mushrooms are edible (according to this Wikipedia entry), but can cause issues if eaten raw or uncooked.  Some people have severe allergic reactions to the cooked ones too.  They're also very similar to a toxic variety, although I can't find a reference to the toxic variety growing in New Zealand.  Mushroom Expert gives a very comprehensive identification guide.



The Inky Cap is a fascinating wee beastie.  The very young fresh mushrooms are edible, although they have a very short shelf life - as in hours - before they digest themselves and turn black.
Again, Wikipedia has a great entry on them.  This Youtube video - timelapse photography of one of these growing and then digesting itself - is just amazing.

Possibly a variety of Inky Cap Mushroom

Galerina toadstools - so tiny and delicate seeming

All up today and last night (well, what wasn't eaten last night), I've picked 1 kg of field mushrooms.

Now to save them.

Before I got my dehydrator, I looked into ways to preserve mushrooms.  We were given a boxful of button mushrooms several years ago and as Hubby was the only person in the house at the time who ate them, we needed to do something.

I found a very simple way to deal with them and it's one that Hubby and now Miss Eight adore.
Slice them up and fry them in butter - like you would if you were going to eat them straight away.  Let them cool, then bag them and freeze them in serving size amounts.  They take only a few minutes in the frypan to heat through and taste (so I'm told) just as good as if they were fresh.

Still unidentified, little yellow toadstools that I find frequently