ottawa foodies

Last weekend Krusty was gracious enough to open up his homestead to visitors for a sausage making workshop. For those of you who couldn't make it here is a pictorial of genuine farm to fork eating.

Meet Krusty's latest litter of Berkshire pigs: this breed originates from the English county of the same name and are said to be Britain's oldest pig breed. They are also bred in Japan where they are known as Kurobuta. The breed is prized for its juicy, well marbled (read flavourful) meat.

These guys tried their best to hide from us but who could blame them for being bashful given what we were up to?

Big Momma's Pen: two females for breeding with a libidinous boar hiding in the back...

Our first step was to butcher the pig and remove as much meat from the legs as we could. Krusty had picked up the pig from the slaughterhouse that morning, broken down into what they call 'primal cuts' with nothing but the entrails removed; as pictured here, even the tail was left intact.

With a hanging weight of 220lbs even the primal cuts were a handful to work with but we set about with our knives and I was happy, even a little smug, that I'd had mine sharpened the day before.

Waste not, want not: Mary was quick to note that the skin would make great cracklin so we were diligent in setting this aside for her to take home...

...and we both took home the bones to use in stock.

When it comes to sausages, fat is the name of the game and most recipes recommend grinding a ratio of 1 part fat to 2 parts meat.

There was a good layer of fat on this hog and it was also well marbled (a prized feature of Berkshires), and we set about cutting it down into smaller pieces in preparation for the grinder.

While a hand grinder would do just fine, we had no qualms with using the heavy duty electric grinder that Krusty had found on eBay. The pork chunks were fed into the funnel...

...and then passed through a second time for a finer grind.

The grinder also came with a handy whisk attachment so once double ground, the pork was measured into the mixing bowl, seasoned and then mixed thoroughly... and effortlessly. :o)

As executive chef, Krusty prepared the seasonings for six different kinds of sausages: Farm Fresh (which doesn't say much but is delicious), Mild Italian (albeit too mild for my liking), Hot Italian (fabulous with green beans and sauted peppers), Mexican Chorizo (the perfect accompaniment to a black bean and corn salad), Breakfast Sausage with garlic and ginger (bliss on a Sunday morning with farm eggs scrambled yet still moist), and Bratwurst (Mrs McGarrigle's Hot Whisky Mustard anyone?)

Sausages can be stuffed into natural or synthetic casings, natural casings being made from the inner layer of animal intestines while artificial casings are most commonly made from animal collagen but may also be made from cellulose or plastic. Unfortunately our imperfect government inspection process means that Krusty and other farmers are not able to obtain the intestines from their pigs to use as casings, making a 100% local/organic/pastured sausage near impossible.

Courtesy of Loblaws, Krusty had two kinds of natural casings on hand -- pig and lamb -- and emptied them into a bowl of water to soak and soften. When we were ready to stuff them, we ran water through them and threaded them onto the tube of his sausage stuffer. The pig casings would be used to stuff all of the sausages except for the Breakfast variety for which we used the smaller lamb casings.

The sausage "stuffing" was filled by the batch into the cylinder with a plastic cap placed on top and fitted underneath a shaft. Turning the handle of the stuffer would lower the shaft and force the ground pork out of the tube into the sausage casing.

Once we were ready to go, Krusty had us tie off the end of the casing and taught us the finer points of cranking out the pork into the casing as evenly as possible while watching for air bubbles.

No hand crank? No problem! A mishap with the stuffer's handle meant that Krusty had to improvise and before you could say MacGyver a cheese press was doubling as the shaft of our sausage stuffer. While it was undeniably a more labour intensive process, we were suitably rewarded with refreshing pitchers of cold home brewed beer.

Once stuffed into the casing, the sausages were sectioned off and twisted off into links, perhaps the most delicate part of the process however broken sausages quickly made it into the frying pan so that we could monitor our work :o)

It is safe to say that in this case the ends justified the means: these sausages made with natural casings from the pork of a pastured, heritage breed pig are little bites of heaven, and I daresay they taste even better for having been made ourselves. Many thanks to Krusty for being such a gracious host and patient teacher, as well as Maria and Mary (who had the foresight to bring a very nice cabernet sauvignon as well!)

Thanks for the photo tour Johanna! I've been sitting here hitting refresh to catch the new ones as you add them :-)

Johanna,

Nice summary of the day and great pictures.

The sweet Italian sausages (medium sodium) and pork chops went with me to my brother's for a family BBQ on Sunday. My niece who is a very picky eater due to allergies loved the sausages. My brother and BIL split the remaining sweet Italian sausages and the other low sodium sausages will be split between my parents and me.

I am in the process of freezing the sausages one type at a time on cookie sheets as singles and doubles so they can be picked out small amount at a time from the freezer bags.

Wow great pics and commentary...thanks for taking all of them and writing about it.

Great pictorial, and this captures what it was like the week before perfectly!

This looks like a great day spent. Hopefully I can participate some time in the future. This looked like a very good time and great food!