Tamworth project: part 2

This post is a continuation of the last one, which described some of the receiving and butchering process of a half (102 lb)  of a Tamworth pig. Here’s the rest of the process turning great meat into great sausage.

Below is 23.2 kg (51 lbs) of partially frozen meat ready for the grinder. The grinding blade and tray have been in the freezer for a while so they’re very cold too.

Grinding begins….and nine minutes later, I have a 51 lb bowl of ground pork. The grinder is a 1.5 hp  monster. Do not wear a neck tie or long scarf when operating this thing!

The plastic wrap is taped to the grinder to control any splattering when the meat is working through the gears. It is a simple trick, but I went for many years cleaning splattered meat from the walls before learning about this.

There is about 20% fat in this bowl of meat.

Below, the ground meat has been weighed and separated into 2 kg piles. This makes it easy to do the math and measure ingredients without wondering how much meat I have to work with.

Spices are prepared for different types of sausages.

My hands were a bit messy while mixing the meat with spices, so there are no pictures of that process. Hopefully you can imagine pretty accurately what meat mixing looks like.

Below , pork in the food processor is being turned into a very smooth emulsion (paste) to be used in hot dogs and a separate emulsion for mortadella.

…and here are the hot dogs.

Bratwurst ready for tailgating at any Big Ten football game. Except these taste better than anything found in central Illinois. Where’s the bucket of  Old Style to go along with these?

Final results of my work. This collection started out with102 pounds of pig. The only waste I ended up discarding was about a cup of dirty fat and a few glands that didn’t belong in anyone’s food. Other than that, we have soup bones, rendered lard, pate, bacon,  and a bunch of sausages.

Not a bad collection of food to pick from over the next few months.