[StephB]

Hi all,

We have our first two weaners nearly ready for the one way trip to you know where  .

My father-in-law used to be a butcher, so we are going to request the carcasses back (minus head) and will lean over his shoulder and try to absorb all his knowledge of butchery.

But there is the sausage, smoked bacon and cured ham that we want to get out of these pigs that poses the question.

Hubby suggests there is "a bloke down the road" that can do it all for us, but what with all the feed costs,  etc etc I am reluctant to add to the cost by paying someone else to do this.

I have searched Amazon & Ebay and have found a mincer, Sausage maker for £35 ish pounds and a meat slicer for a similar amount.  Both have pretty good reviews and wondered if at such reasonable costs might it be worth trying to do the work ourselves. i know there i the initial outlay that will probably cost more than paying someone to do it but it might be a good investment.

I have researched how to cure and it seems quite cheap and simple to rig up a cold smoker.

I just wondered do many of your out there with just a few weaners per year go to the bother of doing it yourself or do you just send it off to "the man down the road" or maybe leave it to the abbatoir to make it all.

I like the idea of doing it ourselves then I know it has been made with good quality ingredients and how we like it.

Look forward to hearing your opinions xxxx thanks

[Rhodie]

I do all my own butchering, I use an oil drum with oak woodshavings to smoke salted joints, I invested in a good mincer/sausage filler several years ago and it has paid for itself many times over, both for own use and doing mincing and sausages for friends. Well worth learning to do your own curing and cutting.

[Sudanpan]

Hiya
With our 1st lot of pigs we did try and do the sausages ourselves - but we weren't very impressed with our efforts    The sausages that the butcher did (with the offcuts from the main jointing and included in the butcher price - if we'd requested more sausages then we would have been charged per kilo) were FAB.


Basically we felt that making the sausages was ALL to do with the quality of the equipment - if you use sub standard stuff then not only does it make it a whole lot more difficult but the quality is reduced.


As for curing - we have done our own dry curing ad hoc - and been very pleased with the results. We haven't tried doing bacon as such but that's more about laziness - the butcher we use will cure, slice and vacuum pack a whole side of bacon for £10 and it is all neat and sorted to chuck straight in the freezer.


We have also done some air drying of whole legs - we have 3 hung up in the eaves of the barn from this year's pigs and they will be ready next year 


Good luck 

[suziequeue]

Agree with Rhodie and Sudanpan - you need to invest in good equipment. A £35 slicer is OK for the occasional  turkey roll sandwich but slicing two porkers' worth of bacon and ham is a different order of magnitude entirely. I'm sure your f-i-l will advise.


We've done our own bacon in the past - just dry curing with a smokey flavoured cure which is GREAT. We have a slicer from Northern Tools and a vac packer from Tre Spade which is absolutely brilliant......looks a bit gimmicky but it's never let us down.


This year we are going to do our own sausages as I like them really coarse cut and herby and - although the butcher's sausages last time were excellent - I would have liked them to have been an order of magnitude herbier   

[Eve]

We do it ourselves as well: sausages, bacon, air dried ham, salami's, lonzino...
We bought a new mincer and new sausage stuffer for the Kenwood Chef we already had, a new smoker (about £70, if I remember correctly), but a second hand Berkel slicer from ebay (essential for ham and bacon) for about 10% of the new price. We tend to make meatballs instead of sausages - much quicker and easier to experiment with flavours    I like my salami's peppery, and again you can vary the flavours if you make your own.
 
PS: why don't you want the head? Brawn, if well made, is nice.
 

[MAK]

Have a go yourself. A recent post deailed the cost of a butcher and making sausages ( £132 for 2 smallish pigs).
We do home kill and I butchered ( with no previous experience). We used a 30 year old Kenwood to make sausages and got cures from Weschenfelder. Salamis was great and the Toulouse Sausage mix is really good.
A good slicer is worth investing in and don't forget to cut the bacon at near ice point.
we processed 2 largish pigs with sausages , hams bacon etc within 3 days of letting the pork hang overnight. Dry cure ans smoking was too much first time around.
Oh - make up sandwiches before you start butchering and make sure you have bags and labels all ready done.
Good luck and enjoy it.