Where does your pork sausage come from?

It’s a long-standing family tradition that we spend part of our Christmas break butchering hogs.  We only do it for ourselves and family members.  We aren’t a licensed butchering facility, which means we can only butcher for our own consumption.  We can’t sell it.  Although I get many people who want to buy what we process!

I have helped butcher since I was very young.  The first time I can remember helping, I was 4 or 5 years old.  My job was to tape the packages shut!  I got to stand on a chair next to my Grandma while she wrapped the meat.  Then I’d have a zillion pieces of tape all cut and slap them on the package.  Then my Mom would write on the outside what was on the inside.

This is my Grandpa.  He is in charge of butchering day.  His butchering memories go back to his youth.  He grew up butchering everything they ate.  Hogs, cattle, chickens, and rabbits are just a few.  Now we mainly do hogs, but have done a few cattle as well.  He supervises and overseas everything that takes place!

When we butcher, we let the hogs hang in the barn and stay very cold.  They may hang for a few days, but the animals must be processed before the weather warms up.  If it gets warm, the meat would be rotten.

Once the entire family gathers to work up the meat, we start cutting it in to the pork cuts.  This picture shows the ribs, pork chops and hams.

After each piece of meat is cut into pork chops, ribs, bacon, etc., we have to go through and trim the fat and cut out the bones.  This part is where I get a bit nervous.  The picture shows my Panda trimming fat with a super sharp knife.  Honestly, those knives could slice a finger off if you aren’t paying attention.  This was the first year I let her trim.  And I tried not to panic!  My Farmer does a lot of trim work while my Monkey was checking for bones.

Then it’s time to make the sausage!  I’ll have a recipe below for my favorite way to use sausage.  Our sausage goes through a double grind process.  Each tub of meat will go though the meat grinder twice.

We also season our sausage.  So my Panda was mixing in the seasoning before we started wrapping, taping and labeling the packages.

Monkey did a bunch of the labeling and taping this year!

And where was my Little Man during all of this?  Supervising with his Great-Grandpa, who he adores!  I let the Little Man help with nearly everything I do, but having him around saws, knives and blades made me a bit nervous.  So he hung out and played with Grandpa for most of the day.

One of my favorite ways to cook our sausage is in gravy.  It isn’t healthy and there’s no great way to make it healthy.  I do use 2% milk in my recipe instead of half-and-half as most older gravy recipes call for. Give it a try and let me know if you like it!