Homemade Sausage Making

Although many will say that salt is salt and it all tastes the same, the use of sea salt is very popular in dry cured products. It is the preferred salt in traditional Italian salumi. But you can use any salt you like.

Well thanks for that, I prefer to us the sea salt, but never have, now that I know it's ok, I will.

Several of the Polish residents here are interested in making some baleron, me too . Sounds easy enough. The local sausage supplier carries beef bung, that holds 15 lbs. I've never worked with beef bung and the sale lady didn't know much about it, does this need to be soaked in water for a period of time, as well, there's no issue with cutting it in half and using it for smaller meat pieces? Similarily to a hog casing? Another question, when i called several of the butchers, nobody seemed to know where the coppa muscle comes from, me neither. From what I see, it comes from the top shoulder. If that's what I get, I should be able to dissect the coppa from the shoulder piece or is there something else I need to look for?

I use beef bung when I make my coppas, you don't have to soak them, however, I find that soaking them overnight with a little lemon helps to soften the casing up and make it better to work with. I have also, cut mine in two pieces before to use with two small pieces of meat.

As far as finding and cutting out the coppa muscle, I learned from watching videos on YouTube, there are many and after watching a few, I believe you will feel confident in attempting this yourself, here's one I found, good luck.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRK3iewWc8w&t=67s

Best is to harvest the proper coppa (karkówka) cut from a side of pork, cutting of the front shoulder between the 5th and 6th ribs, as is done in Italy and Poland. Here most of us cut the coppa out of the pork butt, which is the squared off top portion of the shoulder. The lower part is the "picnic". We get robbed here because when pork is broken down for the retail market the shoulder is cut off between the 2nd and 3rd rib, so the coppa is smaller.

So you need to buy a pork butt or ask a knowledgeable meat cutter to cut out the portion used to make a cottage roll or cottage ham. Unfortunately it is not as easy for Canadians to buy butts at the retail level as it is in the Excited States, where most supermarkets and Costco carry them, and at lower prices.

http://curedmeats.blogspot.ca/2007/10/c ... t-one.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utfdbqCVmyE

https://wedlinydomowe.pl/akademia-dziad ... wieprzowej

Like all natural casings, you have to soak and flush out the beef bung. They also come in two sizes, for the baleron you should get the the larger, 5" size. You can cut in half, or smaller to fit the cut of meat. Soak the bung for at least 8 hours, changing the water a few times. I has a distinct odour, but that will dissipate after the baleron is cooked. You can use the bung for casing dry cured products and for salceson and a large diameter liver sausage (wątrobianka)

Thx. I actually did look at the cartoon drawing of the swine but that really didn't do too much for me. When I talked with the butchers and threw the terminologies at them, kinda makes me wonder how they passed the meat cutting course. The youtube videos are a lot better.
Thinking of wątrobianka just have to convince a few people to join in. That's a tough one to pass on.

Got my Baleron done thanks to Red and others here. It came out well and tastes very good. I watched many videos of how to cut the coppa from the Butt, but when it came time to do it I was lost. I don't think I got the whole thing as it seems rather small. Anyway it was fun to do and helped to build my very novice skills.

I try to load these images so they display but alas I never get it right.


https://i.imgur.com/uyutJwh.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/1itzR4y.jpg

Looks to me like you did an excellent job, congrats.
As far as finding that coppa musle, I still have trouble, but keep practing and refresh with the videos, I like to take a peek at the video once in awhile.

Muxmum-
Not the best tutorial, but it shows which link to copy and paste...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU_kNeRmi3s

Its this box on IMGUR on the menu to the right of your uploaded pic.....
BBCode (message boards & forums)

Thanks for the response guys. Bob, Ill check that video out and hope its better next time.
Thx all

If I may .Redzed has pretty much nailed it when he describes where the Coppa is taken from on the shoulder ! I will just add the following .

As any of you know that have read my introduction on the forum here I have many years experience in the meat industry as a butcher / knifeman . Part of that experience was cutting for specific cuts for dry curing for an Italian line of products . We took the Coppa from the pork butt . If you can picture a whole bone in pork shoulder butt and picnic attached cut off between the 4th and 5th rib lying on a cutting board with neck bone facing up which is the inside of the carcass/side of pork. Now you lift the neck bone out and off the shoulder. Then you separate the Coppa muscle / butt by following the seam that starts by the front hock what would be the brisket on a beef . You follow that seam so that your removing the portion of the butt /Coppa that is lying on top of the blade bone, this is the side of the blade bone that does not have the ridge on it called the spine. You don't want the meat portion of the butt that is on both sides of the spine which faces the outside of the shoulder .You only want the portion of the butt /whole muscle that lies on the inside of the pork shoulder.
Hope this helps !
Knifeman

Thanks Knifeman, nice to have a pro aboard! Do you have a good source in buying pork butts where you live? I have a problem here on the island, and wish that Costco would carry them like they do in the land of Trump.

Since I saw redzed's post and pictures, the idea of making Baleron was sitting in my head all this time. Finally, last weekend this was done: like redzed said - "absolutely delicious".
I followed all the directions per redzed with only two small changes: 1. one smaller piece of meat was stuffed into beef bung and a bigger one - into collagen casing. 2. I cooked both pieces until IT 151F. Redzed, I know your recipe calls for 148F but I just was not sure it will be safe enough to eat as a cold cut. Unfortunately, I cannot post any images - still cannot figure out how to do this..... but..... this coming weekend will be making like 10 (or more?) pounds of baleron. My local store has pork shoulder on sale for $0.99 per pound. Really, really good stuff!!! Thank you redzed!