Homemade Sausage Making

One of the things I loathed was trying to sort out casings to make sausages - especially sheep casings. They are always a tangled mess but I found the ultimate solution I thought I'd share with those who have experienced the same. It's cheap and easy and far less time consuming than unraveling puzzles.

What I do now is take the whole hank and submerge it in a bucket of water before I begin grinding sausage. When you do this all you need do is find the ring and grab one casing from the ring and pull this casing out of the bucket of water. At this point the casings are so slippery they will pull right through any knots or tangles that may be in the hank. It makes life so easy.

Once done, just remove the hank and place the unused casings in a collander sitting in a bowl to catch the water. Once most of the water is removed I just add salt on top of the casings and work it around. The salt of choice for this is Morton's Pool Salt. Its nothing but salt and you can buy a 40 lb bag for $5.00 so its cheap. Once the casings are dry enough to bag I bag them up but if I'm in a hurry I just put the bowl and collander in the cooler till I have time to bag them. Works great and I've been doing it this way now for over a year and haven't had any problems whatsoever.

Just thought I'd pass this on.

Butterbean,

Your "casing tip" came up as a very needed one - at least for me: I just made a couple of batches of kabanosy sausage (10 pounds of each) in March and just struggled dealing with sheep casing. I had to cut it time to time because it was a mess.... Thank you very much for your tip and I will try it next time.

Bolepa, I think you will find it works like magic. Another thing I like about doing it this way is you will always have casings soaked and ready for filling. I'd hate to count the number of times I'd be almost finished stuffing only to find I'm in need of a few more feet.

Ditto on this. Completely agreed with you!