Raw meat storage - Odd taste in sausage if frozen meat is used?

[wasuky]

Hi guys! I'm writing from Venezuela. Pretty hot right now (as always).

I wanted to ask you something about the meat storage because I just can't find a proper answer. So here it is:

I'm starting a home-based charcuterie with 0% experience (yes... I am that crazy) but 1000% of heart and passion for it (both the bussiness and charcuterie). Basically my equipment is a good quality home grinder which I hope can keep up with the rythm for a while until I can get a pro one.

I need to make some test on sausages(which I have made only a couple of times) and a very valuable (for us) spreadable meat that is part of our daily use (in some countries it's found as deviled ham) and I need meat so I contacted a local farmer to buy a hog (probably a 100kg hog) as it's cheaper this way. The thing is that in my mind I have seen myself butchering (or trying) it and storing in the freezer. I thought of grinding the entire thing or at least half of it and storing in the freezer the ground lean meat and fat in separate bags, of course.

My questions are: Is there a problem on storing frozen ground meat and fat in separate bags and use it in small batches as I need it? I mean, I am not going to use 20kg at once, so I might use 3-4kg at a time.

I read somewhere that doing this might bring some problems of flavor in the meat and a lot of problems with the fat. I can't find where I read that.

Guys! Please excuse my rookie question and my bad english (on top of that ). Thank you all!

[Bob K]

No problem at all with freezing. In fact it is recommend with Pork to help prevent Trichinosis. Preferably Vac sealed. If not well wrapped to prevent off odors from being absorbed

[Butterbean]

Welcome to the board Wasuki! Like Bob said, there is no problem freezing the meat. I do some home butchering myself and what I found real helpful is to lay out a plan before you kill and scald the pig. IMO, the key is having help and having a good plan. What I do is don't allow the pig any food for a day before butchering. I then stick the pig quickly after dispatching and collect the blood. I then put this away and scald the animal and then open the animal and remove the fifth quarter and get that into the cooler as soon as possible leaving the entrails in a bucket to be processed for casings a little later.(best to do this at this time if you have some help) Next I split the carcass and break it down into the major cuts and refrigerate everything to cool which makes butchering much easier.

At this point, what I prefer to do, is keep the major cuts in separate containers until I decide what I want to do with it. If you will familiarize yourself with the different Classes of meat like Marianski details in his books, life is so much easier. With this you can begin taking the odd cuts of meats as you butcher and place these in labelled containers to be used later.

With help and a good plan it is not that bad of a job and I prefer doing it this way because there are so many things you can do with a whole carcass not to mention all the free casings you can harvest.

Good luck with your venture. I'd do more of that myself but the food police here get a little unhinged on stuff like this.

[wasuky]

Hi guys! I appreciate your replies.

I was actually thinking something like that (I still have time to think until we're done with the quarentine situation), thought I still have no idea what to do with the whole package of entrails. I have been reading and watching academic videos (still have not found a butchering-related video about entrails) about the digestive system of the pork which it's been a bit confusing because I when I think about the "small intestine" and then I read somewhere that people talk about "middles" or "bungs".... well, I just get confused. Now I know I can use the stomach, small and large intestine, the bladder and even the esophagus (thought I still have to find how to clean all of these) as casings and just keep them clean and salted while I think what to do with them. I'm also interested in keeping the omentum (I know it's just fat but I've never tried it).

So my plan is get the blood sausage the traditional way (it's sweet and a bit spicy with tons of sweet small peppers [we call it "sweet pepper" and it's a regular indredient in almost any recipe] among a couple of other ingredients). Actually I was so used to this sweet and spicy blood sausage that I thought it was very odd and almost disgusting when I tried the first couple of regular salty ones when overseas. I will send you the recipe if interested.

After the getting the blood, I just want to break down body and refrigerate the pieces while I clean the guts (not before saving some meters of the small intesting and a bit of the large one to stuff it and grill them). Most probably I will keep some pieces for me, share a couple with the family and just use half pork for my tests which will end up being eaten by me and my family. I want to grind a large amount of meat and fat (separately) and keep them bagged in the freezer.

I am going to build a small brick smoker in the back of the house to start smoking the entire loin, bacon and bones and make some profit out of them instead of just using that meat for sausages. Smoked loin is a very valuable piece and common in our daily diet (or at least it was before all this chaos), bacon has always been a part of some dishes to give some flavor and smoked bones are part of some soups or cream recipes.

I am planning to build a small curing chamber but it's going be a long while before I jump into that project.

If you guys can recommend a book that could give me information about the right way to clean the guts, maybe information about how I could use each of the pieces, I would appreciate it.

Thanks again guys!

[Butterbean]

The caul fat is plentiful and its easy to harvest but it is very delicate. I simply rinse and fold and vac-seal and freeze. I have a lot of this scattered around in the freezer and comes in handy at times.

Cleaning the entrails is pretty straight forward .....especially if you denied the animal feed for a day or so before butchering. All you need do really is to start at one end and work to the other squeezing everything out. I also use a water hose and its helpful to have rubber boots on. As you work to the other end you will see the different sections of the intestinal tract. If you've done much sausage making you will know what these are when you come across them but if not they are different enough in appearance that you'll know where to cut to separate.

On the intestines, I turn them inside out. This is much easier than it sounds because all you need do is to get it started and apply some water to the fold and the weight of the water will just push it right through. I then wash them good and invert them again and scrape off any excessive fat that may be on the intestine with the back of a knife but I don't get too bothered by this really.

Once its cleaned to my liking I place the different casing in a colander and dump lots of salt on it. I buy 50 lb sacks of pool salt or rock salt for this. At $5/bag its much cheaper than using "food grade" salt.

Really nothing to it. The first five minutes is the worst and this is compounded if you fed the animal before butchering.

[wasuky]

Are these recommendation the same for the rest (bung, large intestine, stomach, bladder). Cut and scrap off any fat or odd material and then rinse like there's no tomorrow?

I have found a lot of material about cleaning the small intestines in order to get the casings but haven't found almost nothing about how to clean the rest (except for the stomach that I have found a couple of videos on youtube but the thing were already clean enough).

[Butterbean]

Its all pretty much the same. Each section is a little different but its pretty obvious what you need to do to clean them. Here are a couple videos you might glean something from. The guy in the first video makes it look harder than it is. The second video is a better idea of how quick it can go. After washing in the vinegar water I put them on salt and don't brine them. I like to put them in a bed of salt in a colander to drain. Once drained and dried I bag them in fresh dry salt and they keep indefinitely.

Like I say, the worst part is getting started. Old folks here call this step slinging. (getting the poop out) Once you get past this there is really nothing to it and if you keep in mind the price of casings then you'll get over the initial disgust of slinging the casings.

Pretty much this is all there is to it. However, in the stomach there are hairy things. I normally don't mess with the stomach but a while back I used deer stomach to make haggis. Inside this stomach was a hairy lining. To help lift this I combined vinegar and baking soda and began scraping this lining off. In a short time I had a beautiful snow white casing which looked a lot better than the initial stomach. That was a fine meal BTW

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5o3qDmk2SGw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jA5YLVtcL8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iI1FkuWXak

[wasuky]

THanks for the links. I have already seen those videos (I think the guy of the 2nd video is a genius.... he makes everything look so simple). I should get my pork tomorrow so I guess I let you know how turned out my self-harvested casings.

Thanks again!