The Accidental Agrarian

Whew! I’m finally feeling like I have a little chance to breath. Last week I slaughtered our annual pig and this weekend I butchered and processed it. Right now I am in a tiny window of rest before the remaining 7 pigs I have been raising are slaughtered here on the farm and taken away by the butcher to be processed to their owners’ desires. On that day I will be dealing with a glut of offal, heads, trotters, lard and anything else my customers don’t appreciate and would otherwise go to waste.

One of the reasons I go to the trouble of slaughtering my own pig, is so I can scald and scrape it on-farm, in the traditional manner. This is easier for me to do where I live and far less stressful for the animals, then hauling them to a mainland slaughterhouse. It is awfully hard work and I was very grateful this year to have the help of my daughter Oona, an intern, Danielle from a neighboring farm, and a Porkshop 09 participant, Greg, to help with the physically demanding scraping. It is a real challenge and learning opportunity for all–including me, each time I do it.

Why do I go to the trouble? Why bother? Because I believe it is valuable to preserve traditions, and I have put so much effort into raising my animals I hate to see waste. Normally, when a butcher skins an animal a high percent of lard is lost with the hide. On my pigs, which have a nice 1 inch layer, this is a crime. By preserving the skin on the pig until it is chilled and the lard firmed up, nothing is lost. I also prefer to leave my hams whole and cured in a brine and smoked in a traditional way and I like to leave the rind on my bacon and pork roasts for crackling–for all of this, the skin is essential.

In addition to all of this, this year I have done one more thing with the rind. Something I would never have considered doing before–I put it in sausages. In order to make the Duckfest 2010 as authentic as possible here on my farm in the Pacific Northwest I am making traditional French sausages out of self-produced ingredients. Cassoulets usually use two sausages in them, in addition to pork rind, and duck confit. Two of the more common sausages are the Saucisse de Toulouse and the Saucisse de Couenne. This second sausage is made up from pork rind, back fat and lean shoulder meat.

And so I found myself on Saturday morning, while preparing a range of sausage fillings, boiling up pork rind in a well seasoned chicken stock to make it more supple before grinding it. After it had chilled, I cut it into large chunks and ran it through my grinder alternately with the back fat and some shoulder meat. What I got was a sticky forcemeat, unlike any other I have dealt with. I then mixed in the other ingredients as suggested by Kate Hill, my accomplice in the Duckfest, via twitter:

@Podchef Saucisse de Couenne: cook the rind in a well-seasoned bouillon for 2 hours. when cool (cold) run through grinder.

@Podchef add lean pork and leaf lard to match weight of rind. season w/parsley, chives, clove, thyme, bay, coarse salt & pepper.

@Podchef place loosely in casings, tie. grill or poach to cook. or use in extra special #cassoulet!

I was a little confused as to the exact ratio, so another exchange a short while later:

RT @KatedeCamont: @Podchef Saucisse de Couenne<–do you know what size these are? Savelloy? banger?

@Podchef fat little boys. shorter than long. they plump and crack apart with gummy goodness. each butcher makes them differently. 4-5 inch.

@KatedeCamont Kate thank 4 Saucisse de Couenne recette..I think I’ve got it figured out. Equal amts of pork, rind & back fat, right?

@Podchef more like half rind and 1/4 fat, 1/4 pork meat. well season since the cooked rind is more about mouthfeel then taste. #pork

Here, then, is the recipe as I concocted it from what I had on hand:

• 960g Pork Rind–cleaned, hair singed off, boiled 2hour in richly seasoned stock
• 400g backfat
• 600g lean meat/shoulder-I cut back on fatback due to fatty nature of the shoulder I was using.
• 8g white pepper
• 30g salt
• 1 bunch fresh Italian parsley
• 1tsp ground clove
• 3 fresh bay leaves
• 1 bunch chives
• 1 tsp fresh thyme leaves
• Slosh of Cognac

After grinding the 3 meats together the first time, I mixed in the remaining ingredients–leaving the herbs fairly chunky–and then reground everything. It was only after the second grinding that I felt things were a bit gummy, so I sloshed in the Cognac to loosen it all up a bit.

I then filled some hog-middles, a slightly larger casing than is used for bangers, and left the filling fairly loose in them to allow the rind some room to expand during cooking–the sausages are pictured above. I tied off the links in approximately 4 inch lengths. I now have them in my outdoor airy meat cupboard for a few days–the weather has turned perfectly cold and damp for this–so the sausages can lose the moisture acquired from soaking the casings and to allow the flavors to mingle. Once they have tightened up a bit I will be trying one.

Here is a “Year in Pigs” slideshow to get you from the winers I bought in February to the above forcemeat:

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Technorati Tags: duckfest2010, porkshop09, podchef, pigs, pork, meat, butchery, livestock, farming, animals, cooking, food, charcuterie, sausages, French food, cassoulet, Kate Hill

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This entry was posted by Podchef on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 7:26 pm and is filed under Farming, Livestock. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.