From pig to sausage: Days 2 and 3

So the second day, we started a bit later. Everyone came over for feijoada and then we got to work. Eduardo started building a smoker a bit before lunch, and he and Clovis worked on that all afternoon so that we were ready to start smoking the various pieces around 5p. The rest of us working on filling the sausages, tying them off, and tying up the various cuts.



For the salami we used silicon tubing, but for all the others actual intestine was used. Carmen's grandparents made and sold sausage in Colombia and Clovis remembers his mom making sausages, so they both had stories about how the intestines were cleaned and prepared for sausage making.



This morning (the third day) we took all of the pieces out of the smoker this morning, and put in all the sausages. And currently, everything that's out of the smoker is hanging in our kitchen. A few more days and we'll take it down and I imagine it will go in the fridge. This morning I'm already snacking on the tenderloin. An interesting piece of information I learned today while furiously using google translator to figure out the names of the various pieces is that Canadian bacon is an American invention, and that it's not made using the bacon, but is rather the loin. Which makes a lot more sense when you look at it (round as opposed to flat and meaty as opposed to striped with fat).