From pig to sausage: Day 1

This weekend a friend came over to teach us how to make sausages. Clovis bought a pig from the farm next door a bit over a month ago, and it was slaughtered Thursday to be ready for Friday's start. Friday was Cuiabá birthday (and a city holiday) so we therefore had a long weekend. Good since the process takes three days.

So Friday we started with the entire pig at about nine in the morning, and Rivania and Decimo showed us how to butcher it. Take off the feet, take out the tenderloin, disjoint the ribs, take out the ribs, then come the loin, then the ham, then skin the head, remove the tail, separate the belly for the bacon, and the rest of the skin and the fat. Just the butchering took all morning.




The head is then put to boil with water and salt, and then the meat was taken off to make frankfurters. We then made four different sausage recipes and salami. Salami has beef mixed in, whereas the others are pure pork. We made the filling for Tuscan sausage, pepperoni, Portuguese sausage, and 'simple' sausage. 2 kilograms of each (1 kg = 2.2 lbs) and everything rested in the fridge over night. We also seasoned all of the other pieces (feet, bacon, loin, tenderloin, tail, face, ribs) to be ready for smoking everything on day 2. The bones were salted and left in the sun, and the skin was boiled with salt and baking soda and then left to dry in the shade to make fried pig skin later. We finished up around 6p.