Homemade Sausage Making

I have four pieces of butt ( the rest of the butts from which I cut the slabs for bacon. My salt and cure were calculated on the mild side at just about 2 percent salt and 150 PPM for nitrite. About .2 percent cure #1. and with a tablespoonful for sugar and a half tablespoon of molassas per pound. This combination worked well for the slabs is did as bacon. These pieces have been in a cold refrigerator since Dec 1st. At present they are tied and are drying. They will go into the smoke pretty soon and we shall see how this worked.

Yesterday I started brining 3 Pork Loins (pumped 10% of weight, 5 day period brine soak) to the adjusted recipe that evolved in this thread. Friday night I'll take them out and hang to dry before smoking on Saturday.

Will report back with the finished product.

At this point with my little experience (compared) I am wary of dry curing, have never tried it and will have to read a lot more before I would go that route.

I said this morning that I had four pieces of butt that were ready to tie and smoke. They have been coated with a dry cure moistened with molassas and kept in a 32.1 degree fridge for 12 days.
all tied up.

On the smoker.

9 Hours later.

The first slice.

As purchased I had 18.5 pounds of butts. Some of it became trimming and there were the shoulder blades with a little meat on them. But my yield was nine pounds of smoked butt and five pounds of bacon. cost 23.92 USD.

Hi Ross,

That Ham looks fantastic! The Pork you buy up there is better than I can find here, yours does not have so much fat.
Do you let them rest for a day before consuming some?

Next year I'll try dry curing as well.

Bubba, The butts that I get are cryovac straight from the packing house. Keep in mind that what you see as my "ham" is what is left after I have cut the bacon slab away from the skin side of the whole butt.
The result is I get from two whole butts, four rolled pieces like this:



And two bacon slabs like this:

Nice work ol' friend!

Hi Ross,

I did some searching on the net last night how the Boston Butt cross section is made up (i.e. bone shape etc) then how to de-bone the Butt.
Then I understood which cuts (i.e. skin side for bacon) you used from the Butts you bought.
Keep in mind I have never butchered before, so I will have to teach myself. As with the very handy information you posted a few weeks ago on butchering a Turkey, I think I have enough initial info gathered from my readings last night to attempt de-boning a Butt in the next week or two.
It will probably require a lot more practice from my end beyond that, but I'll work on that.
As you know, a big difference in using Pork Loin v/s Butt is the cost, if I can decently de-bone a Butt for the different cuts (Ham and Bacon) it will be much more economical.

Bubba, Wegman's still has butts here for a buck thirty a pound. I am going to get at least a couple today and get them started. I will post a photo essay when I bone them out and cut them up. My first job was in a neighborhood A&P store in 1954. I worked behind the meat counter with an immigrant German butcher named Herby. He taught me how to cut meat while I worked for him and it is some of the most valuable education I have gotten.
My knives are sharp and I have fresh batteries in my camera. Have a wonderful day.

Bubba, This is one of the most discriptive sites I have seen. http://porcine.unl.edu/porcine2005/pages/index.jsp

Going from a store bought pork butt to bacon and ham.
This is what it looks like at the store.
When you get it home and unwrapped it looks like this skin side:
And body side:
The shoulder blade:
For the first cut I lay the butt skin side on top and make a horizontal cut straight into the thickness of the meat and I work around this way until I hit bone. When I get all the way around and the meat is cut loose except at the bone I take a narrow blade and follow the contour of the bone to finish separating the "bacon" from the "hams". the slab will look like this: On the left and this is the skin side: .
With that done I finish removing the shoulder blade and trim the meat away from it: at the top of the pix.
Next I separate the butt into halves:

Hi Ross,

That is amazing the way you captured and recorded it. Thank you very much for posting this!

I'm now eager to try this myself, and right after Christmas is the time! With some practice I'll get it right.

I washed my hands a lot.

I have also mixed the cure for these cuts and that will be the subject of another thread.

I boned another today and made a video: http://s1112.photobucket.com/albums/k482/nansssor/

Edited to post better link

A short clip of applying the cure. http://s1112.photobucket.com/albums/k48 ... ew0003.mp4