Homemade Sausage Making

I'm about to do a lot of curing and was gathering supplies when I spotted a bag of Morton's Pool Salt at Sam's. It was $4.95 for a 40 lb bag. The label said it was 100% natural and had no additives but warned it could contain some small rocks. Since I'm planning on doing a lot of brining in the next week and my price for salt is around $0.90/lb I thought it worth a try since the rocks would simply sink to the bottom of the pot and I would strain the pickle into the barrel.

Anyhow, I cut the bag open and was well pleased with the salt. Its a larger grain than kosher and looks more like sea salt - which they did say it was collected in a shallow sea bed. So far I've found no rocks or anything in the salt so I thought I might pass this tip along to those who might want to save around $32 on 40 lbs of salt.


Here is what it looks like.

Salt looks good and might even have more flavour than the more purified salts. I have seen old recipes where salt was not highly processed and it was recommended that it be baked in the oven before adding to sausage.

Wonder what the baking does? So far I've just used this in some brines but I haven't seen any reason not to use it for something else.

I usually get a 50# bag of Morton Granular from the local livestock feed store. Very fine but the bag says table salt non iodised. About 15 bucks last time I got some.

Butterbean wrote:Wonder what the baking does? So far I've just used this in some brines but I haven't seen any reason not to use it for something else.

The heating I suppose is to kill any bacteria that still might be it, even though you would think that the salt itself would take care of most of it.

Bob K wrote:I usually get a 50# bag of Morton Granular from the local livestock feed store. Very fine but the bag says table salt non iodised. About 15 bucks last time I got some.

As to salt, I bought a 40lb bag of coarse salt for less than $7.00 at the Bellingham WA Cash and carry. I use that for brining and sausage. For salami and dry curing I use sea salt. Never thought of checking out the livestock feed place. Thanks for the idea.!