Homemade Sausage Making

Hi, Im just looking at doing coppa from the marianski book and its a touch confusing.

boneless pork butt/shoulder metric 1000g(1 kg) - 2.20 lb
then uderneath that it says butt will weigh about 2.2kg(5 lbs)!!!

That makes no logical sense as surely the final product weighs less after losing water etc. Any ideas what is trying to be conveyed here..?.maybe one starts with 2.2kg meat....im not sure and then worried about levels of cure 2, if guessing.

Any help appreciated

cheers
andrej

aaaaah i think it means the boneless wieght is 2.2 kg....author just didnt put boneless in there...quite badly written that, its unclear and could have big impact on food safety for newbies getting wrong weights.

cortion - 'bone in', i meant

As purchased a pork butt can weigh more or less than the example given in the recipe. You should be able to weigh the boneless meat and use the recipe for one kilogram as the proportional amounts of ingredients for the weight you are using.

Hi Andre just a tip that may save you a lot of confusion. You will find that a lot of recipes for sausages or cold meats will refer to 1kg. or 2,2 lbs. What it boils down to is you would either multiply or devide the amount of spice by the amount of meat you have on hand.So you do not have to have exactly 1 kg of meat, you just calculate the spice for what you have and off you go.

Sorry Andre forgot to say welcome to the forum. I am sure you will many friends here.

hi, thanks for the tip. I hope the coppa works out well.....its first effort with a drying chamber and have spents weeks getting humidifiers, thermostats etc. Its a lot of work but good fun. I love the marianski book and think his merguez is excellent.

Hi Guys,
In all fairness to Stan, we should have his thoughts on the matter. The great thing about Wedliny Domowe is that Stan is actually our very own "Seminole" on this site. He's always happy to oblige and answer any question. I'll rattle his chain and have him respond to this question.

Best Wishes,
Chuckwagon

I think that if we don't regularly do the food shopping we may not be familiar with the packaging of the many products in the meat department of any supermarket. Just in the line of chicken you can find whole chicken, cut-up entire chicken, boneless breast, split breasts, leg quarters w/back portion, thighs, drumsticks, sold separately, or combined, whole wings, wing drums, packages of hearts and gizzards and tubs of liver. Sometimes you can find backs with all of the fat still attached. In this area you can also find necks in large bags for blue crab bait. In one market they sell chicken feet. I worked in a market where we received the chickens dead and plucked but other wise complete. we sold them in the "round" or eviscerated and cut-up or whole.
Different parts of this county feature very different selections of meat depending upon the ethnic make-up of the clientele.

Hi Andrejwout,
I've just received a reply from Stan Marianski (Seminole). He wrote:

Hi Chuckwagon,
The sentence "Pork butt will weigh about 2.2 kg (5 lbs)" is confusing and will be replaced in the second edition of the book with : "A small pork butt weighs about 2.2 kg (5-6 lbs)."
The recipe is calculated for 1 kg (2.2 lb) of meat, but pork butts are bigger, 5- 6 lbs. That is why this sentence was placed there, but instead of clarifying the matter it has created only confusion.
Regards,
Stanley

OK, my friend, I hope this has cleared up the matter.
Best Wishes,
Chuckwagon