EAST TEXAS HOG DOGGERS FORUM

Anyone else on here do their own game processing? A friend and hunting buddy of mine has a great setup for it and we have been doing all of our own processing here lately from start to finish including smoking the sausage. Nice to be able to do it all yourself. I figured others on here are bound to do it as well. Though it would be worth discussing. We have been making jalapeno cheese link sausage as well as bacon here lately and it seems like its getting ate as fast as it gets made  ;D

I've been wanting to get a smoker and learn how to salt cure meats, and make my own sausage and bacon

What style smoker do you use? Will you post some pics


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Just got done making 120 lbs, made 30 jalapeño and cheese, 30 pineapple and brown sugar, 30 spicy Cajun and 30 regular mild, got it on the smoker now, my good friend who lives just down the road has a complete set up, it's really nice, everything you need all under one roof, we did a bunch for the public last year and are getting ready for this deer season, we were almost overwhelmed last year.

He has a custom made box smoker, 5' tall, 4' wide, 3' deep, nothing fancy just made outa 1/8" sheet metal.

I do everything except sausage

Friend of mine, he died quite while back. He was an older fella. I used to go to his house and help him process.
 
We would grind and mix and make sausage and stuff.

His smoker was homemade. It was a small shack the size of an outhouse with one door and a tin roof. Couple feet away he had small cast iron wood burning stove. The flew was piped directly into the outhouse at the lowest point it could reach from the height of stove. He had vents he could turn at the top of house to control smoke. He had removable expanded metal shelves and hooks to  hang sausage from top.

He made the best sausage and on shelves did hams,  chicken , jerky, Tasso, anything really...

Had the best deer jerky I ever had in my life

the pineapple and brown sugar sounds awesome!

Pretty sure the walls was ceder siding.

This will be the first full year to do deer for us, hoping to get some good flavor/recipes ironed out so we can do all our deer as well.

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50lbs we put in the smoke house yesterday evening

Ive seen em built like that before Semmes, pretty nice being able to control em from the outside.

Looks like y'all got it going on over there Justin. His was prob less than half that size. Prob only 4x4'

The expanded metal just sat on cleats screwed to the walls on either side. And were removable and hieght adjustable depending in which cleat ya used so he could smoke various thing and still have sausage hanging and everything would baste what was under it the next level down

Did you get his recipes?

No, unfortunately, I was working for him here and there and he went in for a routine over 90% effective heart valve replacement. I was lined out to take care of stuff on his property while he recovered. Him and I cleared the spot he had a pond dug and levee built in the woods on his property and hung out many a long hours. the surgury went wrong and he died on the table. Next time I saw him I was Paul bearer at his funeral. ....month later I had a heart attack...wierd stuff.

Hate to hear that semmes.

The smokehouse my buddy gas is either 10x12 or 12x12. Its BIG

The guy was my cpa for probably more than a decade, and opened a side lawn business basically for his grandson who flaked out on drugs and me and him ran it for couple of years. Poor guy was do to retire from it all that summer and live the good life on a nice size prime property fully paid for along with the very nice house he built for him and his wife.

Was an avid hunter and fisherman and a vet and a great all around guy.

Bout the last memory was Sitn on his dock feeding the fish in the pond we made talking bout how next year we could start keeping some....

It really is, it's a really good breakfast sausage, smoked or fresh, link or patty, we mix 2 lbs of brown sugar and two 12 oz cans of crushed pineapple per 30 lbs of meat, we season it with 1 1/4 oz of rebel brand seasoning per pound of meat, it turns out pretty good.

The wood burning stove he had was small.... Like two or three split log max. I have a 1975 Vermont defiant in my house and it is the only heat source besides a small electric heater in bedroom. It's big and a beast and eats woods like starving dog.

I see the small ones on Craigslist here and there

We do it all. There's nothing better than home cured bacon. Usually put up about a 150 lbs of dried sausage a year plus plenty fresh and hamburger. There's a calf or two on feed pretty much at all times too. We process beef more than deer or pork usually.

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Im gonna have to give that a shot Goose! Thanks

That's a tough deal, my dad died of a heart attack at 72 and two uncles under 50, I better get checked out soon

Yeah I process all my own meat.  From hamburger (deer) meat and the fat I collect in which to had to it,  run meat through a hand crank tenderizer for my chicken fries,  make lots of jerky, make my own smoked sausage, raise and eat our own chickens, go fishing for the freezer, even feed raw to my dogs instead of store bought stuff.
         I use the Polish sausage seasoning you can get at Cabelas then add jalapeños and cheese.  Mix that with pig meat that the dogs have caught and maybe a litter deer meat at times mixed in with it, stuff it in casing and smoke it for a few hours.   That's my sausage recipe

Anyone ever raise a domestic hog and dunk it in hot water to scrape the hair off and salt cure the meat like the old timers did?


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every year leifal .

Ive always processed my own meat.  never taken anything to a butcher.  Usually i just go through the spice cabinet/fridge and start mixing stugff together till i get what i like.  Make anything from burgers, sausage, steaks roasts etc.  never taken anything to a butcher. from live and walking to grilled ready to go i do all the work.

JDT, so i tried a salt and brown sugar cure rub, but it didn't turn out to well. i was wanting to try a strait salt cur rub with some regularly used seasonings from the pantry this year. whats the best way and how long do you let your stuff hang and do you use a refer to cure your stuff or do you let it air hang and what temp do you do it at if you air cure it?

we grew up on all that...also stored the lard in big metal containers for use when cooking...we let the hogs get up to 350-400 pounds...been many years since we have done one like that...

Man I love those cracklins!!!
Do you use plain salt or seasonings?
What brand salt?

I have two old spot heritage hogs that are about 300 lbs that I've been wanting to do that to but I've never done it. Was thinking about using a galvanized horse trough propped up on cinder blocks with a wood fire underneath, hoist the hog up with a block from a tree and dunk it. Scrape the hair off with a dull butcher knife. Salt the meat in some plastic bins with holes drilled in the bottom so it doesn't get brined.

Do you have any advice for a first timer?

you gotta be careful not to leave the hog in the hot water to long. the heat will set the hair follicles and you won't get them out. when we do it, we build a fire around a 55 gal drum (the cattle trough will too), get it to a steaming boil and take a 1 gal metal bucket and pour the water on the hog and scrape. repeating till the entire hog has been scalded and scrapped. we left one in one time for to long and ended up just rolling the hog in the coals to burn the hair off.

to scrape a hog and if he will fit in a 55 gallon metal drum...dig a hole at a 45 degree angle and set the drum in it...keep a fire burning and keep a big pot of hot water boiling...we used those big cast iron pots...don't know what they were called in English maybe kettle...put the front end of the hog in the barrel and then pour hot water over the hog for a few minutes and roll him...pull him out and some can scrape while the little kids can pluck hair...have to work fast before he cools off...repeat once or twice before finishing up...we also used a tan tote sack and laid it over the hog and poured hot water  to kind of steam the hog and then pluck and scrape...we also made cracklings in the same kettle we boiled water in...

we had a tote sack or a 20 pound flour cloth sack...ran a stick through each end...as the cracklings were done we dipped them out onto the sack used to squeeze the oil out and 2 helpers would twist the cloth opposite directions to squeeze the oil/grease back into the kettle...we kept a big container to dump the cracklins into and another for the lard....

we also set a grille along side the fire and pulled some hot coals and grilled the liver and slices of the meat and snacked as we processed the hog...we always waited for cold weather to butcher a hog...

I've butchered,cut up the meat,made sausage,bacon,porkchops,hoghead cheese, cracklings etc.  sinnce I was a kid,but instead of me trying to explain all the processes to yall, go to youtube & search. I'm 67 years old & really can't type worth a damn! Most of the youtube videos on curing bacon are pretty good.I recommend using Mortons tender quick to cure bacon(unless you're a yankee stay away from the sweet stuff to cure your bacon & wash & soak it alot before hanging it in the smoke house or it will be very salty).If yall have any specific questions on anything about taking a live hog & turning almost all of him into some very good to eat yall are welcome to p.m. me.  Bolo--the old blue boar

I'm getting hungry just reading about it!

Hey Charles does burning the hair leave a funky flavor on the meat?


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Not that i tasted or was told. It just smells horrible as your burning it off

We always had a big pot of boiling water with a couple croaker sacks in it(burlap) took a sack out and put it on the hog where you wanted to scrape for a little bit and then scraped that spot with a dull butcher knife

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Sometimes had to pour a little water on the sack if it wasn't scraping good

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yes sir...and the tan sacks I was talking about were burlap sacks just as Decker said...

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100 more pounds fixin to get turned into saysage.

sorry charles and leifal , been busy .

i have a regular scalding vat , get the water to 150 put hog in and keep him moving for a couple minutes . then check the ears and feet , when the hair starts slipping roll him up and check the back when it starts slipping flip him over and repeat. when the other side starts coming pull him out and scrape .

to cure hams i go to the co-op and get a bag of meat salt . that meat needs to cool out before going in the salt so i just spinkle a little salt and let lay out over night . next day i poke salt down olong any bones . then pour a layer of salt in the bottom of the salt box then put the meat in not touching each other and cover with another layer of salt . repeat until you have all the meat in except bacon . i put it on top and just frost the top with 6-7 parts salt and 3-4 parts sugar . themiddlins stay 12-14 days and the hams 30 days .

Bump. Anyone getting their smokers ready to roll yet? We should be startin up in the next week or so. Got 3 hogs in the walk in right now

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i been makin and sellin sausage but it ain't cold enough here to cure any meat yet .

the way it's lookin i might oughtta cure and can alot of meat .

We do it all from link sausage to middling for bacon.

Jdt we may all need to start saving meat cuz we may not get any for the next 4 years hahahha


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We do ours make link sausage and smoke most of it. Smoke and make bacon out of the middling(http://i1291.photobucket.com/albums/b548/Lettmroll/IMG_1526_zpssks41tbj.jpg) (http://s1291.photobucket.com/user/Lettmroll/media/IMG_1526_zpssks41tbj.jpg.html)