Again this is the memory of actual events as they really were.
It is a sad/happy memory trip. I wish I would have been awake
enough to learn this skill from him! I am positive that he was
willing to teach me! Below is the memory run.
Author:
Ralph Roggenbuck
West Fargo, ND
Fred's Sausage
Fred Sauer was my godfather and somehow I used to think he would be there forever. I remember being with him one winter, gathering wood for sausage smoking. This was in the early 1950's and Fred made his own sausage. He always went deer hunting for the meat.
Then the real wok began. There were the steer, & pig or pigs to be butchered, depending on the size of the deer and the pigs; another factor in here was his intended blend of meats. Sometimes he would also add chicken, usually the non-egg laying older hens. All of the cutting and aging of the meat; had to be done before he could even start the grinding for the blending.
After the meat was cut up, cooked and coarse ground; it had to blended together.
He did this in a clean metal "Wheeling" galvanized wash tub. He would carefully scrub his hands and forearms first.
The next step was to dump portions of the beef, venison, chicken, and pork into the tub. As he did this he hand mixed in spices and salt. Sometimes he also used a butter paddle for the mixing. For those who don't know a butter paddle was used to work the butter milk out of the home churned butter. It looked like a wooden curved garden hoe with a short handle.
Most I have ever seen and used were about 10 to 12 inches long.
He would spend a large amount of time working all of the ingredients around to a nice blend. Sometimes it would end up being several washtubs full.
He would sometimes even have to commandeer the copper boiler that every farm house had a couple of. The wood stove and the boiler or boilers were your entire hot water supply for all of the things that required hot water except cooking. The cooking hot water usually used a device still used a simple teakettle.
Then the meat blend was reground; by a hand powered meat grinder clamped to edge of a table or sometime a chair.
The grinder had a special front
that looked like a funnel hooked to the front of it. This was a sausage stuffer.
The cleaned and boiled pig intestines were used as sausage casings; again they still are in old-fashioned sausage making places. The intestines were rolled up onto this funnel and fed down as the meat was ground. They were tied with string at the beginning and when about full enough, tied off again. Even the string had been boiled as a cleanliness factor. After the double tying the sausage could be cut free. Sometimes they were and sometimes they were left in long strings.
After all of the sausages had been stuffed it was smoking time.
He had a special small building (actually it was a converted outhouse) set up with the fire cans in the bottom and a small smokestack on the roof. He had racks and also used perforated metal pails ( I think he used the old leaky milk pails for target practice and then they ended up here) to hang his sausages for smoking.
The smoking is a slow carefully watched process. He was very picky what kind of wood he chopped for his smoking fires. I remember crossing the small river and helping him find and take home special braches from the ground. He always used down wood.
I couldn't tell which branches were the good ones and which weren't. By the wonderful taste of his sausage; he could.
Then he took a hatchet and chipped away at the branches; he even was careful about the size and the blend of the different wood chips he used. He had to keep the fire just right also. This required several trips at odd hours to the smokehouse to monitor it.
Writing this small article has made me extremely hungry for sausage! I measure every sausage I ever taste to the Fred Sausage; 90+% don't even come close. A few get close; but in 50+ years of not tasting his sausage none have ever equaled it! Somehow I don't believe that any ever will for ME! Maybe part of that is the man was so special!
