E6: Making Cracklings & Sausage is a Guenther Family Tradition: Come Along with me to Muddy Pond

[Music] [Music] so we're finally uh after about an hour and a half these cracklings are are cooked to a nice Brown and what I'm going to do here I got this pot over here and uh I'm just going to scoop lard crackings and everything out and pour it through this sail and the lard is going to go in that and Gonna Keep the crackling separate to put in this bowl behind me on the table here and then the girls will put those in jars and basically hot Cannon and so I'm going to turn over here and just dump them out right into here like that those are the crack ones that's what we're going to eat the lard over here is what's going to be used in making Breads and stuff all right so uh when I say hot canning and and what we're doing here uh that this lard is very hot it's I don't know how hot but it is it is hot hot enough that when these cracklings are put into jars that they seal themselves the jars the girls have washed and cleaned these jars this morning before and they're they're they're ready waiting waiting on us to put these cracklings into those jars so the jars are already clean and put the cracklings in there this being this hot they they can themselves yes no and and you don't have to you don't have to what they call hot water bath a more pressure cooker I mean these are they are already cooked and because it's so hot itself seals the jars and then this large is going to be uh left in this tub till late afternoon early evening and um we only have plastic buckets to put that lard in have you got another Bowl I think we need to change that and probably just go ahead and go to the house with it just be real careful and don't drop it it's hot so you didn't care for the craft ones the union well you know what in the first video I said I did not eat them but I tried them this last fall we Butcher and they are actually pretty good yeah let's all remember I was really surprised if you didn't like them before that you know I guess I forgot what they taste like pieces that was some stuff that accidentally got in there that didn't get ground up I'll get rid of it another piece so okay just don't put those in here so I came in to check you do know when you put the lids on you turn the lids upside The Yards upside down yeah and do you care what kind of lid we use well I thought I'd brought Lids on yeah Holly those were already washed yeah they were washed this morning I yes God lives on mine [Music] no just the one piece yes putting them upside down the lard is heavier than the cracklings and that goes to the bottom and that's the reason for putting them upside down and that's what actually seals the jar I'm not sure how dry they need to be um yeah they don't they don't need much water that's for sure I should have told you all that we had washed them this morning and got them ready sorry okay Heidi come here you're gonna help us so just take out any of those big pieces oh yeah I think I got most of them I saw them go in there and they were just accidentally didn't get through the grinder it's the same thing but and so what you want to do because the lard goes down as you're filling them you want to sort of keep this mixed up so that you get lard in the jars with them and you know what I'm actually I'm not sure I got enough lard in this I'm going to run back out and get the Dipper and uh bring a Dipper of a little more lard in here and put it on there you need somebody stirring and you dipping so you don't get just pure lard and so that but that you get enough lard in each jar because the lard goes down and that's what SEALs it right yes there you go I think Holly's here is good I'm gonna put just is that enough in there greens it's pretty uh oops [Music] oh I do okay well how about I guess I need to go out come over here and you come over here I will tell you that the old timers they didn't put them in jars they put them in uh in uh in stone crops and and then after they would cool down they would pour lard on top of them and that's what sealed them because of the way they're cooked in their own lard they they are so they they keep themselves yeah that's real good okay I'm gonna go on out and keep working on other stuff so this is once that fat um you know cools and this it'll solid you know it looks solid like that good eating I'd rather eat that than pork chops [Music] okay [Music] careful not to set your jar down into the thing ready another one foreign well if you want to be we make videos about stuff called the Appalachian channel oh yeah oh nice yeah we've seen your videos okay yeah we're filming today they're uh they've done a hog butchering yesterday and they're processing the meat today and all that so we're been documenting that that'll be on the video where y'all from Lansing oh not far then oh you're from Florida yes yes well yeah visiting my children yeah and we're happy to be here well they got a lot of nice products in here to take home yeah it's not very busy in the store today yet I've only had I think one customer or two customers I had two customers so far so it's not a very busy day but during the week weekends we're busier yeah it's not really tourist season right now people's not traveling so but the summertime it'll be opened in the fall like in the fall it's very busy in here like it can be you know like this door will be full of people when I was here last time Doreen I don't think I saw these bonnets what's what's the story about these guys uh like there's an Amish lady that we know in Kentucky and she makes these for us she makes the hats so we just got these hats and like they're generally for the men and then these bonnets for the ladies so this these are genuine Amish bonnets so this one would be like for a child probably a small child maybe a baby even I'm not sure how old because it's not very large and then this one yeah this would be for a child and then there's bigger ones for adults now whose bomb these are Amish people buying these are just tourists buying them to have them uh tours surviving them so generally the Amish are going to make their own yes this is so yeah we like to have them because people will yeah I don't I'm not sure I think it was didn't have any when I was here last time so they had to make these hats too yes yes so how much is a hat like that sell for okay these are 21.95 21.95 well that's not bad send off you so that's uh yeah I've sold a couple of these recently so they are popular what's the well you sell the best here in the store what's your best selling the baked goods or you know right now the baked goods are the the big thing right now we do sell a lot of baked goods um people like kitchen items you know like different kinds of kitchen knickknacks or gadgets you might say we had I do we do good with those and uh trying to think what else of course sorghum always does well in the honey we have honey and that does well too so yeah just just a variety of things it's amazing what people and we have some used items and so sometimes somebody will find something uh unique that they like that you know they might not find elsewhere I mean there's things outside like the men find things out outside like old things that old tools and little tools and just stuff like that is it's interesting and uh yeah I do sell purses I have uh used purses too which are sometimes popular uh if we can find nice ones they they like those too the women like those but yeah it's we just sell a variety of things so looks like you've sold out a Fried Pies or she not brought any today she hadn't got any here today maybe I need to let her know I I don't work here every day so I'm not sure like I just worked a few days a month so I'm not here all the time but yeah we'll let her know that's your daughter that makes those right this would be my sister-in-law your sister-in-law would like Steve yeah okay my daughter makes other things she offers the stack cake and the in the cookies oh okay well yeah I need to let her know well I'm gonna go back and see what everybody's doing okay good talking to you good talking to you so this this is the pure lard here from where we earlier this morning we were cutting up the lard and then uh Nathan ran it through the grinder and then Nathan carried it over there and put it in that kettle and we started boiling it to make cracklings and then we used that sieve to strain the cracklings out of that lard and this is just pure large there's probably three five gallon buckets of that lard here and that's what Holly and different ones of the ladies will use this lard to make bread and all kinds of baked goodies that that homemade lard there's nothing that makes better bread than that so it's a it's very valuable and treasure for them I I estimate there's three buckets of lard in here they prefer to use this all all of this this lard uh wish that uh that they would like for us to be able to make enough lard that they wouldn't have to buy any lard I'm not sure how store-bought lard is processed but they say in bread making it's no comparison to this lard it just makes much better tasting breads with our homemade large is the store-bought lard but they have what they have and otherwise they have to use the other alarm but right now it's just out here the reason we have it out here open it nice cool air just letting some of that air some of the heat escape from this and um later on by this evening it'll be cool enough that we can pour it in some some buckets that they have prepared for it cleaned and ready to go turn completely white and be turned become completely like with a ladle you have to scoop it out it's like firm lard so the other thing is it's sitting here so there's there's fine bits of of uh from the ground from the grinding is just real fine cuttings I guess you might say in this lard while it was cooking and by letting this sit here like that all those fine particles settle to the bottom so we will start by gently dipping it off the top and then uh when the kettle gets when this um pot gear gets almost empty we'll actually tilt it up and let all that settling goes to go to one corner and just take off the top and there's going to be some uh fine real fine it's basically lard cracklings kind of grit which when I was young mom and dad didn't have a lot of money and dad didn't either growing up and they would take that crackling lard mixture and mix it halfway half and half with peanut butter and use it as a bread spread on their bread because they simply couldn't afford to buy enough peanut butter to feed everybody and this was a way to get the peanut butter taste and supplement everything so a lot of a lot a lot of lard consumed I don't know my dad died too young he was 76 maybe he would have lived longer if he would have uh not eaten all that stuff but I sort of doubt it I don't think it hurt him any don't I don't know I mean doctors will tell you not to eat that and a lot of people are firm Believers on it and how unhealthy is it but I think you know if you have an active lifestyle and farm and work the way we do that our bodies can we can consume we can we can absorb those lardy Foods you know because uh after all it's lack of exercise I think is what gets so many people that makes them unhealthy knocker so quickly tell us you know quit eating that lard it's so unhealthy this and that and the other well if you're just sitting on the couch or you're sitting in an office I would say that's probably true but you know if you work hard like we do here on the farm I don't think it's hurting us oh my goodness what are you doing now son there's Brian Brian bring us cooking some food for lunch I guess right oh just samples yeah yeah okay okay so let's go down in the basement and we're gonna uh see where they're at with the sausage and figure out how many pounds we have of that and we're gonna look at the recipe and get the salt and pepper and the seasonings the way we're going to season that and mix it all together then we'll get started stuffing the sausage more than two buckets one so I'm gonna say it's a fair hundred pounds oh yeah yeah it's at least that at least 100 pounds okay we call it link sausage and the reason we call it link sausages like the intestines that I was that we were cleaning there yesterday um after after that we stuff it and it's smoked it will be cut into pieces and put into freezer bags when I was growing up when I was young mom would put it in jars and pressure cooker pressure cook it can it you know meat you have to pressure cook it to to preserve it if you're not going to freeze it nowadays we all have freezers uh much easier and probably safer less likely to get food poisoning like we're worried about food poisoning but uh it's just a lot easier today to put it in freezers that's the way we all do it and that's the reason we call it link sausages because two buckets pretty close yes so so this recipe is for 10 pounds so um you want to go [Music] yep times ten if you could put that together you have the Bison Hogs to grill with I forgot thank you all right here we go okay so you need this times times ten yeah so you need to okay two tablespoons can I write it on here yeah you can wrap I don't know I actually don't need to okay so 20 tablespoons of salt how much would that be salt sea salt if you don't care sea salt okay probably I don't know if one pound will do probably two pounds and then black pepper okay here's black pepper I need 10 tablespoons if I need a big one and fennel that would be okay fennel where are you this is I may have to go to the back to find fennel I don't see fennel here I think I know we have it I just don't see it here okay paprika now there's two kinds of paprika regular paprika and smoked but you probably want regular right the regular because we're going to smoke it you know okay paprika says 20 20 well I think we're gonna need two of those and red pepper would that be cayenne pepper yes ground red pepper oh yeah that's Cayenne okay so it takes up here just put it right there in that pan yes you dig that much salt like it calls for 28 tablespoons so I don't know how much one we'll try that we'll try that and see if that's enough yeah it's going to take both of those I think okay so we got the I need to go check on the fennel here cute garlic powder and brown sugar okay I get those first before I go get the can you weigh that brown sugar out into that pan right there or do you have that already pre-bagged it's pre-bagged I believe let me double check we need 10 pounds of that so let me go see if we have that do you like the dark or the yeah the dark is fine but if the dark isn't as dark as the light I'll pick the cheaper one for you okay okay so three six uh this would be nine pounds without yep yep garlic powder 10 tablespoons of that let's see do you want whole fennel that's or do you use ground feet okay let me see what we have I think I did that one time and then then you had those chunks in there and that wasn't yeah it doesn't look good okay so let me see if she has ground panel so what was the main which first opened was the main stuff you were selling but food dishes bacon or something or well she uh she always ever since I was little she always sold bread and um maybe some rolls a little bit of stuff like some some bake stuff that she made in the house and back in those days you didn't have to have an inspection and she just made this stuff in her house and uh visitors would come through the community and they would she had a sign out here by the road and they would stop and they'd just come right in her kitchen right where we live and buy her bread that's how she started she always did that but the store came about when uh uh up here at the top of the hill turned around where we were on how bigger Loop the other day one of the hubberger families had a small store there named The Variety Store and when Church trouble started and they moved away that store closed and that's when mom decided that she wanted to have a store and Doreen thinks that that was in 1992 I'm going to say it was in those early 90s approximately 19 yeah and and the original store where she started it because as I talked earlier this morning of down there where we were working this was called the side house it was the building beside the house where just everything was stored and packed in here and it was not ready for a store so this she started the store in another building a quarter of a mile up the hill here and uh of course that being a quarter of a mile away from the house that was that made it a lot more difficult and then she had some people working for her and that came here and remodeled this and and made this into a store maybe late 90s um no I think she was I think she was only up there about a year or two that's right there yeah she did not stay up there very long if she wanted it moved home here but she was uh she was a bit of a business person she really liked that she uh she knew how to do business like that and she done well with the little store here so since she didn't use a telephone how did she find products and order products how'd that come about well you know back in those back in those days these suppliers they were also uh uh they had catalogs and you know they would mail out catalogs with Goods that they were selling and then they had an order form in there and she would fill these order forms out and mail it off and then the orders would come that's the way things were done back in the old days but you know the telephone then definitely did simplify things yeah let me just write this down here right and you can stroke it off afterwards if you don't need it okay so that but you know what on the fennel we have no ground so what I what you could do if somebody had a grinder yeah a coffee grinder they could grind this up for what you did I know we're ready to use it right now so don't have time and I know I tried that one another time I yeah then you'd eat that sausage and all of a sudden you bite into one of those whole things and that that was too much flavor for one bite yeah okay thanks oh yeah bringing in the seasonings for the link sausage okay if you guys will put the table down now please if you'll take the twisty off of that and dump it on there Eddie you do the other one and I'm going to hold back a little bit on that I think we're overdoing the sugar just a little bit what we need to do is pull that table away from the wall so we get all the way around it okay let's get serious about it that's good that's good so the recipe calls for 10 pounds two tablespoons of salt so that would be 20 tablespoons with old enough on that sugar uh we might put half of it in there okay so the deal is um it calls for three-fourths pound of brown sugar for 10 pounds and so how many pounds were in each of those bags three pounds so we've already put six so three fourths um three-fourths pound for every 10 and we've got 10 batches that would be seven and a half pounds right so we're at six so maybe about half of that that's good enough and there's one two three four count out loud is it what's right on it huh just put all that in there and put us a little bit more there we go all right now I'll put 10 of these 10 tablespoons of black pepper is this the same exact direction I've been using from the beginning pretty much pretty much yes no now dad mom and dad never had it written down it was a mental thing for them but I decided when Dad was still living that this mental thing can be so easily lost and so we wrote it down and made hard copies for it that we keep at home and then when butchering day comes we get a coffee out get the hard copy out and make a copy of it and bring it over here so you know if it gets wet that's 10 of them yeah okay next we're going to put um 10 tablespoons of Paprika in it that was paprika yes paprika because we also got cayenne pepper here and the cayenne pepper okay next we're going to put in um this right here the cayenne pepper um we're going to put in fine five tablespoons of the red pepper yep it calls the recipe calls for one half tablespoon for every 10 pounds one two three better be glad you stop at five okay ask me what the next number one five five that's garlic powder you say you did a little more of the Kaya Mark yes just a little bit that's what we did last time okay yeah it's a sneeze you're close enough need just a little more excuse Ain't Gonna Hurt okay what's that Red Bull I do I'll talk to him six months ago and they started carrying it okay the ingredients are all in have at it oh this is my least favorite part yeah right you mix until your arms are about to fall off and then you mix a little more that's when you know you're done so you see there now now they're gonna put their hands in it and knead it all together mix it together Clean Hands yep been working with meat all morning they're clean they better be no booger picking or anything like that and I'm gonna check on the bone cooking over here [Applause] stir that a little bit what's the smell so we're finally at the uh the stuffing stage of it been working on deboning this meat and grinding it and mixing the seasoning in it and now we're putting it in the suffering Nathan and Tim got the stuffer ready over here on this other table this is an old hand crank machine this machine actually belongs to me I was at an auction if you want to come around here well John and they'll they'll work right there actually if you'll stand in the corner so because Nathan has to stand on this end I was actually at an auction and they had this thing came up and was uh going to be auctioned off and people started bidding on it and there was another man that was interested in it that I knew and he knew me but he chased me up to 450 for this thing which I thought was you know quite high but at that that day these machines are so rare that uh that I felt like that I needed it and uh dad had a dad has had a couple of them I think there's one around here on the Shelf but they uh they can't have issues there's gears can break and things like that and so anyway I bought this thing for 450 in auction about three or four years ago and uh it's a fantastic fantastic stuffer so what Nathan is doing is he's uh stroking on the uh intestines that we cleaned yesterday these are the intestine the small intestines that we cleaned from that hog yesterday and he had Tim push out just a little bit of sausage on the end it makes that and a little bit slippery for the intestines to feed on there a little easier and so I'm going to come right over here and Nathan knows that the intestines are very fragile there's very very thin skin you want the intestines to be nice and full but you can easily overfill them and he's going to make mistakes here he is going to bust them it always happens and he's just feeding that off and you can see how these intestines just naturally sort of curl up just like they were in the hog's belly so he's told Tim to speed up just a little bit and we're off to cranking and I'm turning it along a little bit here I think there are some modern day stuffers on the market now and Nathan do you know some electric powered well a lot of these uh Grinders that homeowners version Grinders they come with a stuffer attachment okay okay he's just going to cut it off there and I'm going to take this out of his way and I've already went to The Smokehouse and brought this stick out of the Smoke House and something dad would have done is just go to the woods and get a small sapling tree and cut it cut a piece of it long enough that goes from one side of the SmokeHouse to the other and then just hang this meat on there just like that and equalize this out a little bit here so it'll hang on there three times and then when this stick gets full somebody will help me one on each end of that stick and we'll carry it to The Smokehouse and be ready to put the smoke to it which we will finish we will finish all the stuffing before we build a smoldering fire hickory smoke fire in The Smokehouse and start smoking this meat so it's always amazing to me okay that's the end of his section right there but like I started saying it's amazing to me yesterday started cleaning those intestines there and that you can put the same Hogs meat back in those intestines for the casing so all the seasoning is in that meat and all they need is hang in The Smokehouse and hook a smoke them for about two to four hours with a good hickory smoke and delicious like some of the meat we were eating here just a little bit ago and then you then you cook them on a pan fry them in a pan you can fry them in a pan you can bake them in the oven the fast way is cut you a section of it but like that much what you're going to eat for lunch and put it in the microwave for uh 90 seconds and it's ready to eat yeah real fast lunch good snack yeah so if so if we buy uh buy sausage in the store are they encased in the intestines the same way store-bought sausage or is that different uh it's it's possible that they can they can be I know that there is also a synthetic casing that you can buy and not clean the intestines like this but I guess these synthetic casings are are um you know digestible that you can that you can eat them but I'm not sure like what hot dogs are encased in but they have to be casing something didn't it pretty neat yeah so as soon as they get all on this case do then you go to The Smokehouse then we go to The Smokehouse well we'll go to the Smoke House as soon as this stick is full and and as you can see over there they're filling that tub again uh and so one one tub full there did this amount and so I'd say we'll probably have four times five times that much probably so you throw it hard to pack it in there gets there out of it yes he intentionally smacks it in there like that to try to keep the air bubbles out because if you don't the air bubbles will come on in and meet and a little bit difficult to get them out not that it hurts but you might be cheating somebody's lunch try to feed him up a pocket of Air instead of meat you know okay so we are about ready to carry this stick out to The Smokehouse and put another stick on in here to reload it you need some help with that yes I'd like for both of you to carry this I can but you know I would rather you guys carry it ing so we're going over here to The Smokehouse with this link sausage this little block building building dad built probably I don't know 30 40 years ago probably it's always been his Smokehouse here on the yard so all it is is just an open building and it's got a couple of bars in here so come on in Tim you see that ledge right up there your end goes up over that and I'm going to scoot this back like this and go ahead yep okay sit back far enough okay now let's move this back this way are you good Tim it's on there enough okay very good all right now if you all want to keep on stuffing I'll be right behind you with another stick so these are the the little sapling sticks here that Dad made and and let you see where we hung the sausage on here and uh when we get all the sausage in here Holly just asked me well have you got the fire belt yet and I said no I'm not going to build a fire or make smoke until we have all the meat in here because once uh the smoke starts you can't breathe in here you can't live in yourself get all the meat in here and then we'll get the smoke started so we're going to go back down here to the basement with a another stick and load it with some more sausage [Music] in that kettle there's a head the meat is pretty well falling off of it we're gonna go we're going to get that out of this now and pick the meat off of the bones and start the process of making liverwurst right right there is one of my favorite pieces the roof the roof of a Hog's mouth and only put cornmeal in and it's like corn mud yeah both very delicious and again they only meet about it there is no meat in it it's just the water is flavored with the meatballs and I wasn't that much passes and the fish and the fish that they caught they had to count on that start racing would have started today [Applause] oh yeah yeah pretty good [Music] [Music] nope it's good it's good what it is there's not much here actually I'm gonna take this piece out the rest is going to be okay for a little while in about an hour we'll put just a little bit more wood on it it's already it's already taking a little Darkness another word [Music]

Channel: The Appalachian Channel

Views: 187,865

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Id: oqnebCtoVLY

Length: 41min 42sec (2502 seconds)

Published: Tue May 02 2023