Why is our little PlayGourmet inspecting this sausage? Well because of the hours, days, and weeks that he put into it. He has been watching over this batch and waiting for this day. This Italian sausage was stuffed 6 weeks ago, and has been curing since.

So prior to what you see here, this sausage was hanging in our curing chamber, where we keep the humidity around 70% and the temp around 55 degrees.  Curing is something that we will get into at another time, but basically though the process, we pull out most of the water and add some stuff that makes the meat a very inhospitable place for anything harmful to grow.

So for a month, while this happened, we had to do a lot of playing and eating, besides making sure there was adequate humidity in our chamber.

But before all that waiting around, we incubated the meat for about 24 hours. This was to kickstart the fermentation process. Since it has been a bit chilly outside, we did this in the oven with the door open.

Before we incubated, we stuffed and tied up a bunch of sausages, which by the now our little play gourmet could write a book on. (All except for that fact he can’t yet read or write)

And prior to that we prepped the meat with our old family recipe, just like Grandpa used to do.

Now that we are all done, it is a two man job to vacuum seal all the goods.

All and all, I think our quality control department did a commendable job!