My first time and it came out so GOOD! I made beer bratwurst from prepackaged seasoning with the casings I cleaned out a few weeks ago. The sausages were a hit with everyone! The hard part was turning the crank on the meat grinder (manual). What a work out. Everything else was a piece of cake.
We cleaned them out through several water changes on each side and washed them several times with homemade soap and lemon juice. The sow had not eaten for 24 hours so it wasn't a stinky mess to begin with. then I left them in a little bit of clean water and vacuum-sealed them to freeze. Extremely easy to do and so digestible. Not at all papery or chewy like some casings we've had before. that I will be doing it from now on everytime we butcher.
No scraping, inverting it etc? just wash thoroughly and use? Do you eat or strip the casings at dinnertime?
We did invert - that's what I meant by washing on each side. As far as scraping- we didn't really need to. What little gunky stuff was on them pretty much came off in our hands and was discarded in the water changings. Someone had mentioned making them transparent by scraping and they were already that. You can't see them on the sausage at all. They're so thin yet strong. We eat the whole sausage, casing and everything. I know I've read a ot of stringent stuff about processing the casings but imo, it was incredibly easy to clean them. Perhaps I was expecting the worst and got the best case scenario. We plan to do it with every hog so we always have frozen casings available.
Small intestines, or large or both? I've heard it was too much work, and have been leacving the entrails out as an offering to the coyotes
