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[Asherdan]

It's been neat making different stuff at home.

Cleaning a carcass for grinding:



Adding seasoning to mix into the ground bird:



So far we've ground up two turkeys and made 5 pounds of breakfast sausage mix, 4 pounds of sweet Italian sausage mix and 10 pounds of straight ground turkey.

I home smoked a bird last Tuesday and we turned that into a classic turkey and stuffing meal as well as turkey ala king, green sauce enchiladas, pozole and multiple workday salad toppings. Spouse can straight chef it up, so the repeated use of poultry doesn't get boring because all the flavor profiles are different.

I put two 18 pound birds in the freezer whole after letting them age for 5 days in the refrigerator. I have a female and three males left to process. Will probably make the final female a whole freezer carcass, I think 18 - 20 pounds is the sweet spot for a bird to bake or smoke. The breasts on the first male weighed out at almost 4 pounds, so I'm thinking I'll breast the final three males and half them to put up twelve 2 pound packages of turkey breast for the freezer. From the rest of the carcasses I should get at least 15 pounds of meat for making sausage. I got the extruder nozzle attachment for the grinder and I just ordered some 3/8" and 5/8" casings. I'm thinking some breakfast and sweet Italian sausage should be a hit.

This worked out so well that I think I'm hooked. Home raised animals with plenty of pen space and quality feed most definitely taste better.

I'm going to take a month off from raising meat animals and then order me two dozen Cornish Cross chickens to raise for the freezer. Slaughtering chickens is a helluva lot easier than big-ass turkeys.

[Asherdan]

Last night we defrosted some of the Italian seasoned ground turkey and made a meat sauce for pasta with it:



Sampling the meat before it went in the sauce, I think the seasoning is pretty spot on, with just a little spice to cut the sweet. My big worry was that ground turkey can be dry and bland, so avoiding that is a good sign. The meat is very lean, so dryness can be an issue.

I ordered sheep and pork casings for sausage makings. Sheep is smaller and used for breakfast sized sausages, while the larger diameter pork is good for bratwurst and hot link sized sausage.

[wombat]

Now that's more like it!

[Carlos del Vaca]

Yeah, put that ground bird in stews and chili and such and it'll be fine.

[Asherdan]

Meatlaof, 50/50 beef and turkey.



It was damn fine.

[AugustWest]

Looks tasty.

[Asherdan]

Butchered out one of the larger male turkey carcasses. Took both breasts and carved them into tenders, bagged up eight pounds of meat from that. Parted out the other pieces and the carcass and ground it up. Spouse got real creative and found two different sausage mix recipes, one apple based, the other bacon based, both had various seasonings to add flavour as well. Interesting thing  to me, both recipes used egg whites as a binder and moistener, drying out will definetly not be an issue with these. Here's some photos of how the sausage is made:



Some finished bacon sausage (yes, we used Hammy bacon):



We made nine pounds of sausage, now that the learning curve is over I can see doing this regularly.

[Asherdan]

Hammy sirloin chops last night:



That little asshole is delicious

[Asherdan]

Some of the turkey apple sausage hit the grill last night:



The natural casings really keep the moisture in, the innards were done and tasty, but moist. Lesson learned: prick the casings for the last 5 minutes or so of cook time so they can dry up a little bit.

(not pictured in this same meal, baby back ribs and country style ribs from Hammy. she continues to be delicious.)

[Carlos del Vaca]

That is one big ol' jug of Herdez salsa. I eat plenty of salsa but I don't know if I could get through that before it went bad.

[KeithHernandez]

Damn, seems pretty awesome to own a farm nowadays.

[KeithHernandez]

But my girlfriend and I are moving from an 8x8 room with a hot plate to a one bedroom sooo...someday if we keep moving up.  Our idea is like a responsible commune?  Like...not a commune but a few families share a farm.  Whatever!  No more prison style living after today!

[AugustWest]

There is a song in the lyric "8x8 and a hot plate."
Use that stuff, man.
Hobby Farming is pretty dang OK.

Seconded.

[AugustWest]

Better be careful, eatin' too many of them eggs could angry up your blood.

[Asherdan]

I'm going to close this thread out with this ham of Hammy, the pig who was a delicious jerk:



Really, this has reached the point where you can assume anything but beef (for a little while) and giraffe I make food is something I knew the face of.