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I know I haven't posted many sausage threads recently. I've been making them, just nothing new.
So here's something a little different.
After years of frustration and coming home with just 1 or 2 pigeons, my dad's finally found a spot and technique where he's regularly getting 20 plus pigeons a visit. Him and his mate got 52 between them the other day - most either of them had ever shot in a day.
Now I don't shoot myself - doesn't do anything for me, tried it and happy to leave it to other people - but I've got no problems processing the dead beasts.
So new years eve he comes back with 19 pigeons..
Now normally we pluck the breast feathers outside and then just cut the meat off indoors. You're still dealing with the whole pigeon and it's not ideal.
So I decided to try a different approach and try breasting them outside instead.
Youtube is your friend.
Followed this bloke's method
Once you've worked out how to remove the wings without snapping the bone at the shoulder joint, it's pretty quick and no tools involved. Popped on a pair of rubber gloves and about 20 minutes later had a nice big bowl of clean, tidy, wood pigeon 'crowns'.
Once cleaned up inside. You can either remove the breast fillets with a small sharp knife and fingers - very quick. Or use the whole thing as a small meat joint.
I removed the meat from 12 of the crowns which gave me just over 3lb of lean, cholesterol free meat.
3lb 2oz pigeon breasts
If you haven't had it, it is interesting stuff. Raw it looks and feels like liver. Quite soft and slippery and very dark.
However if you cook it in a casserole or stew you would swear it was beef. it will also fry like the tenderest fillet steak and makes fabulous biltong and jerky.
Each breast fillet is around 2oz. And as wood pigeon are classed as vermin (and they really are) they can be shot all year round.
Due to the very high concentration of haemoglobin it's a fairly strong flavoured meat. Almost venison like.
So decided to go half and half pork and pigeon meat and used the b2b sausage seasoning to keep the flavour of the pigeon prominent.
Basically: meat, few oats, beer for slurry, cure salt, pepper, garlic and paprika.
It's a simple and great basic spice blend that will highlight the flavour of the meat itself.
Coarse ground the meat. As there's no fat or sinew on pigeon breast, it doesn't need to be frozen before grinding.
I ended up with about 6.5 lb of sausage meat.
Stuffed about 5lb into 40 mm (about 1.5 inch) diameter hog casing.
Reserved the rest for a little jerky - seperate thread.
Twisted into good sized links.
Now here's the thing (lol)
I'm currently working on ways to mass produce smoked goods cheaply and simply for commercial purposes, with minimal setup and minimal outlay.
So I'm experimenting with cold smoking on the grounds that I can set up a shed sized cold smoker for about £40 and then do the actual cooking indoors in a second hand hot cupboard type cooker.
Much cheaper and lot less hassle than a large hot smoker.
So I've currently got the sausages in the outlaw being cold smoked for about 10 hours.
Used a bunch of paperclip hooks and strung the sausages from the underside of the cooling rack :-)
Because it's cold smoking I can use the whole lengh of the rack.
LIke so:
Neat innit :-)
Once smoked I'll leave them overnight and oven cook to 150 internal tomorrow.
And we'll see what they end up like.
So here's something a little different.
After years of frustration and coming home with just 1 or 2 pigeons, my dad's finally found a spot and technique where he's regularly getting 20 plus pigeons a visit. Him and his mate got 52 between them the other day - most either of them had ever shot in a day.
Now I don't shoot myself - doesn't do anything for me, tried it and happy to leave it to other people - but I've got no problems processing the dead beasts.
So new years eve he comes back with 19 pigeons..
Now normally we pluck the breast feathers outside and then just cut the meat off indoors. You're still dealing with the whole pigeon and it's not ideal.
So I decided to try a different approach and try breasting them outside instead.
Youtube is your friend.
Followed this bloke's method
[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgD2-A0mppA[/yt]
Once you've worked out how to remove the wings without snapping the bone at the shoulder joint, it's pretty quick and no tools involved. Popped on a pair of rubber gloves and about 20 minutes later had a nice big bowl of clean, tidy, wood pigeon 'crowns'.
Once cleaned up inside. You can either remove the breast fillets with a small sharp knife and fingers - very quick. Or use the whole thing as a small meat joint.
I removed the meat from 12 of the crowns which gave me just over 3lb of lean, cholesterol free meat.
3lb 2oz pigeon breasts
If you haven't had it, it is interesting stuff. Raw it looks and feels like liver. Quite soft and slippery and very dark.
However if you cook it in a casserole or stew you would swear it was beef. it will also fry like the tenderest fillet steak and makes fabulous biltong and jerky.
Each breast fillet is around 2oz. And as wood pigeon are classed as vermin (and they really are) they can be shot all year round.
Due to the very high concentration of haemoglobin it's a fairly strong flavoured meat. Almost venison like.
So decided to go half and half pork and pigeon meat and used the b2b sausage seasoning to keep the flavour of the pigeon prominent.
Basically: meat, few oats, beer for slurry, cure salt, pepper, garlic and paprika.
It's a simple and great basic spice blend that will highlight the flavour of the meat itself.
Coarse ground the meat. As there's no fat or sinew on pigeon breast, it doesn't need to be frozen before grinding.
I ended up with about 6.5 lb of sausage meat.
Stuffed about 5lb into 40 mm (about 1.5 inch) diameter hog casing.
Reserved the rest for a little jerky - seperate thread.
Twisted into good sized links.
Now here's the thing (lol)
I'm currently working on ways to mass produce smoked goods cheaply and simply for commercial purposes, with minimal setup and minimal outlay.
So I'm experimenting with cold smoking on the grounds that I can set up a shed sized cold smoker for about £40 and then do the actual cooking indoors in a second hand hot cupboard type cooker.
Much cheaper and lot less hassle than a large hot smoker.
So I've currently got the sausages in the outlaw being cold smoked for about 10 hours.
Used a bunch of paperclip hooks and strung the sausages from the underside of the cooling rack :-)
Because it's cold smoking I can use the whole lengh of the rack.
LIke so:
Neat innit :-)
Once smoked I'll leave them overnight and oven cook to 150 internal tomorrow.
And we'll see what they end up like.
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