A young couple has moved back to Laurel with a plan to open a meat market, offering whole free market butchery. This means you get the cut of meat you want, not what the factory wants  you to have. They’ll not only offer fresh cuts of meat, but also will cure and smoke meat for their customers. That means they will be making Sausages too. 

Sausages exist all over this planet. That fact adds an entire chapter to part of every travel adventure I have. Apparently this couple moved here from Seattle, a city I visited in 2010, and where I enjoyed lunch at a small store front called Salumi’s. http://www.salumicuredmeats.com/ I hope they know the place and can recreate some of its wonder. Books say they people began stuffing meat into animal casings as a way to preserve meat. All I can say is “Thank goodness!”

A note of caution:  This happy Blog was supposed to be FUN information for people who know about sausages and cured meats.  In it’s initial form there were some photographs that I found on the internet which I thought, by the information on their link, were free to use for non-commercial uses.  This Blog is surely not a commercial use as anyone can see.  It is, however, part of my company’s web site, so the gendarmes who monitor the web informed me of same.  I shall be more careful next time.  Regradless,

The first time I ever looked at a link of sausage was the Friday meat sale at my Dad’s family business, J M Wilson and Sons. My Dad was one of the sons, and Champ was another. Champ had a lifelong friend, Jimmy Tant, whose family owned Tant Packing Company. It was a full line meat processing company, and early every Friday morning Jimmy brought sausages, hams, head cheese, and bacon to the Store, then hung it all on a “tree trunk” display. They sold out every Friday. The sausages were a country style recipe of fresh pork stuffed in 1” pork casings. That’s about all I knew about sausages. Well that is true, except that I had been eating hotdogs, Bologna and Vienna sausages all my life, who knew?

There came a time when I traveled beyond my little circle 250 miles from home and found, among other things, that the world was one big sausage eating place, glorious sausage of all kinds and sizes. First there was Kielbasa, the Polish sausage with strong garlic seasoning. Then Italian, both sweet and hot, fresh pork sausages became instant hits. After that I began to notice all the different kinds. The Germans have their frankfurters to wursts. The Iberian Peninsula is famous for Tapas prepared from cured meats.

Some years later I had begun to cook. That is when I began to understand some of the inside story of why we love our links. It’s all about seasoning, fat, how the lean is ground up. For example, it was a good deal of sage and red pepper with just the right amount of pork fat and pork lean, ground rather rough, that made Tant’s sausage country. It’s the taste Southerners look for in the morning. All over the world, humans have their own favorites, and there are many masters.

In our world we hear about Salumi and Charcuterie. One from Italy, the other French, these are the names of master craftsmen who practice the art of making sausages and other cured, smoked and preserved meats. In Mississippi there are only a few found in our grocers’ shelves. As I said before, part of every travel adventure I have involves seeking them out.

One morning I ran into Mr. Tant, and I asked him about his unique blend. He didn’t reveal it, of course, but instead asked if I knew what Kielbasa was. He went on about one of his major customers wanted him to supply Kielbasa to offer to the New Orleans market for use in Red Beans and Rice. For years Andui, a Cajun pork sausage, was the favorite; but there were those who wanted a different choice. Polish Kielbasa is pork sausage similar to what Mr. Tant was making except for the seasoning. It’s full of garlic and a great companion to red beans. He asked me to come down to his plant and help make some. I could bring down my spice blend, and we’d make some. I spent a week collecting and blending my spice mix. We used it in 100# of sausage. It was pure fresh meat, cold and clean, no chemicals. It’s not possible to describe how much fun that was.

So, back in 2012 I wrote one of these Blogs about Christmas Salumi.

If you are interested, go read the blog. http://www.chriswilsonrealtor.com/blog/?p=1465

We still make various sausages in my kitchen, including my wife Holly’s grandmother’s recipe. Her entire Delta family loved her version of Country Sausage. It’s fair to warn you that some don’t like knowing what it is, they simply want to eat some, now.