The Herald-Zeitung

Charles Saur didn’t invent his family recipe. He just made it better.

Over the years, Saur won awards for his salami, dry sausage and jerky, but ask him how he does it, and he’ll laugh and admit he isn’t sure.

“A lot of it is the smoke,” he said. “Pecan doesn’t give a strong flavor.” He said other woods often cause the sausage to come off too strong, but the wood his family prefers – pecan – goes easy on the tongue.

His family has owned the same property since 1864, and they’ve been making sausage almost as long.

“It’s handed down from generations,” he said. “My Dad, Opa, my Dad’s Opa all did it. I’ve experimented, changed it a little.”

And “it,” as becomes clear when he describes the process, isn’t for the casual cooking dilettante.

Saur’s sausage calls for half venison and half pork. He said, years ago, people would have to kill their own hogs and scrape off the hair to prepare the meat. These days, he buys it ready to go.

He also buys the casings. They’re feet long and covered in salt. And a pain to prepare, he said.

“They’re see-through, they look like snake skin,” he said of the casings, which are usually made of beef intestines. Before they can be stuffed with sausage, they must be soaked in water, rinsed of the salt – and rinsed some more – coated with baking soda and then turned inside out.

“Nobody wants that job,” he said. “It’s always the new person on the block that gets it.”

Luckily, there’s no shortage of new people.

Saur, who makes a few batches throughout the year, said from 10 to 12 people show up for the sausage making.

“It’s a family deal,” he said. “We take a weekend, start Friday morning and finish Saturday evening.”

He said the best sausage-making days are dry and sunny, because the sausage smokes faster and better.

With his father, sons, brothers, sisters and in-laws, they divide up the tasks and start the process.

First, the meat is cut into pieces, then mixed together and weighed. Based on the weight – he said they make about 50 to 60 pounds of sausage in a batch before Christmas, and three times that amount in January – they figure out how much seasoning they need.

Saur uses salt, black and red peppers, garlic powder and saltpeter for preserving and to give the sausage a redder coloring. Then, the meat and seasoning is mixed on a table by hand. After that, it goes into a hand-cranked coarse grinder, which makes it look like roughly chopped meat.

Then, the fine grinder gives it the sausage look.

Then the casing comes back to haunt him.

“It’s the trickiest part, stuffing it into the casing,” he said. “If you don’t stuff it tight, it gets moldy. Too tight, and the casing bursts.”

Then the sausages are tied off with special string and set to smoke for six hours.

The smokehouse is a 10-foot by 10-foot room, dark and airless, with windows and doors so they can see how the meat is progressing and add wood if needed.

Once he deems the sausage smoked, it might be finished several ways. It can be tried for two to three weeks, grilled or boiled in water.

The family does this several times a year, he said.

“Everyone helps,” he said. “Watching, learning and working.”