This is one our favorite soups and one of the easiest things to make with one of our sausages. The kielbasa already has the meatiness, the garlic, the black pepper and the herbs, so all you need is:

1 pound of fresh kielbasa from The Piggery
Cubed Potatoes - 2 or 3 pounds, we like a good waxy fingerling potato
Liquid - A half gallon or so of some combination of milk, stock or cream
Salt
A little cooking fat, preferably lard from the piggery

Start by frying the kielbasa in a medium-large pot in a little bit of your cooking fat on medium high heat until it browns nicely on both sides. It doesn’t need to be fully cooked. Remove the kielbasa from the heat and add your cubed potatoes and liquid to the pot. We like to use a half gallon or so of whole milk, but sometimes use half milk and half stock. Or if we’ve got stock and cream then we’ll use those. Whatever you can come up with, really. Anyhoo, bring the liquid to a simmer and maintain the heat until the potatoes soften. While the potatoes are cooking, slice your sausages into good sizes to fit on a soup spoon. When the potatoes are done, thicken the soup by pulling out some of the potatoes, maybe a third of them, mashing them with a wooden spoon and whisking some of the hot liquid from the soup back into them. Mix that potato mixture back into the soup, return it to a simmer, and add your sausage pieces. Season with salt and eat as soon as the sausage pieces are fully cooked.

Our sausage is a vastly different product than that made by local USDA meat plants and grocery stores. Now, I don’t mean to disparage the grocery store meat departments and I certainly don’t mean to disparage the USDA meat plants since they are crucial to our business and since they are hard working folks trying to get by like everybody else. But their reality is different than our reality. Large grocery stores and USDA butcher shops are in a high volume, low margin business. They have very little pricing flexibilty. Their goal has to be to streamline production and cut costs wherever possible if they are to survive. Our goal is to provide you with the finest possible product. We’ll spend as much time as it takes to make the best possible product and spend what money we have to to get the best possible ingredients. In return, we ask a fair price for the products of our labor. Let’s dig into it.

The Finest Meat

Otto von Bismarck famously said, “Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.” We disagree. Where other sausages are made from “scraps”, our sausages are made from the finest cuts of pastured pork including loin, shoulder and belly(bacon). You’ll find no lips and @$$holes in our sausages.

Seasoning

Sausages are typically made from a “seasoning mix”. Essentially, you add one packet of seasoning to every 25 pounds of sausage (or whatever it is) and you’re done. I think that in the case of USDA butchers, by law they can only add approved seasoning mixes. No creativity allowed. If the USDA hasn’t approved a mix for that sausage variety, then they can’t make that sausage. Crazy.

We put great effort into creating the perfect seasoning mix for each of our sausages. Our hot italian sausage is based on the family recipe of one of my best friends from childhood whose grandparents moved here from Italy. It is seasoned with organic fennel grown by Kingbird Farm, giving it a unique, anise-scented appeal not available through other channels. Our kielbasa is made with fresh, local, organically grown stiff-neck garlic provided by Red Tail and Kingbird Farms. You won’t find that in a USDA approved seasoning packet.

Finally, our seasoning mixes are put together fresh every week. We chop the garlic, we fresh grind the pepper and. nutmeg and we test the seasoning balance. Again, you won’t find this in a seasoning packet.

Quality Control

To create a truly premium sausage, care needs to go into every step.

Our quality control begins in the meat prep stage. We get whole shoulders, loins and hams back from the slaughterhouse. These are carefully broken down by hand so that we can remove all of the connective tissues, bones, cartilage, glands and other undesirable tissues. This is distinct from the standard approach of “throw all of the scraps into the grinder”.

We do everything possible to insure the finest grind. This includes both absolute temperature control and patience. The best grind with the least fat smear is made with meat that is as close as possible to 32 degrees fahrenheit that is allowed to work it’s way through the grinder on its own without cramming it through with a meat pusher. Both of these crucial quality control points require time. When you prep meat it inevitably warms up and has to go back in the cooler for a good long while to get it back to 32. The meat has to be cut small enough that it can make it’s way through the grinder and then you’ve got to drop each piece of meat through the grinder individually rather than just cramming it all in. These steps eliminate the dreaded fat smear, which will cause all of the fat to render out of a sausage, leaving it both greasy and dry at the same time. Yuck.

Once the meat comes out of the grinder we create the primary bind. This involves kneading the sausage mix with a little added liquid until the mixture comes to a uniform consistency. This process is analogous to creating a good bread dough and is distinct from the sausages you see in most grocery stores. What happens when we make the primary bind is that we create an emulsion of fat, water and protein that will give the finished sausage a uniform consistency. A sausage that has not been through this process will have a crumbly texture and appearance, much like fresh hamburger. Most grocery stores grind their sausage mixes directly into casings, which cuts their sausage making time in half but leaves them with a crumbly sausage. The reason our sausages have that extra snap, texture, and mouthfeel is that we take the time to make the bind.

Conclusion

Superior meat. Superior seasoning. Superior process., These are the things that allow us to sell you a superior product.

By 2009, all of the piglets we produce will be sired by “Chunk”, a purebred mulefoot boar. And “Chunkette” will provide us with purebred mulefoot piglets. This is no small matter, as the mulefoot breed dang near went extinct. It’s nearly a miracle that we have them. We had to pick them up at the airport in Syracuse after they got off of a plane from South Dakota (in a dog crate - they don’t let pigs use the seats, which I think is kind of mean).

Why did we go through all of this effort to get a couple pigs? We certainly like the idea of helping to preserve a rare breed and therefore biodiversity in pig genetics. And clearly, raising heritage pig breeds gives us a marketing edge. And mulefoots do great on pasture, foraging for a good chunk of their diets. We love that mulefoots are incredibly cold tolerant and can often be found digging in a snowbank somewhere while the other pigs huddle in their shelters on a cold, wintery day. And mulefoots are totally adapted to living outdoors in simple shelters with few health problems. But you could make those same arguments about a handful of other heritage breeds.

What sets mulefoot hogs apart from all the other American pigs is their type. You see, back in the day pigs were classified by their type - rangy, meat type or lard type. Rangy pigs were long and lean with long legs and were specialized for the production of bacon. They had relatively small shoulders and hams and their long lengths meant they would have lots of belly, aka bacon. Lard type or “chuffy” pigs had short legs and short bodies and could be made incredibly fat, back when lard was still used for all sorts of industrial processes as well as being the dominant cooking oil. Meat type hogs fell somewhere in the middle and were selected for large hams and shoulders.

As time went on, lard was replaced by vegetable oil, bacon became incredibly popular and Americans became incredibly paranoid about consumption of lard even while it apparently still formed the backbone of the Mediterranean diet. And so the lard and meat type hogs went the way of the dodo. Decades of selection turned even old lard type hogs such as the Berkshire into long, lean rangy hogs. This selection seemingly happened to every American breed of any commercial importance. Which brings us back to the unique history of the breed.

Like I say, the Mulefoot breed was nearly extinct, with literally one known breeder left, Mr. R.M. Holliday of Louisiana, Missouri. For four decades he kept his Mulefoot herd going while all of the others vanished. Since the breed was of no commercial significance to anyone else and since Mr. Holliday liked them the way they were, the Mulefoot breed is the only full size American lard type hog left.

So why do we want chuffy hogs? Quite simply, pork fat rules. Pork backfat is a unique cut of meat that can be heated without all of the fat rendering out. It is what allows a sausage to retain it’s juiciness when cooked. It is what allows a pate to be creamy but not oily. Modern breeds of pig have been bred specifically not to produce this cut of pork which is so crucial to great charcuterie. When fed a full grain ration they will very efficiently convert it to lean meat. The mulefoot hogs will grow lean meat when fed a low calorie diet of pasture with some whey and when fed liberally will easily put on backfat, so they allow us to have it either way.

I’m pleased to report that Chunk and Chunkette are doing well. Chunk is an incredibly good natured boar who loves to be scratched behind his ears. Chunkette is large, lovely, chuffy and grumpy. Very, very grumpy. We hope that Chunk can see through her grumpiness because we’d love some little mulefoots.