What piece of pork is used to make saucisson?

Want to know more about how saucisson is made before ordering your saucissons online? Saucisson is one of the essential specialities of French cuisine. Like ham, saucisse sèche or rosette, it turns up alongside many dishes. This cured meat, made from selected meats — most often pork —, raises a question many people ask: which part of the pig is actually used to make it? Our Directos.eu charcuterie expert tells you more.

The cuts of pork used to make a saucisson

Most saucissons on the market are made with pork. However, particular attention is paid to the parts used to prepare this cured meat. It is important to choose the right cuts of pork that go into making saucisson to get a flavourful quality of meat. Saucisson is made of roughly three quarters lean meat and one quarter fat. The lean cuts come, among others, from the pork shoulder, the ham (pig's leg) and the loin, which sits on either side of the spine. For a full overview of this product, our saucisson guide details everything worth knowing.

As for the fat, it mainly comes from the belly or the backfat (the fat located on the pig's back). These various cuts of pork are used to make dry saucisson. There are many other, more or less inventive recipes that contain beef, wild deer, wild boar or donkey meat. However, the ratio of these meats generally does not exceed 30%. If you do not like pork, you can always opt for saucissons made with duck or poultry.

How pork saucisson is made

Making saucisson happens in several very important stages. It starts with selecting the main raw material, pork. To get good-quality saucissons, it is best to choose free-range pigs. Those from intensive farming should be avoided. The stage that follows selecting the ingredients and raw materials is sorting the meat. This task is meant to bone, trim the fat and remove the sinews from the pork. It is then cut into pieces of about 3 cm and put through the mincer. The meat is then seasoned with sugar, salt, pepper and other additional ingredients depending on the recipe.

Filling is a stage that consists of preparing a natural casing from the chosen pig. The "mêlée" (the flesh of the future saucisson) is then filled into the casing, and the edge is tied with string. Drying is the last stage in making pork saucisson. It consists of hanging it in a humid room with a temperature between 10 and 15 °C. Drying can take from 6 to 10 weeks to get a dry saucisson with a very good taste.

There is a wide variety of pork saucissons. Among others there are:

• fig saucisson,
• hazelnut saucisson,
• cheese saucisson,
• farmhouse saucisson,
• Catalan saucisson, etc.

All these different products are available at Directos.eu. You can go there to make your choice and enjoy fast delivery to savour your saucisson!