Meat Processing Class

How to Make Sausages, Bacon, Snack Sticks, and More!

Do you dream of enjoying an abundance of bacon, bologna, snack sticks, and other goodies prepared with your own hands?

This class will teach you many different ways to transform a whole pig or cuts of beef and venison into delicious sausage and a variety of cured meats and snack foods.

If you are new to the art of meat processing and curing, this class should give you the basic skills and confidence to immediately make a premium quality product. If you are already making your own processed meats, it’s a great opportunity to advance your knowledge and ask questions of Joe Renfroe, an instructor with many years of experience.

Some of the things you will learn in this class:

• Making fresh sausage
• Making cured sausage: summer sausage, bolognas, snack sticks
• Curing and smoking bacon
• Marinating, curing, and smoking jerky: muscle and ground (AKA formed jerky)

We will demo:

• Grinding, adding seasoning, and stuffing for the fresh sausage
• Seasoning and curing ground meat and stuffing summer sausage (with a verbal-only detour into snack sticks and bolognas)
• Prepping and curing bacon
• Seasoning and curing ground meat for formed jerky
• Slicing and marinating muscle jerky

There will be samples of all of the above.

We will talk extensively on smoking times and techniques for all the meats and discuss making jerky in a dehydrator or oven.

About Joe Renfroe: Joe has been a culinary educator at the Pennsylvania School of Culinary Arts located in Lancaster, Pennsylvania for the past 20 years. He teaches an advanced culinary course which covers all aspects of sausage-making, including grinding, stuffing, curing, and smoking. He has competed in KCBS competitions and SCA events over the years and certified as a table captain and judge. Joe is not only a great teacher, but he takes great personal interest in meat processing as an enthusiast, too.