Sow bladder | for sausages and charcuterie

Description

What is a sow bladder?

A pig’s bladder is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a cleaned and dried pig’s bladder. A sow’s bladder is much larger than a normal pig’s bladder because sows are raised to reproduce and thus live a lot longer and become much larger and heavier, up to 250-300 kg (compared to around 120 kgs for a regular pig). Consequentially, their bladders are much larger too.

What do you use a sow bladder for

A pig bladder is a classic ingredient that is not often used anymore. You can fill it with minced meat to make sausage or use it for the ‘en vessie’ technique: cooking a flavored product in the bladder. This is often a chicken. This technique is best known from Paul Bocuse (†2018) and Anthony Bourdain (†2018). You can easily fit a chicken in this sow’s bladder.

From the Dutch book ‘Slaughter visit’ by Gerhard Kwak

‘The pig bladder was a common by-product of the house slaughter. For example, along the eastern border with Germany it was regularly used as a “barrel” to smuggle spirits with. Furthermore, you could make a beautiful natural lid by stretching the moist bladder over a Cologne pot, which was then closed nicely. Once dried it was the perfect lid. When this was not necessary, the bladder was inflated, buttoned and dried. Then the kids had a football to play with. The bladder was also filled with dried peas to form a kind of rattle. Children often used the bladder for the so-called “bladder steps”. The bladder was then tied with a rope to a child’s leg and the other children tried to break it. If it succeeded with a big bang, the child who had smashed the bladder was the champion. “

Content

• one dried sow bladder
• Size: around 2 liters

Instructions

1. Soak the sow bladder in water overnight in the refrigerator
2. If necessary, make the opening wider with a knife
3. Repeatedly fill the bladder with lukewarm water to stretch it further and further
4. Fill it with whatever you want

For the advanced chef: we also have the beef bladder!

We also have smaller sizes for beginning chefs: the hog’s blatter

Online English spoken sausage making workshop

In this English spoken online workshop you will learn the theory and practice of making fresh sausages. What types of meat work best, where can you find your ingredients, what are the main pitfalls and what funny things can you do with casings. Foodwriter ‘Meneer Wateetons’, author of several books on fermentation and alternative food preparation techniques,  will teach you all about fermentation, curing salts, food safety, pH, starter cultures, molds and drying conditions. Click here for more info.