I picked up a "home pack" of natural hog casings for my recent initial sausage endeavour. It contains enough casings to make about 25 lbs of sausage. My thought was I would just pull out a few casings and put the rest back in the package and put it in the refrigerator.
I did not know that right out of the package, these things are caked with salt, relatively dry, and nearly impossible to separate (at least I felt so). So I soaked the entire thing in water for an hour, after which each casing was easy to separate from the others.
I only used two casings when I made my sausage so I hastily searched for what to do with the leftover now-completely rehydrated casings. 2 Guys and a Cooler suggested that I try to remove as much water as possible and then cake the casings with a ridiculous amount of salt and let that draw out as much moisture as it would for an hour and then store them in the refrigerator.
So I did.
Is there a better way to store these unused casings? Would it have been fine to just store them in a sealed container in the fridge along with the water in which they were rehydrated?
I did not know that right out of the package, these things are caked with salt, relatively dry, and nearly impossible to separate (at least I felt so). So I soaked the entire thing in water for an hour, after which each casing was easy to separate from the others.
I only used two casings when I made my sausage so I hastily searched for what to do with the leftover now-completely rehydrated casings. 2 Guys and a Cooler suggested that I try to remove as much water as possible and then cake the casings with a ridiculous amount of salt and let that draw out as much moisture as it would for an hour and then store them in the refrigerator.
So I did.
Is there a better way to store these unused casings? Would it have been fine to just store them in a sealed container in the fridge along with the water in which they were rehydrated?
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