"Making of the Sausages"

After dinner, J and I embarked in yet another series of common activities in Port Alsworth, AK: preparing salmon for canning and transformation into jerky. The Park Services historian had agreed to lend us his heavy duty pressure cooker for canning, and we got tips and equipment for the jerky from the maintenance and safety officer. J and I spent much of the evening washing fish, cutting fish, stuffing fish, grinding fish, mixing fish.

I have to admit, however, his stash of sockeye reds was truly amazing. J had frozen much of it in solid ice, having run out of vacuum bags, and the soft bright red salmon flesh seemed to be as beautiful as it must have been on the very first day.


To make salmon jerky, you must remove the skin from the filets, thoroughly debone the fish with needlenose pliers, and put it through a grinder. For grinding, we borrowed an old-time contraption stored in an original box happily labeled "Making of the sausages" in four different languages.

At the end of our rainbow, we had a beautiful pot of ground up salmon. Patting the salmon jello was a strangely satisfying thing to do, but our work was not done. After adding jerky seasoning, the mass has to marinate overnight before being stuffed into a tube that looks like a caulk gun and then piped out onto a grate for drying in the oven. Luckily those steps will be saved for tomorrow because I am pooped out.