Volcanite grilled sausage with natural pig casings.

Natural sausage casing is the sausage casing commonly used in the countryside, which is made from the longest small intestines of animal offal, usually pig small intestines, but it is possible to use cow small intestines, horse small intestines, and sheep small intestines.

Making small intestines into casings requires a tedious process, which involves not only cleaning and removing undigested food residue, but also removing the inner layer of mucous membrane and removing the outer layer of intestinal skin. As a result, the thickness of the casings is much thinner than normal animal intestines, allowing the meat to be poured into them.

The advantage of natural casings is that they have excellent air permeability, so by properly drying the sausage and then smoking it, you can allow the smoked ingredients to adhere to the sausage and get your preferred flavor, and the casings can be eaten directly.

Difference between natural sausage casings and artificial sausage casings:

Natural sausage casings are very difficult to handle and are mainly popular in rural areas, whereas artificial sausage casings are usually sold in bulk in supermarkets, which can be cost-effective, simpler to handle, and polished and beautiful. Among them, edible casings produced through regular channels are similar to natural casings and are not harmful to the human body.

Synthetic casings are divided into breathable casings and non-breathable casings. Breathable casings can be divided into edible and inedible casings. Edible casings are also known as collagen casings, which are made from animal skins and other raw materials, and their characteristics are similar to natural casings, i.e., they are breathable and edible.

Non-edible casings mainly include cellulose series casings and cellophane, cellulose series casings can be divided into cellulose casings and fibrous casings, the characteristics of such casings are breathable but not edible. Now there is also a non-edible enteric coating called smokable plastic enteric coating, is made of plastic as the raw material, this kind of enteric coating also has breathability, can be smoked.