SOUTH-AFRICA-L Archives

From: "Steve Hayes" <>
Subject: Boerewors
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 12:36:06 +0200

I think it was Patricia Frykberg who posted about boerewors.

Boerewors, as its name implies, is a rural product.

Here's a description of the urban equivalent:

Another explanation for the paper might be for the casing. I'm an engineer
and about twelve years ago I interviewed for a job with the T-Pack Company
in Danville, Illinois. It's a huge 24-hour, 365-day operation making
sausage casings. I toured the whole operation (they tried to hire me to
design a casing-scrunching machine, but that's a different story).

It was fascinating. The operation starts at the top floor where large
boards of wood pulp are soaked in lye for several hours. This breaks down
the pulp into cellulose. The (now bloated and partially dissolved) boards
are then squeezed by hydraulic rams and the goo drops through the floor to
the next level. It undergoes several more processes until, at the ground
floor, it is a viscous, crystal-clear liquid, sort of like honey. This is
pulled upward in the form of a narrow tube (like blowing bubbles with a
wand) and up, up, all the way to the top floor again. Fans blow on it all
the way. It passes over a pulley and then back down again through the fans
to dry and solidify it into thin, transparent wiener skin. It then is
flattened and wound onto large spools. Then it goes to a shirring machine
(what I would have been redesigning) and is scrunched, accordion-style onto
a mandrel forming short sticks that contain many yards of casing. These
sticks are sold to companies like Oscar Mayer where they are attached to a
meat horn and filled like balloons, making sausages.

So perhaps the paper was used for its pulp, not as a filler.

Don
Kansas City

--
Steve Hayes
E-mail:
Web: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/stevesig.htm
Phone: 083-342-3563 or 012-333-6727

This thread:

• Boerewors by mary <>

  • Boerewors by "Steve Hayes" <>