Are my casings ROTTEN?????

[meat hunter]

Just opened a pack of sheep casing 30 minutes ago. Have been letting them soak and I tell you, they smell like CRAP. I mean the really smell like dead rotting flesh. Brand new, never opened, packed in salt. I have only used sheep casings once before and don't recall them ever smelling like this. I asked the wife to smell them, she thought I stuck a bowl of poo under her nose. Yeah, sure, I got a laugh out of that, but I was planning on using these tonight, like right now. 10# of Chorizo to stuff. Do they always smell that bad or should they smell like hog casings?

 

[wutang]

In my experience sheeps casing definitely have a ...um...stronger odor.

They do smell worse than the hog casings I have used.

 

[que-ball]

The raw sheep casings definitely have a funk all their own, but they are fine to use once you rinse them inside and out. The odor you smell now won't be in the cooked sausage.

 

[meat hunter]

Ok, I just flushed them real good. The smell is about 80-90% gone. I noticed though that there is still some (digestive?) matter inside them. Is this normal for such a small casing like this? Do they not get as clean from the processor as hog casing due to their small diameter?

 

[hounds51]

Somethin ain't right with that picture! You might want to try and turn them inside out and rinse them very very throughly. Also might want to soak them in some vinagar/water mix.
Where these packed in salt?

 

[meat hunter]

Oh man, there was not turning these small diameter ones inside out. Yes, they were packed in salt. Brand new, never opened. I flushed the heck out of them, and did manage to get them almost odor free, but there was obvious signs of digestive matter in them. The wife almost cracked me across the head when I asked her to smell them. LOL, you should have seen the look on here face, I thought it was funny as hell, needless to say, she did not. Turns out that they did not fit on my stuffer tube so I didn't use them after all. I think I got a bad batch. These without a doubt had either digestive matter or fecal matter in them and its a brand that I have used in the past several times. I'm just wondering if it was because of the small diameter, they did not get a good cleaning at the processor. I think for now on, I will get them from out local butcher. I did get my chorizo stuffed though, I just posted a thread on it.

 

[oden010]

It has been my experience that the packages dry salted sheep casing smell like crap. I could not even think about using them. But I purchased salt brined wet sheep casing and they had no odor to them. I bought mine from Ham Lake Butcher Supply in Minnesota.