Stuffed Pig Stomach

“We always expected a pig stomach at butchering time. That was special.” Stuffing a pig stomach with a sausage-potato-onion mix is a blend of the innovation and conviction against wastefulness that characterizes the Amish. The texture of the browned, chewy skin against the moist richness of sausage and cubed potatoes has made this combination survive the demise of family butchering. Today, thanks to freezers, pig stomachs are available from retail pork butchers in the Lancaster area at almost any time of the year. One gray-haired Amish man recalls that his mother “put oysters in pig stomach instead of sausage.” A middle-aged woman remembers that at serving time, her mother “would take the stuffing out of the stomach, grind the skin, then lay that meat over the stuffing. She did that because the skin was not evenly browned and it was not of equal thickness. That way no one felt cheated for getting a thin spot and no one got stuck with a too chewy piece!”