New Uses for Potatoes: How to Make Potato Bologna

Image Gallery Potato bologna can be used in a number of recipes. There's nothing quite like good, old-fashioned potato bologna! PHOTO: FOTOLIA/SPECTATOR

Here's a special treat for any family that enjoys truly hearty meat-and-potato meals. It's called potato bologna, and it's one of the most economical — yet filling — old-timey foods I know of. It's also a lot of fun to make!

We cook up a big batch of these bolognas once a year — in November — to serve with holiday meals, give away to friends, or just to have handy for those chilly winter nights when the ole taste buds water for this savory dish. You can make potato bologna any time of the year, though. It's easy:

First, round up some natural, 100 percent hog-intestine sausage casings. Check all the local meat markets...and if that fails to reward you with any of the "bologna wrappers", try a slaughterhouse. One pound of casings will be enough to make 12 to 15 individual bolognas.

And you do want pork casings, not beef. The latter are simply too large in diameter for this use.

OK. Once you've brought the casings home, it's time to wash them to remove the salt cure (which they'll probably have if you bought them in a store). Begin by soaking the skins in cold water to cleanse them outside...then — in order to clean them inside — pull one end of each casing over the mouth of a water faucet, gently turn the cold water on, and — to avoid a blowout — carefully unkink the delicate tubing by hand as it fills. (If you're working with fresh pig innards, you'll want to be sure to boil the washed viscera, to kill harmful micro-organisms.)

When you've finished washing it, cut the long tube into a number of 15-to-20 inch segments. (True, you could've done this before you began the washing operation . . . but — in my experience — it's more fun for everyone if the casing is left in just one slippery, flexible piece as long as possible.)

Now you're ready to make bologna!

Potato Bologna Ingredients

10 pounds of raw potatoes
1 medium onion
3 pounds of ground beef
3 pounds of pork sausage
3 teaspoons of sea salt
1 teaspoon of allspice
1 teaspoon of pepper

How to Make Potato Bologna

Peel the potatoes, cover them with water in a large pot, boil for 1 minute, and drain. This parboiling will keep the spuds from dripping profusely during the next step...which is to put the taters through the meat grinder, using a coarse blade setting. (While you're at it, grind up the onion as well. You can — if you want — grind up two onions...but remember that the onion flavor will become noticeably stronger after you freeze the bologna.)