A CIDU from Zbicyclist, who says “I want to understand this in the wurst way, but I just can’t.”
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39 Comments
I think it’s a take on the idiom ‘…how the sausage gets made’, as in something you don’t really want to know about because it’s unpleasant or disgusting. Just enjoy the results without asking too many questions.
The anthropomorphic sausages here have taken offence at this phrase being a derogatory term and are trying to set the record straight.
I think there’s also a reference to the idiom “a made man” which I associate with Mafia or gang initiation rites requiring that you kill someone before you are fully accepted into membership.
My first thought was that it was implying that making sausage was difficult, or at least labor intensive. It’s been many decades since I made kielbasa with my grandmother, but I don’t remember it was being that hard. However, as the headline indicates, perhaps the trickiest aspect was getting the casings prepared and on the nozzle to be filled.
I would say it’s equivocating between “how men are made” (on the field of battle, supposedly) and “how sausage is made” (a common idiom).
I’d say Stan has it.
Powers for the win!
It would make more sense if they weren’t already sausages, but instead whole pieces of meat: then doing something stupid on the battle field like staring down your enemy would quickly lead to graphically demonstrating how sausage is made as they get butchered, slaughtered, ground up, etc., etc. (though it wouldn’t explain why the enemy would then go through the trouble of packing up the resulting carnage into casings…)
@Andrea: I was thinking of more of a “real” candidate [no offense intended to Pat Paulsen] , like maybe George McGovern. And there was another half to the gag, based on “very badly” — like, “But Mr. Nixon wanted to be President very badly … and he is doing that!” .
I don’t remember who wanted to run for President in the worst way, but it made me think of this exchange: “Your hair needs cutting badly.” “No, it needs cutting well. It was cut badly the last time.”
FIve-star kudos to Phil Smith III and to Scott.
THIS will put you off sausages for a long time . . . STARTING AT 21:45
Fascinating process-video! Tho I didn’t stick with it as far as the sausages.
There’s a 1993 movie called “The bed you sleep in” directed by Jon Jost https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106372/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk with some aspects that put off many critics and general audiences, but others found attractive or compelling. I was fascinated by a sequence filmed in a working sawmill. Off to one side the central character is having a conversation (inaudible) with the mill operator, while what we mainly watch and hear is the operation of a saw unit that drops in place a long circular-cross-section log, saws off a section of the top from the whole length, then bumps it to rotate 90 degrees and saws off the new top section, then repeats twice more until it knocks it out to another area as a square-cross-section long log suitable for slicing into boards. This is maybe horribly boring. Or suspenseful, as we do care how the negotiations between the sawmill operators are going, and whether the protagonist is going to share his developing personal life scandal with these neighbors. So, boring, and teasing or suspenseful,… But maybe inherently fascinating as we see what the saw is doing.
I’ve been watching several videos of automated food production processes . . . I have to admire the engineers who come up with all these ‘Rube Goldberg’ machines. I find them fascinating. But then, I’m easily entertained . . .
What I found surprising (and occasionally irritating) about the Korean video was the mixture of optimized “mechanical” processes, interspersed with primitive “manual” steps, such as cracking hundreds of eggs one at a time by hand, or filling each bag of chips separately with a scoop. There are better ways to do many of those jobs, but it’s impossible to tell whether there was a reason for the “manual” methods (unless it was just because it looked better that way for the camera).
P.S. For comparison, here’s a link to a German video about the “sausage ‘crease’”, showing remarkable similarities (and differences) to the Korean process. They both add ice to the meat (to keep it from heating up in the chopper), and extra fat (for consistency & flavor). The difference in the end marks is caused by the way the strings are hung up in the smoker.
P.P.S. For anyone who can understand the German commentary, there is a common error that is based on a widespread linguistic misconception: the old term “Pret” (which is the basis of the first syllable in “Bratwurst”) has nothing to with “braten” (frying). In both cases, the archaic noun referred to the chopped meat that is used to make sausages and other foods. Thus, the name of a “bratwurst” comes from what’s in it, and not from what the cook is supposed to do to it.
P.P.S. @ Andréa – The German “Sendung mit der Maus” has a huge collection of short videos showing how various things are made or done. Even if you can’t understand the commentary, the visual descriptions are usually very clear.
P.P.P.S. Unfortunately, only the titles with an arrow icon are available online, but it’s still an incredible collection.
@Mitch4: “Tho I didn’t stick with it as far as the sausages.”
But . . . but . . . that was the entire point of my comment . . . and I gave the starting point to fast forward to.
@Kilby: “What I found surprising (and occasionally irritating) about the Korean video was the mixture of optimized “mechanical” processes, interspersed with primitive “manual” steps, such as cracking eggs . . . ”
I’ve watched many of these ‘Korean baker and street food’ videos, and they ALL crack hundreds of eggs by hand (I’m thinking a chicken farm in S. Korea would be a helluvan investment). My first thought was, “How many health and safety regulations can you find in this video?” Some places are squeaky clean, others . . . yuck. Memo to self: If I ever go to S. Korea, don’t eat the food. AND it seems that half the population spends its lifetime making food for the other half. Prices are cheap, BTW: $1USD=1248 S. Korean won, so when you see a price of 6000 won for a cake, it’s less than $5.00USD.
@ Andréa – My dad once told me about KP duty in the Navy (not sure if this was about himself or someone else): when assigned to crack eggs, they would crack two in each hand simultaneously (four per operation). That might risk getting a bit of shell in with the eggs, but the way those Koreans cracked single eggs into a huge vat containing hundreds of eggs was also insane: one mistake could contaminate the entire vat, and at the rate they were working, it would take hours to crack them all.
Not only that – when they want to separate the yolks from the whites, they do it with their hands, AFTER putting the entire batch of eggs into a bowl.
I remember at some point some years back running across a whole set of videos of this genre… about various styles of industrial egg-cracking gizmos.
There’s a reasonable chance it came from here, so it might be findable in the archives if someone can think of search terms.
The German “Maus“ show that I mentioned above once did a fascinating piece about a type of marshmallow “kiss” (but I can’t find it online). Part of the process was producing powdered eggwhite; that factory had an amazing machine that not only cracked the eggs, it also separated the yolk from the white, and it did it so fast that they had to show it in slow motion to make it clear what was happening.
Close as I could find –
I had to break three eggs to bake a Summer Berry Buckle this a.m. and no, I didn’t dare crash one into another, as so many videos show. I did it the old-fashioned way, on the rim of a glass.
And another, but I still don’t see the actual process of separation . . .
Well, at least it isn’t done with the hands . . .
Every time I make an omelette or scrambled egg I note, too late, that I’ve missed another opportunity to practice separating eggs with my fingers where it doesn’t matter if it goes wrong.
Well, I watched the video, and genuinely could not see a single thing that would put me off eating those sausages – not one. They appear to be made from proper pieces of real pork in a hygienic plant. No mechanically recovered poultry “meat”, no slurry, no pink slime…
I don’t think anybody from the USA should be pointing fingers at food processing in other countries and going “oh yuk”.
I recently watched a baking show in which the baker had an egg separator and, shur ’nuff, it was available on amazon for only a few bucks. Which I immediately ordered (the egg separator, not the bucks).
We have one of those little plastic gadgets for separating eggs. It fits on the edge of a bowl, and when you crack an egg into it, it lets the white slide through a horizontal slot, retaining the yolk, which you can then dump into a different bowl. If you are doing lots of eggs, it’s a good idea to empty the whites into a separate bowl as well, just in case you encounter a yolk that breaks when the egg is cracked. That way you only have to discard one or two whites, and don’t risk ruining the entire batch. Extra large eggs (and eggs with very thin shells) are more prone to such separation failures.
P.S. Even a drop or two of yolk in the whites can significantly reduce the quality (and amount) of the resulting foam. Any oil residue in the mixing bowl can have the same effect: for this reason, it’s always better to use glass or stainless steel mixing bowls, and avoid plastic.
One of the baking videos mentions cleaning the bowls, the spatulas and the beaters/whisks with vinegar, which makes sense, as my recipe for meringue cookies/tortes has vinegar in it. Also, room temperature for meringue; cold temps for whipping cream.
Sorry – I’ve been a a baker, but never a cook, since I was in Home Ec class in junior high school; I’m currently picking up the hobby of cake decorating, complete with piped flowers. I’ve gone down the rabbit hole of Korean/Japanese street food and cake decorating videos many times.
And, as 99% or more of CIDUers are male, I’ll link to this . . .
Comics I Don't Understand 
I think it’s a take on the idiom ‘…how the sausage gets made’, as in something you don’t really want to know about because it’s unpleasant or disgusting. Just enjoy the results without asking too many questions.
The anthropomorphic sausages here have taken offence at this phrase being a derogatory term and are trying to set the record straight.
I think there’s also a reference to the idiom “a made man” which I associate with Mafia or gang initiation rites requiring that you kill someone before you are fully accepted into membership.
My first thought was that it was implying that making sausage was difficult, or at least labor intensive. It’s been many decades since I made kielbasa with my grandmother, but I don’t remember it was being that hard. However, as the headline indicates, perhaps the trickiest aspect was getting the casings prepared and on the nozzle to be filled.
I would say it’s equivocating between “how men are made” (on the field of battle, supposedly) and “how sausage is made” (a common idiom).
I’d say Stan has it.
Powers for the win!
It would make more sense if they weren’t already sausages, but instead whole pieces of meat: then doing something stupid on the battle field like staring down your enemy would quickly lead to graphically demonstrating how sausage is made as they get butchered, slaughtered, ground up, etc., etc. (though it wouldn’t explain why the enemy would then go through the trouble of packing up the resulting carnage into casings…)
Nice pun in that intro comment from Zbicyclist
Stan has it for sure. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/how_the_sausage_gets_made
@deety: Which neatly refers to one of my five top fave singers who won EuroVision 2004 . . .
And who was the candidate who got on a comedy show and said “I wanted to run for President in the worst way … and I did!” ?
I never sausage a bad set of puns.
And here I was thinking this was a reference to the Franks and the Vandals.
Alternately, the battlefield is likely to be a meat grinder?
(following Scott) Alternative caption: “Let’s show them how we defend the Kingdom of the Franks!”
I agree with Powers, it’s both the old ideas or sayings or whatever.
@Danny Boy: Sounds like something Pat Paulsen might’ve said, altho I haven’t found it yet . . .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Paulsen
@Andrea: I was thinking of more of a “real” candidate [no offense intended to Pat Paulsen] , like maybe George McGovern. And there was another half to the gag, based on “very badly” — like, “But Mr. Nixon wanted to be President very badly … and he is doing that!” .
I don’t remember who wanted to run for President in the worst way, but it made me think of this exchange: “Your hair needs cutting badly.” “No, it needs cutting well. It was cut badly the last time.”
FIve-star kudos to Phil Smith III and to Scott.
THIS will put you off sausages for a long time . . . STARTING AT 21:45
Fascinating process-video! Tho I didn’t stick with it as far as the sausages.
There’s a 1993 movie called “The bed you sleep in” directed by Jon Jost https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106372/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk with some aspects that put off many critics and general audiences, but others found attractive or compelling. I was fascinated by a sequence filmed in a working sawmill. Off to one side the central character is having a conversation (inaudible) with the mill operator, while what we mainly watch and hear is the operation of a saw unit that drops in place a long circular-cross-section log, saws off a section of the top from the whole length, then bumps it to rotate 90 degrees and saws off the new top section, then repeats twice more until it knocks it out to another area as a square-cross-section long log suitable for slicing into boards. This is maybe horribly boring. Or suspenseful, as we do care how the negotiations between the sawmill operators are going, and whether the protagonist is going to share his developing personal life scandal with these neighbors. So, boring, and teasing or suspenseful,… But maybe inherently fascinating as we see what the saw is doing.
I’ve been watching several videos of automated food production processes . . . I have to admire the engineers who come up with all these ‘Rube Goldberg’ machines. I find them fascinating. But then, I’m easily entertained . . .
What I found surprising (and occasionally irritating) about the Korean video was the mixture of optimized “mechanical” processes, interspersed with primitive “manual” steps, such as cracking hundreds of eggs one at a time by hand, or filling each bag of chips separately with a scoop. There are better ways to do many of those jobs, but it’s impossible to tell whether there was a reason for the “manual” methods (unless it was just because it looked better that way for the camera).
P.S. For comparison, here’s a link to a German video about the “sausage ‘crease’”, showing remarkable similarities (and differences) to the Korean process. They both add ice to the meat (to keep it from heating up in the chopper), and extra fat (for consistency & flavor). The difference in the end marks is caused by the way the strings are hung up in the smoker.
P.P.S. For anyone who can understand the German commentary, there is a common error that is based on a widespread linguistic misconception: the old term “Pret” (which is the basis of the first syllable in “Bratwurst”) has nothing to with “braten” (frying). In both cases, the archaic noun referred to the chopped meat that is used to make sausages and other foods. Thus, the name of a “bratwurst” comes from what’s in it, and not from what the cook is supposed to do to it.
P.P.S. @ Andréa – The German “Sendung mit der Maus” has a huge collection of short videos showing how various things are made or done. Even if you can’t understand the commentary, the visual descriptions are usually very clear.
P.P.P.S. Unfortunately, only the titles with an arrow icon are available online, but it’s still an incredible collection.
@Mitch4: “Tho I didn’t stick with it as far as the sausages.”
But . . . but . . . that was the entire point of my comment . . . and I gave the starting point to fast forward to.
@Kilby: “What I found surprising (and occasionally irritating) about the Korean video was the mixture of optimized “mechanical” processes, interspersed with primitive “manual” steps, such as cracking eggs . . . ”
I’ve watched many of these ‘Korean baker and street food’ videos, and they ALL crack hundreds of eggs by hand (I’m thinking a chicken farm in S. Korea would be a helluvan investment). My first thought was, “How many health and safety regulations can you find in this video?” Some places are squeaky clean, others . . . yuck. Memo to self: If I ever go to S. Korea, don’t eat the food. AND it seems that half the population spends its lifetime making food for the other half. Prices are cheap, BTW: $1USD=1248 S. Korean won, so when you see a price of 6000 won for a cake, it’s less than $5.00USD.
@ Andréa – My dad once told me about KP duty in the Navy (not sure if this was about himself or someone else): when assigned to crack eggs, they would crack two in each hand simultaneously (four per operation). That might risk getting a bit of shell in with the eggs, but the way those Koreans cracked single eggs into a huge vat containing hundreds of eggs was also insane: one mistake could contaminate the entire vat, and at the rate they were working, it would take hours to crack them all.
Not only that – when they want to separate the yolks from the whites, they do it with their hands, AFTER putting the entire batch of eggs into a bowl.
I remember at some point some years back running across a whole set of videos of this genre… about various styles of industrial egg-cracking gizmos.
There’s a reasonable chance it came from here, so it might be findable in the archives if someone can think of search terms.
The German “Maus“ show that I mentioned above once did a fascinating piece about a type of marshmallow “kiss” (but I can’t find it online). Part of the process was producing powdered eggwhite; that factory had an amazing machine that not only cracked the eggs, it also separated the yolk from the white, and it did it so fast that they had to show it in slow motion to make it clear what was happening.
Close as I could find –
I had to break three eggs to bake a Summer Berry Buckle this a.m. and no, I didn’t dare crash one into another, as so many videos show. I did it the old-fashioned way, on the rim of a glass.
And another, but I still don’t see the actual process of separation . . .
Well, at least it isn’t done with the hands . . .
Every time I make an omelette or scrambled egg I note, too late, that I’ve missed another opportunity to practice separating eggs with my fingers where it doesn’t matter if it goes wrong.
Well, I watched the video, and genuinely could not see a single thing that would put me off eating those sausages – not one. They appear to be made from proper pieces of real pork in a hygienic plant. No mechanically recovered poultry “meat”, no slurry, no pink slime…
I don’t think anybody from the USA should be pointing fingers at food processing in other countries and going “oh yuk”.
I recently watched a baking show in which the baker had an egg separator and, shur ’nuff, it was available on amazon for only a few bucks. Which I immediately ordered (the egg separator, not the bucks).
We have one of those little plastic gadgets for separating eggs. It fits on the edge of a bowl, and when you crack an egg into it, it lets the white slide through a horizontal slot, retaining the yolk, which you can then dump into a different bowl. If you are doing lots of eggs, it’s a good idea to empty the whites into a separate bowl as well, just in case you encounter a yolk that breaks when the egg is cracked. That way you only have to discard one or two whites, and don’t risk ruining the entire batch. Extra large eggs (and eggs with very thin shells) are more prone to such separation failures.
P.S. Even a drop or two of yolk in the whites can significantly reduce the quality (and amount) of the resulting foam. Any oil residue in the mixing bowl can have the same effect: for this reason, it’s always better to use glass or stainless steel mixing bowls, and avoid plastic.
One of the baking videos mentions cleaning the bowls, the spatulas and the beaters/whisks with vinegar, which makes sense, as my recipe for meringue cookies/tortes has vinegar in it. Also, room temperature for meringue; cold temps for whipping cream.
Sorry – I’ve been a a baker, but never a cook, since I was in Home Ec class in junior high school; I’m currently picking up the hobby of cake decorating, complete with piped flowers. I’ve gone down the rabbit hole of Korean/Japanese street food and cake decorating videos many times.
And, as 99% or more of CIDUers are male, I’ll link to this . . .