Another Visit to Rolf's

While Mr. Dave will eat things I won't go near anymore (my days of gas station cuisine are long gone), I don't recall him recommending anything bad. So when he recently recommended the Teawurst at Rolf's, I knew I would be trying it the next time I was in the store. That time was yesterday. A small chub of the Teawust was about $2.50. The date on the label is wrong. I bought this yesterday.

It was a midday stop at Rolf's and I knew I wasn't going to wait until I got home to try the Teawurst, I also picked up a loaf of rye. Using the back of a crummy draft report as tablecloth in my cube, I dug in.

As promised, the Teawurst is very good. And at $2.50 for a small, I doubt I'll be able to leave Rolf's without one in future visits. This particular loaf of rye kind of overpowered the Teawurst. It would be better on a good but less flavorful bread, like the Prinzo's loaf Mr. Dave used. A decent baguette would work or a slice of Bella Napoli bread would be good too. And I think a step up from the Prinzo's loaf would be a Prinzo's hard roll. Those rolls make everything better. And with those rolls in mind, I just figured out the circular route I'm going to take between the office and Rolf's on my next trip.

Summer Sausage - Eating

I cut up one of the sausages, put it on a plate with some cheese and crackers. When the kids came home they were very excited and asked, "Is this snack for us?" I told them it was and the plate of food was gone before I got to snap a picture. Success. I brought one over to my neighbor. I hope to get a review tomorrow morning at the bus stop.

I'm pretty happy with the sausage. I might go a little heavier with the seasonings and possibly a tick heavier with the smoke. All in all, a good batch of sausage. Good thing because there are still 4 pounds of it to eat. If I make another plate up tomorrow I'll try to get a picture before the kids get to it.

Summer Sausage still continues

Fired up the offset smoker tonight. I put the skewers of summer sausage on some positioned fire bricks and used the thermometer from my turkey fryer to monitor air temperature. The sausage went in around 5 and came out at 9. I didn't use any wood chips, just a hardwood charcoal heat.

Here are the coals firing up and the sausages waiting for some heat.

The stacked bricks maximized the length of the sausage (less string to tangle myself in) plus the ones of the left shield the sausage from the radiant heat coming of the coals in the firebox. I also had a thermometer in one of the links. I pulled them when the got to 150 degrees F.

I did my best to keep the air temperature around the sausage at 200 degrees F. Worked for most of the time. I did have some spikes and one pretty good dip.

Ta da!

Pretty good. I think they will be better tomorrow after some time in the fridge.

Summer Sausage continues

Last night I ran the seasoned beef/pork mixture through the grinder again. This time with the fine plate. Earlier tonight I stuffed the re-ground mixture into some hog casings and tied them into 9 inch (or less) links. I have the links tied to old metal kebob skewers that used to go with an indoor charcoal grill (yes indoor) that used to be at my parents house. No wonder I'm a grill nut. Anyhow, the skewers are hung from S hooks in the little basement fridge. Tomorrow night I will transfer the skewers to the smoker for a few hours. I already have the the weird combination of bricks I am going to use to hold up the skewers set up. Anything much longer than a 9 inch link was going to hit the bottom of the smoker. I am clearly getting older and/or wiser. There is no way I would have measured that a few years ago.

Summer Sausage

I made this once before and remember it being pretty good. The only modification that I made to the recipe was to actually use Fermento since I have some now instead of dried milk. I also forgot to dissolve the Fermento in water and just added dried with the spices. So much for reading the recipe a few times a day this week.

I started by cutting up a rump roast. This beef is from steers raised in my in-law's back yard (it's a pretty big yard)

To the beef, I added a pork butt that I had picked up earlier in the week. The recipe calls for half as much pork as beef. I went a little over that ratio because there wasn't enough pork but left over to make sausage.  It would have make just under 100 grams (little less than a quarter pound) so I just kept in in the summer sausage.

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All the meat went through the coarse plate of the Kitchen Aid grinder attachment. Et voila - ground meat.

I put the meat in the fridge and put weighed out all the spices. It's nerdy, but I use a spreadsheet to adjust the original recipe spice weights to the weight of meat I am currently using. Here are the spices getting weighed out - salt, pink cure#1, dextrose, Fermento, Coleman's, granulated garlic and ground coriander.

Got the spice combination and some diced fat back here.

I didn't add any water to the spice mixture turning it into a paste before adding it to the meat. Forgot that step. I just mixed everything together and it smelled good.

The seasoned meat goes into the fridge for 2 days. On Sunday, I'll run it though the grinder again and then stuff it into casings. Maybe I can smoke it on Monday.

Summer in February Featuring SPAM

A family tradition to break up winter has been the Summer in February picnic. The idea is to have all of the fun foods you would have at a July picnic in the dead of winter. This has also been called Rib and Pierogi Day. No matter what you call it, the day is a lot of fun and there is always way too much really good food. My responibilities for the meal are the ribs and sausage. This year I added a little bit of Spam. I saw it over at the Cowgirls Country Life a few times and decided to give it a whirl.

I've made sweet Italian sausage and posted about it a bunch of times. On Saturday afternoon, I made about 3 pounds of it. I also made a new to me fresh sausage. Not sure if anyone else has made it before, but it has been on my radar awhile: Srirachia sausage.

Started with some pork butt. It was a little lean so I added some fatback.

Salt and pepper were added at the same ratios used for Italian sausage. Then I added sriracha sauce until it looked wet. Probably around a quarter cup.

Ground it up and cased it. Then I made the rib rub...

Once the ribs were going in the pit on Sunday, I broke out the can of Spam (currently on sale at Price Chopper). I can not remember ever having had Spam before.  It was everywhere in Hawaii. We have hot dogs on treadmills in our quickie marts, they have warmed spam sushi under heat lamps in theirs.

I cut a criss-cross  pattern in the Spam and filled the cracks with brown sugar. As I was doing it, I couldn't help but smile because I was putting organic brown cane sugar on Spam. Slightly opposing sides of the food spectrum there. I drizzled on a little Jim Beam too.

Duke is no dummy. He knows something good is cooking...

 Here's what he was sniffing out

Aunt Carol's pierogi frying station ready to go

As it cooked, the Spam kind of opened up.

Carol's hard at work frying...

My mother in law makes some seriously kick-ass deviled eggs. Her potato salad is top notch too.

Sausage getting plated. Sweet Italian is on the plate. The sriracha sausage is on the right.

Spamity Spam

There were two, delicious trays of these bad boys.

I'd say the pierogi and sausage stole the main course show. The sweet Italian sausage came out great and the sriracha sausage had a nice little heat to it but the spice didn't overwhelm the other flavors of the hot sauce. This is definitely one to make again. I could eat those pierogi all day. The Spam was decent. My father-in-law didn't care for the Spam. He said it was too used to it just fried. Uncle Lou liked it. He said it didn't taste like Spam anymore, it just tasted like a baked ham. Having nothing to compare it against, I thought it was OK. If I make it again, I will make the cuts deeper. I only went halfway through the block of Spam. I'd go as far as I thought I could go without breaking the block next time. I think I'd skip the bourbon too. All in all a beautiful February day.
 

Sausage from the trimmings

I took the flap off the pork belly and a few other trimmings while making the bacon lat night. Tonight I groun the pork with salt, fennel and black pepper. The bowl of sausage will get made into sausage and broccoli with cavatelli tomorrow night.

The pouch of sausage will get frozen and come out to top my next attempt at pizza. Not sure when that will happen, but I've been catching my brick oven bug again. Summer in February is coming up so I'll get to play with a little fire and a BBQ pit. Maybe that will scratch the itch. A new tile floor is being installed in the lobby of the building I work in. I'd be lying if I told you I never entertained the idea of sneaking out of the building with the contractor's obscenely nice wet saw. The saw is actually an older model, but nicer than the one in the link. The water pan looks better. With the right blade, I know it would slice through fire brick without flinching. I've been a good boy though and just drool a little bit every time I walk past it...

Charcutepalooza Project #6 - Continued

I kind of feel like I am handing in a homework assignment three days late...maybe I'll just think of this as extra credit since the Italian Sausage was made on time.

I tried the chicken sausage out of Charcuterie with a few changes. I cut back on the pork fat since it seemed like too much. It is a 30% meat/fat ratio but I didn't think the chicken thighs needed that much help. I skipped adding the wine, olive oil and vinegar. I had tried something similar with the original Italian sausage recipe and didn't like it. I also skipped the remixing after the grind. I prefer the coarser grind in the final sausage. All that being said, here's what happened in the kitchen:

Got all the ingredients out. I was thankful for the mise en place routine earlier in the week when I realized I had no sun dried tomatoes.  Here the re-hydrated sun dried tomatoes and basil.

Chicken thighs and back fat. Would you believe I am actually starting to run low on back fat?

Diced, seeded tomatoes with minced garlic on the left and the salt/pepper on the right.

Mix it all up then grind.

Into the stuffer and out come sausage. The chicken stuffs easier than pork. I ran out of rinsed casings at the end. Just meant a larger late night snack for the cook.

One thing that is more noticeable with the chicken sausage is that the flavors change significantly as the sausage ages. I'd argue it improved with some time. I tasted a little bit before stuffing to see how the seasonings were. I thought it tasted pretty good, maybe a little heavy on the salt, and the sun dried tomato flavor was pretty strong. After the stuffing, I fried up the leftovers. The sun dried tomato flavor was not as strong and it seemed a little less salty. A definite improvement from the original taste. Tonight, I grilled up a bunch of the sausages and froze the rest.

The wife was surprised that this is what I had made the night before. Got her rating "best chicken sausage she's had." The older daughter liked them too. The younger daughter was not impressed. She's not that into dinner in general and the sausage was no competition for the diced cantaloupe that was also on the table. Two out of three ain't bad. This will have to be made again. I'd cut back even more on the pork fat and reduce the salt a bit, but definitely a very tasty sausage.

Next month's challenge is blending. I haven't had the best luck with emulsified sausage. I blame my lack of ice maker. I guess it could be operator error too. I thinking about trying hot dogs but I've got to go through a few books before I start cooking.

Charcutepalooza Project #6

Stuffing

This was actually a pretty timely challenge because Albany Jane had kindly invited me to a potluck get together for those that follow her blog and really enjoy food in the Albany area. Kind of fun way to kick off summer - meet people you have only virtually spoken to and eat. Everyone there was crazy-nice and the food was really good too. And since stuffing was the challenge of the month, I thought I'd bring some homemade grilled Italian sausage with roasted peppers and onions. Unfortunately, there will be some missing pictures to the story. While I was grilling sausages and at the potluck, the rest of the family was at my niece's baseball game with the camera.

I once tried the recipe for sweet Italian sausages as it is written in Charcuterie. I liked it, but I prefer a simpler version. I use the same meat/fat/salt proportions as the book, but I only season with salt, pepper and toasted fennel seeds. And here are the ingredients...

I toss everything together and make sure it is cold. In this case, there was still a partial freeze on the Boston Butt I was using. The combined ingredients go through the small die on the Kitchen Aid grinder.

The casings, which can be bought locally is small tubs at Price chopper and in smaller, but slightly more expensive packs at Roma in Latham and Pellegrino's on Central. I rinse the salt off and then soak in room temperature water for awhile (at least 30 minutes). I also flush the casings. Here's a shot of the casing filled with water.

Now waaaaaay back in the day...like 2 or 3 years ago for me - longer for my wife's grandfather...people used to use this kind of sausage stuffer. It is a very simple design. Kind of a horn shape that narrows to a tube and a plunger connected to a lever arm forces the sausage through and into the casing. It would have worked better for me if the stuffer was bolted down to something. It used to be on a piece of wood the got c-clamped to a table. But that piece of wood is gone and the few times I made sausage with this stuffer, the balancing act would probably have been quite a sight. Now, the poor thing is stuck in the basement with an old parrot from my tailgating days looking over it.

And the way the stuffer sets up is pretty slick too. Two bolts with the little pins in them are the connection to the lever arm.
 

The drawbacks to this kind of stuffer: 1-You'd be surprised how hard you have to push on that lever. 2-It can't hold that much at once. 3-You are left with a good amount of bulk sausage when you are done. The plunger can't push everything into casing. With the vertical stuffer, all that is left is a nice "job well done" snack for the chef. The main pro, is that you can get it really cold. The stuffer is pretty heavy and all metal. A few hours in the freezer and that bad boy is chilled. The vertical stuffer is significantly faster. This batch was about 5 pounds. Once I was ready to start filling casings, I don't think it took 5 minutes. Clean-up is about the same for both.
 

Unfortunately, I don't have pictures of the grilling or the pot-luck, which in case I forgot to mention was awesome. Albany Jane, DerryX, and Lillimonster posted pictures and descriptions of the gathering. There's another one coming up but my daughter is turning 7 that weekend so I will be missing it. I hope I can make the one after that. I already have an idea of what I'd like to bring - a little teaser so I get invited again :)

I was planning on making some chicken sausage tonight and writing all of this tomorrow to meet the 15th deadline. As I started to figure out the proportions of ingredients, I realized I had forgotten one of them. Probably tough to make chicken with basil and tomato sausage without the tomato. I'll pick some up tomorrow and try again tomorrow night.

Charcutepalooza Project #5

The Grind

This month's challenge was to pay attention to the grind. I kind of took the easier path and made some bulk breakfast and sweet Italian sausage. It was actually kind of nice to take a break from putting sausage into a casing. But really I mean it was nice to take a break from cleaning the stuffer at midnight since I start these projects after everyone has gone to bed because there is something wrong with me.

I happened to be in the Schenectady/Rotterdam area and I stopped in at Sal's. I hadn't been in awhile. I used to live nearby about 10 years ago. Very old school take a number Italian meat market. I picked up a 5 pound butt with the plan being 3 pounds for breakfast sausage and two pounds for sweet Italian sausage.

Here it is proportioned  in two bowls. On the left, the pork has been seasoned with salt, pepper and fennel. The bowl on the right got seasoned with sage, Herbes de Provence, parley, fresh thyme leave salt and pepper. I followed Mrs. Wheelbarrow's recipe.

Both bowls went into the fridge until after dinner. I ground the sweet Italian first while the breakfast sausage got colder in the freezer. Everything was pretty cold so I skipped the bowl of ice water around the bowl catching the ground sausage. As the weather gets hotter, I don't think I'll be able to keep skipping that step. I knew I should have gotten a fridge with an ice maker...

I cooked up a little piece, liked the seasoning and split the sausage into two bags for the freezer.

The sweet Italian sausage will most like get used in a cavatelli with broccoli and sausage. Fairly quick, decent mid week meal. And for some reason the kids don't fight about broccoli. Next up, breakfast sausage.

I also cooked up a small piece of the breakfast sausage. The Herbes de Provence really came through and added a lot of delicious flavor. My first impression of this sausage was that it was screaming for a runny egg yolk. Almost as if the recipe was designed to be accompanied by a runny egg. I thought it might need a little more salt, but decided I could always add a little when cooking it. The breakfast sausage got split into 4 bags.

But wait....that's not all. There was much more grinding this weekend. The steers that were slaughtered two weeks ago were butchered this weekend. Here's a shot of the pork and beef aging in the meat locker.

To borrow a scene from Crocodile Dundee:

That's not a grinder.

That's a grinder.

It has it's own fuse box. Once the beef goes through the grinder twice, it gets placed into a very large sausage stuffer.

No cranks on this bad boy. Everything is motorized and it can hold 55 pounds of meat. It is operated by a hip-switch. Lean into it, and meat gets pushed out. It has been outfitted with a custom tube for filling plastic storage casings.

The butcher can fill these faster than we can close them and label them.

 Here's my case of ground beef.