Jason

Rabbit sausage with Morels and Ramps

January 15, 2015 by Jason 1 Comment

Rabbit and morel sausage, or also known as, ‘Bunny Bangers’… one of my seasonal favorites. Seasonal because you must have fresh morels, and non-freezer-burnt rabbit. Deboning a rabbit is some pretty tedious work too. Whether you are harvesting your own rabbits, or buying them from a breeder, have that rabbit ready for when the morels pop! This has to be hands down, my favorite fresh sausage.

Like all sausage making, your equipment, trays, grinder head, stuffer, and all the meat and fat have to be cold! Cold as possible just short of frozen. Rabbit fat is good stuff. I use all of it and only add the needed amount of pork fat, Have it diced and frozen ahead of time. I also de-bone the rabbit and freeze it on flat trays ahead of time. This way, when it comes time to use it, you have a sheet of chopped rabbit meat that is ready to use after a very quick thaw (just enough to break it apart). Soak your casings in lukewarm water while you prepare everything else too.

Mix all your spices. This is a simple one. Salt, pepper and garlic. Nothing else is needed because you want to let the rabbit and morels shine. Admittedly, I change it up though. I’ve tried adding cumin and rubbed sage, and always fresh minced garlic. It’s really up to you. I list percentages below so that you can weigh out your trim and adjust your fat and spices accordingly.

Rabbit/Morel Sausage Recipe

Rabbit trim (deboned, chunked and mostly frozen)
32% Fat back, cubed (mostly frozen)

Take total weight in grams of the rabbit trim + fat, and weigh out your spices.

2% kosher salt
.2% cracked black pepper
.6% garlic (fresh, crushed or minced)
Morel mushrooms. However many you have, or want (chopped any size you like)
Optional: Ramps! They are usually in season along with morels.
Optional: 3/4 cup asiago, romano or parmesan (shaved or chunked)
1 cup of red wine
4-5 feet of casings

Some people add the spices to the meat and fat before grinding. Others, do it after grinding. I have tried both ways and cannot find a notable difference in taste but I have decided that I like to toss the meat and fat in the spices, then grind as helps get the spices well-integrated.

Have everything together, and cold, then grind that meat and fat into a bowl set in ice, or a deep-side tray. BUT DON’T GRIND THE MORELS OR RAMPS. You don’t want to chop them into oblivion. Once ground, add the spices (if you haven’t already) and mix together. Then add the wine and mix some more. The ramps can be chopped into 1 inch pieces. The morels should be cut to the size you like (bigger chunks for me) and then folded in to the final force-meat. Let sit for the pellicle. The time here depends on how cold you’ve managed to keep things. I find I have plenty of time to do the quenelle test (adjust the spices) and prepare the stuffer.

When the farce is sticky, stuff into the casings, twist and let sit for about 20 minutes to let it bind a little. I have not tried cold-smoking them yet. Some day, I will. Here is where I cut them to about 4 per pack and vac seal them before tossing them into the freezer.

To serve, I thaw completely, and give them a gentle poaching. If you are using the right vac seal bags, you can sous vide the sausages right in the bag before opening. Just be sure to not over-cook. You want the sausage still pink inside. Finish on the grill. Check out some of the pics.

Rabbit, Morel and Ramp Sausage 2021

Rabbit, Morel and Ramp Sausage 2020

Rabbit and Morel Sausage 2015

Cured egg yolks

December 22, 2014 by Jason Leave a Comment

I have to admit, I never heard of this until recently. Like anything else, quality ingredients make a good final product. Since I have some awesome egg-laying chickens, I had to try curing egg yolks. Pretty simple stuff really. Lay down a half-inch of iodized salt and put some impressions in the salt to catch the yolks. Separate the yolks from the whites and drop the yolks into the impressions you made in the salt. Then, cover the yolks with more salt until they are buried. Put them in the fridge for about 7-8 days. They will be firm by now. Brush off the bulk of the salt, and wrap the yolks gently in some cheese cloth or butter muslin. Put back in the fridge for another week or so. After that time, you can grate them like cheese on salads, or other creative uses you may dream up.

Make Mortadella di Bologna

December 22, 2014 by Jason Leave a Comment

Mortadella originates from Bologna, Italy. It’s nicknamed “la grassa,” which means fat. Mortadella has been made for the last five hundred years, yet many Americans haven’t heard of it. When told it’s Italian bologna, they think of the stuff we ate as kids (but stopped eating when we grew into adults and found out how it was made). Real Italian mortadella is fatty baloney… pork and fat emulsified into a paste, seasoned, then stuffed into a casing. It’s served in a sandwich, on a cracker, or as part of a salumi plate. It’s a more challenging product to make than other charcuterie, in my opinion. The following recipe was adapted from Ruhlman and Polcyn’s book Charcuterie. I put a few spins on the process, but the recipe is very close, with a few extra ingredients. Look up the recipe there, or find one of many on the internet. Below, I’ll talk more about the process I followed and tell you what I learned making mortadella.

20141221_150958 — Mise en place. It’s critical to have all of your equipment cooling down in the freezer, and all of your spices and additives measured and ready to dump in when you need them.

There are two ways commonly used to make emulsified products; one uses a paddle mixer, and the other uses a food processor. The big difference is that if you use a mixer, you will grind the meat twice through your grinder–the first through a larger die, after which you will add the salt and cure. Then, the second is ground through a smaller die, after which you will add to your mixer along with the spices and paddle-mix it. If you are using a food processor, you will add your salt and cure to the meat, and grind once through the medium die, then move to your food processor to mix the seasonings, and bring it to a paste. In both processes, you need to remember that we are heating up the meat by working it. We need to watch the temperature and move it into the freezer to chill it down if the temps get too high.

I used the mixer and it’s important to keep that in mind as I describe the process below.

Sausages makers already know that it’s important to keep all your equipment and ingredients cold when making any product. The same is true, and even more important when we’re making emulsified meats. Emulsified meats are ground, seasoned, and mixed into a paste that becomes the consistency of a thick batter. After I stuffed the farce info the casings, I gave mine a light cold-smoking.

I found the actual process of making mortadella smooth, and fairly quick (about 30-40 minutes). It was the prep ahead of time that was challenging, and incredibly important. It took me several hours to achieve mise en place. If you have already made fresh sausages, or ground-meat products, then you are already armed with the basic knowledge. Our goal in this process it to execute the process as quickly as possible without over-heating the meat as we handle it. Between each step, I kept my instant-read thermometer handy to understand if I needed to put the meat back in the freezer to cool it down. Emulsified meats require a bind of the proteins without smearing the fat. A broken farce in this case means starting over.

Blanching the fat, and letting it cool well ahead of time.

I froze all of my equipment ahead of time… the grinder attachments, all trays, and the mixer bowl and paddle. I also have my stuffer in the deep freeze downstairs. My meat and fat was diced into chunks and almost frozen (crispy cold) in one bowl. In my first attempt in 2014, I used the recipe called for in Ruhlman’s book “Charcuterie.” I changed up the spices to my own liking over time and I have posted the latest below. All of my salt, cure, spices and dry milk were pre-mixed and in the containers ready to dump in when needed. Salt, cure #1 and garlic was in the first bowl, 2 tbs. of dry white wine is in the fridge. The main spice mix (bay, coriander, mace, pepper, and nutmeg) were in the second bowl. The dry milk was in the third bowl, and the crushed ice was measured and in the freezer. I had another bowl of more finely diced fat (quickly blanched and cooling in the fridge) and pistachios (blanched, peeled and cooling in the fridge). Both would be folded in just before stuffing. My casings have been prepped, rinsed, and are soaking in tepid water

Using the mixer-method, I would be grinding twice. I took the meat and fat, and ground through my medium die into a cold tray. I changed from the medium die to the small die. I added the first bowl with the salt, cure and garlic, and the 2 tbs. of wine into the farce. I added the crushed ice, and then mixed quickly by hand in the tray making sure everything is integrated. I fed it right back into the grinder and ground through the small die. It was looking pretty fine now. I used a rubber spat, and put all into the cold mixer bowl, and added the second bowl with my spices in it. I hooked up the paddle and mixed in the spices. I needed to stop a couple of times to push the farce out of the paddle and allow it to mix better. It was an easy process since the paddle had space for fingers to fit through. Last, I added the dry milk, and again mixed it in. I grabbed the instant-read thermometer, and it was reading 38F. Not bad! I cleaned out the bowl, and put it in my pan again. I folded in the diced fat and pistachios, and kneaded it with my hands for a bit until I noticed the sticky pellicle. I formed into a ball, and put in the freezer while I prepared my stuffer and threaded on the beef middles to the stuffing tube. About 5 minutes or so. I dropped the farce into the cold stuffing container and tied the end of the casing. I stuffed short, fat chubs… about 3-4 inches long. Twisting and tying each side. I tied twice between each chub and cut each one off to put into the fridge before moving to the next. All done, and everything seemed to go great.

20141221_172219 — This is after the second grind. I used the fine die, then added the farce into the mixer bowl along with the spices before paddling.

I checked the water I had heating on the stove to see that it was between 170 and 180F for poaching. It was ready. I pulled out the chubs and added them to the water. After about 15 minutes, I stuck my instant read thermometer into the end of one planning to let it stay in there so I could see when the internal temp was 150. I didn’t notice until it was time to pull them out… but the one with the thermometer in it split along the underside. It didn’t actually held together pretty good (see pic). It also tasted OK, but the texture was not nearly as nice as those that did hold together and it was of course water-logged 🙂 I decided to stick the others as I pulled them out to test their temperature. Caution here! When I pulled out the probe, juice from inside the casing squirted, hard and far. I had to make sure I had it aimed in the pot before pulling out the probe. I’m not sure if I should have done this, but I did. I was concerned with all the liquid inside if it would not allow a good bind. The final produce ended up fine!

After removing from the hot water, I put them into a bath of ice-water to quickly cool them down and I rinsed them a couple of times to keep the water cold. It was a cold day outside, so I took them outside and set them on top of the smoker and got the cold-smoke generator fired up. I smoked over apple wood for about 2.5 hours. It was plenty! I was going for a light smoking, but 2.5 hours really hit it. I still enjoyed it very much, but it shows how delicate this product is. It amazes me how much smoke can get through the casing and into the middle of the product so easily.

After the cold-smoking, I brought them in, wiped them with paper towels and put them in the fridge to let them finish setting. That’s an overview of the process I followed. See the pictures below and note the details I have added to their captions. I consider this a great success and look forward to trying it again maybe changing up some ingredients next time. Leave a comment below… I’m happy to answer any questions you may have, or even just talk about meat.

Here is the most recent recipe as of 2020 as well as the pictures below.

I made the recent mortadella with the following, however, on my next one, I will up the fat content… making the farce more white then what I ended up with this time. See the color of the farce from 2014 at the bottom of this post. It was about perfect.

1771g Pork Shoulder
454g Pork Belly
240g Back fat, cubed in 1/4″ pieces or less, blanched, and chilled
Total protein weight: 2465g

2% Kosher Salt
.2% Cure #1
.3% Ground Wht. Peppercorns
.2% Garlic Powder
.1% Nutmeg
.05% Caraway Seed
.1% Star Anise
.05% Coriander
.6% Whole Blk Peppercorns (set aside, do not grind)
.4% Shelled, peeled and blanched pistachios (112g for my batch)
1/2 Cup cold red wine to add to mixer when mixing

I took the caraway seeds, star anise, white peppercorns and a little of the salt just to keep stuff from sticking to the spice grinder and mixed into a powder.

Grind the shoulder and belly through a course die once. Hold out the diced fat back. Then, mix all spices into the first grind by hand (hold out the black peppercorns and blanched pistachios)

Now run the meat and spices through a fine die. To this farce, you will fold in the peppercorns, pistachios and blanched/chilled fat cubes. Fold in and toss in your mixer. Don’t over-mix. You also want to keep your farce under 38F. If it’s too warm, stop and put it back in the freezer for a while.

Once all mixed, I stuff into 4.5″ beef bungs, trussed, and pricked, then put in fridge while I warmed up the immersion circulator.

I’ll sous vide at 155F until an internal temp of 155F is reached. This could take 6-8 hours. Once done, submerge in ice-water to chill quickly. Once cooled, pat dry and cold smoke if you want. Mortadella traditionally is not cold-smoked, so on this latest one, I smoked one, and not the other.

Here are pictures from my most recent make Mar. 2020.

Below are the pictures from my first make in 2014

Make your own cold-smoke generator

December 11, 2014 by Jason 2 Comments

First, let’s make clear distinction between cold- and hot-smoking. Hot-smoking is the most common method of smoking meat. The chamber is usually between 300 degrees F or higher. Cold-smoking is keeping the chamber cooler then 85 degrees F. There are subtle variations (and opinions) depending on what you are trying to do. Cold-smoking allows the smoke to penetrate deeper inside the meat but takes more time (hours) than hot-smoking. Hot-smoking will harden the casing, sealing up the pores in the casing and keeping smoke out. In cold-smoking, we want to keep the casing soft and prevent it from drying out. We do this by reducing the heat… to a temperature that is a little warmer than room-temperature. In cold-smoking, it is not our goal to cook the meat, but to smoke it… keeping the cooking chamber as cool as possible.

There are various cold-smoking techniques, including smokers that have the firebox in a totally separate chamber, only pulling in the smoke to cure the meat. Because the meat is not cooking, we will usually have a salt or cure in the meat so that it prevents bacteria from forming during the long hours of raw meat sitting close to room temperature. That’s a brief overview of the processes, and it’s well-documented everywhere.

When we’ve decided to cold-smoke, we quickly realize that the lowest setting on our hot-smoker is already way over the temperature that we need. So, we have to improvise by creating a cold smoke generator. Here again, there are many options. You can buy them (I also own an A-Maz-N Pellet Smoker and find it pretty awesome), or make them yourself. Here is a quick way to build a cold-smoke generator out of items you may have lying around.

I found a medium-sized coffee can, and took the label off. I used a blow torch and gloves to burn the inside and outside of the can really good. Cans today can have BPA lining the inside of the can, and possible paint or other contaminates on the outside. The idea it to heat up the can in and out. I got it glowing red-hot all around before calling it done. I did the same to a make-shift lid that closely fit the can.

Next, I drilled holes as shown along the top of the can. Note, after using this a few times, I have a few modifications that I’m making that I’ll list below. I found an old soldering iron that was lying around. You can buy a cheap soldering iron that has a little less girth, but since I don’t use this one I had for anything, why not? For the typical soldering iron, you can remove the tip. You only need the heat from the shaft of the iron, and you certainly don’t want the soldering on the tip burning in your can. Make sure there’s no solder on the shaft as well.

I put one hole in the back of the can, and lower down (the can will be laying on its side, but I have also seen ones that sit upright and have the iron coming in from the side. Then, I drilled a few lines of holes along the top of the can for the smoke to get out. Plug it in, add your chips, and place in a chamber that will hold the smoke for your product.

Looking back, these are the modifications I plan to make.

First, I think there should have been far fewer holes… and possibly even smaller. The reason is because when I plug in the soldering iron, it burns through dry wood chips in about 1 to 1.5 hours. So, I have to reload the chips once or twice to get through the standard job. Soaking the chips ahead of time can slow the burning temporarily. If we reduce the air-flow inside the can, it seems we should be able to slow the burning more. Last, reducing the heat of the soldering iron using a rheostat could also allow us to burn the wood chips slower…. and of course… cooler.

UPDATE: I’ve found even a better way by doing nothing. I can pull my soldering iron out of the cane once it’s going. Then, I can reload new chips in with the ones that have turned to coals. It fires right back up and I no longer need the iron. The iron is only used to start the smoker, then pulled out. Works great!

Coffee can, with inside and outside burned with torch. Holes drilled.

Iron fits into hold in the beck of the can.

Can with rigged tin lid, also torched to burn off paint.

Make Venison Bresaeola

December 11, 2014 by Jason 2 Comments

20141210_111621 — Spice mix, black pepper and juniper berries.

Lately, I have been curing what’s in season, and right now, it’s hunting season so this series of posts will feature venison. All of these products are cured. It requires an environment where you can reliably control temperature and humidity. Once you have the environment, and the basic knowledge of safely curing meat, the recipes are up to your imagination.

Here, we’re talking venison bresaeola. See also venison landjaeger and cured deer heart.

I started with a roast from the hind quarter.

My spice mix contained:

598g deer roast(1.5 lb or 21 oz.)
18g kosher salt
15g sugar
1/2 tsp. pink salt #2
1 tsp. rosemary
2 tsp. ground black pepper
20 juniper berries, ground

Mix the spices real good. Put the roast on a plate, and rub both sides of the deer roast with the spices. You want to get as close to 100% of this spice mix into the bag with your roast since everything, especially the pick salt, was measured to the weight of our roast. Put the roast in a zip-lock bag, or vac bag… and dump the rest of your spice mix left on the plate in with it. Seal it up and put into the fridge for 7-10 days. Massage and flip the bag every other day.

Once cured, remove the roast from the bag, and rinse the spices off the roast (use red wine to rinse off the spices if you like).

Optionally, you can cold-smoke at this time as well, but first, decide how you will dry it. For example, if you will wrap it in cheese cloth, and tie, you might cold smoke it before doing so. If you stuff into a beef bung, you would do this first, then cold smoke it.

Now, you should weigh the bresaeola and mark its weight in your log. Your bresaeola is ready for the fermentation stage. Place the bresaeola in a 70-75 degree F environment for 24-48 hours. I put in my oven with the light one. Just be sure to put a note on the oven controls that says “No Oven” so your spouse doesn’t come in and pre-heat the oven!

After fermentation, your bresaeola is ready to head into your chamber to finish drying. Currently, my dryer is running at 60 degrees F, and 80% RH. I will gradually turn the RH down to about 70% during the drying process if the other products also allow.

When the bresaeola loses 30% or more of its original weight, it is ready.