how-to – Page 7

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.

Spice mix. We’ll grind the juniper berries and black pepper as well.

Bresaeola vac sealed with the spice and cure.

The roast was rubbed with ghost pepper powder before casing.

These are two backstraps from a small doe (not full length). They have been cured, seasoned and will be stuffed in beef middles.

Vension straps and roast cased and trussed.

Vension straps and roasts cold smoking on apple wood.

Make Venison Landjaeger

November 30, 2014 by Jason 1 Comment

20140827_155922 — Venison landjaeger v1. I made my first batch of landjaeger closer to traditional. That is, pressed into square links just larger than a slim jim. I also wanted to heat it up, so I used dried, crushed tepin pepper. The result was one of the finest venison products I’ve made to date.

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

Venison langjaeger v2. This is my second attempt. The first, seen at right, was excellent and it was made using Hank Shaw’s recipe. This time, I wanted a larger caliber sausage and I also wanted to play with the ingredients. Instead of the hank casings I used in v1, I tried beef middles. The larger caliber and weight required me to truss them up. And last, I doubled the batch to 10lbs. since I had a lot of venison.

8lbs. venison chunks
2lbs. pork fat back diced (Stick to fat back here, and save your leaf fat for the lard.)
76g kosher salt
30g dextrose, or white sugar
12g pink salt #2
2 tsp. garlic powder
2 tsp. caraway seed
2 tsp. ground coriander
1 tsp. celery seed
4 tbsp. ground black pepper
Optional: 2 tsp. ground habanero powder
1 tsp. T-SPX starter culture (Diluted in 1/2 cup distilled water. Important, chlorine-free water.)

20140731_143432 — Lean venison and pork fat back.

Just like fresh sausage making, you want to have your equipment (stuffer, grinder, trays, etc.) and the meat and fat very cold! Your venison should be trimmed and cut into chunks along with the fat back.

Take your chosen casings and soak them in lukewarm water. I’m using middles in this recipe, and I took more time to clean them out by running water through them multiple times.

In a cold tray (I prefer metal trays to help stay cold from the freezer) mix the venison, fat, and all of the spices, but HOLD OUT the T-SPX and water. Put everything into the freezer until it starts to freeze, but not frozen. The colder the better.

When ready to grind, grind through the course die. This is really a preference but I don’t want to overwork the forcemeat. I’m also looking for a courser texture in the final product. Once ground, place back in the freezer to chill it up again. It should be cooler than 42 degrees F.

While the forcemeat is chilling, prepare your starter culture by mixing it with the distilled water. Let it sit for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Remove the forcemeat from the freezer and add the starter culture, mixing very thoroughly. If you have a meat mixer, use it. Otherwise, use your hands, and fold it over and over until you notice the formation of the pellicle (this is when the meat starts getting sticky, and binding together)

20141207_152812 — Grind the meat and spices through your course die. Notice how cold the grinder attachments and trays are. The colder, the better throughout the entire process.

Now it’s time to load your stuffer and stuff into casings. Whether using hank casings, or beef middles, stuff them and tie off each link with hemp rope or twine. Using beef middles, tie two knots between each link because these will need to be separated and hung individually due to their weight and size.

Prick your sausages thoroughly and massage the air bubbles out of them. If using pork casings and the smaller caliber, the traditional step to take here is to place the sausages between two trays (traditionally wooden) and press them tightly together so they form more of a square chub (like the picture above.)

Now, we will ferment the sausages. We want to let them sit between 75 and 80 degrees F for 24 hours… up to 48 hours if you want to. This let’s the starter culture get to work. During this time, you need to prevent case hardening by keeping the casings moist. I use a spritzer bottle and spray and turn the sausages several times during the process. Another thing I tried this time around was to pre-mix my Bactoferm Mold-600 with distilled water to fill the spray bottle with. I use Mold-600 on most of my sausages in the drying chamber just to give the sausages a head start on developing the good mold and I had this handy. Update… it does work. White mold started pretty quickly, even as it was sprayed during cold-smoking.

20141208_194238 — Trussed up in larger beef middles and monitoring cold smoke temperature with an instant thermometer.

After fermentation, it’s time to cold smoke. I suppose you could skip this is you want, but after my first successful attempt, I require it. I used cherry smoke this time around and I smoked for 4 hours. The idea of cold smoking is to give your sausages smoke flavor, and not to cook the meat. I keep my smoker between 80 and 90 degrees F, and never hotter than 100 degrees F. This usually requires the use of a cold smoke generator as it would be difficult to keep your hot smoker under 100 degrees F. I made this cold-smoking device and I use it in my hot smoker.

Finally, it’s time to dry your sausages by hanging them in your drying chamber… or the proper environment. My dryer runs at 60 degrees F, and 80% RH. Of course, if you are using smaller casing, such as hank casing, it could take anywhere from 2-3 weeks. A larger caliber will take longer, and also require more careful monitoring of the casings to make sure they do not get too dry and hard. Case hardening is a critical issue in all meat curing. If the casing is left to harden and dry out, it looses it pores, and does not let water moisture escape through the casing. The result can be botulism.

After mixing the meat, fat and spices, I lay out on trays to put back in the freezer. This helps is get closer to freezing, faster.

The stuffer was frozen too to keep everything cold.

Because of the size and weight of beef middles, I opted to truss them.

Trussed venison in the smoker, cold smoking.

Landjaeger v1… stuffed into hank casings.

The final product from v2 (larger caliber)

Cure and dry deer heart

November 13, 2014 by Jason 2 Comments

Freshly harvested and cleaned deer heart

This post has been edited and updated with subsequent pictures and info that I have gleaned over the years.

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Hunting season means deer hearts are plentiful. It’s common for friends to drop off their hearts to me and tell me to do with them what I may. My original article wrote about curing what’s in season, so the series of posts featured venison. Here, we’re talking deer heart. See also venison landjaeger and venison bresaeola.

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. I’ve added one below.

Now, I always aim for the lung shot to preserve the sacred heart. While I don’t chomp into it during the field dress like some traditions, I do let none go to waste.

I cut my teeth on grilling hearts. Just like your other venison cuts, don’t over-cook it. I figure there’s a window of about 2 minutes that separate just perfect… and ruined. But let me step back a bit. I myself was a hunter who didn’t think they’d ever eat a deer heart. That changed when I saw what the inside of a deer heart looked like. Give it a chance. If you’ve never prepared a heart, harvest it if it’s not all shot up. Take it through the process of cleaning it… you can always toss it, or give it to someone else in the end. However, you might find a new-found passion as I did.

Since I’m curing and drying this heart, here’s what I do. Take your fresh heart, and run clean water through the valves, squeezing and massaging any clots out. Empty the water and refill, repeating the process a couple times. It’s OK to leave the heart soaking in salt water for several days in the fridge until you can make it around to it if you need to. I prepare a salty brine to soak it. When the water becomes bloody dump it and change out. A few changes, and it’ll be clear. When ready, cut it open in a manner that leaves the heart lay flat and in one piece. I plan to roll and truss the heart later when I go to dry it. The inside of a heart is… empty, with white fibrous webbing (or strings) that operate the chambers and valves. Trim this webbing out as best as you can until the heart looks like the pictures below. Give it another rinse and prepare your spice mix.

After cleaning the heart, and cutting open to clean out, you'll see that it's a beautiful piece of meat. — After cleaning the heart, and cutting open to clean out, you’ll see that it’s a beautiful piece of meat.

I make subtle variations in the spice mixes each time… making notes so that when I hit a grand slam, I can come back to it. I have rolled tight like a pancetta, and cased it in a beef middle (sometimes, I’ll cut hearts in to two pieces to do this,) and then truss it. I’ve also rolled up and netted. Here is a spice mix idea.

To a 350-450g heart (average weight of whitetail hearts I’ve cured)

15g kosher salt
2g pink salt #2
7g brown sugar
1/4 tsp. dry thyme
1/2 tsp. crushed black pepper
1 tsp. caraway seed
1 tsp. dried crushed jalapeno powder
1/4 tsp. paprika
1 tsp. fresh crushed garlic

Deer hearts, cut in two pieces, cured, rolled, trussed and cased in different ways.

In another variation, I omitted the garlic and brown sugar, and crushed 1 tsp. of juniper berries. I also substituted the jalapeno powder for habanero powder.

Just like all other cure jobs, massage the spice mix into the heart and put into a zip-lock, or a vac bag making sure to get all the spice mix in with it, including any spice mix left in whatever you mixed it in. We want to make sure to get the proper amount of pink salt in the bag. Now seal it up, and put it in the fridge. Leave it for 8-10 days and flip it over every other day.

Once done, remove from the bag and rinse off the cure. You can use water… or wine. I rinsed one of them with wine. Now, cold smoke if you like for 2-3 hours, remove, and put into your dryer. Here again, watch for case hardening. Spritz as you need, and make sure you environment has 70-80% RH. It should take around 3-4 weeks to fully dry. Don’t rush this process… or you will dry the outside too fast and trap water content inside. The idea is to keep the outside soft and pliable during the drying process. You are looking for approximately 30% weight loss.