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Harvesting Wild Ramps

April 23, 2019 by Jason Leave a Comment

Here in SE Indiana, April/May is morel and ramp season. For those days we go out and not find the beloved morel mushroom, we can pacify ourselves a little when we bring back some saddles and wild ramps.

Ramps, aka Allium tricoccum, or spring onions are a North American perennial. Think green onion with 2-3 much broader leaves, and more of a pungence. There are a couple of varieties too. Around here, there is a variety that has a purple/burgundy streak coming up the leave stems (tricoccum) from the bulb, and there is the narrower leaf variety with no purple (burdickii). While the entire plant of both varieties is edible, we try to preach harvesting them sustainably. You can wipe out a ramp patch if you give no thought to harvesting. Ramps are bulb-dividing, rhizomes… just like ginseng and ginger. Their popularity has seen a surge in the last few years. About 5 years ago, I transplanted some on to my own property and have been leaving them alone to do their thing.

Here’s my wife standing beyond the ramps I transplanted.

Ramps from seed can take 6 to 20 months to germinate and even after germination, another 5-7 years before it is large enough to harvest. Remember that when you eat the bulb of a ramp, it likely took up to 7 years to form. It’s my thought that if we’re eating them, we need to be propagating them even more. Generally, I harvest only the leaves… and on occasions, I will take some bulbs from a well-established ramp patch to make a jar of pickled bulbs, or another personal application. Still, I cut the roots from the bulb in a way that keeps them intact, and I’ll return those to the ground. It’s the least I can do. Moral of the story is, if you take, then you should work to put back.

Below are some picks of my personal ramp patches (both varieties) and some public lands I hunt on.

  • Close up of burdickii patch.
  • Burdickii variety, narrower leaves.
  • Harvesting just the leaves. Leave one leaf alone.
  • A nice burdickii patch.
  • Tricoccum variety – Wider leaves.
  • Around here, there is no burgundy color on the burdickii variety.
  • Ramps, leaves only harvested in bucket.
  • Ramps cleaned and drying.

Now that we know how to properly identify and harvest wild ramps, let’s talk applications. I’ve always enjoyed the greens sautéed in butter and garlic… and of course with sliced morels! This year, I wanted to change things up. Thus far, I have not harvested any roots or bulbs and limited my harvesting to only the leaves. With these leaves, I have a few other projects underway. Click it out:

  • Wild Ramp Salt
  • Wild Ramp Kraut
  • Wild Ramp Chip Dip

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Filed Under: food/culinary, homesteading, how-to, recipe, Uncategorized Tagged With: food/culinary, homesteading, how-to, recipe

Venison Shank and Barley Stew

March 1, 2019 by Jason Leave a Comment

Venison shank and barley stew is a wintertime essential. I took the shanks off the bone for this one because I used my own chicken stock and wanted to make it ready-to-eat at camp this weekend. These were braised all day at 200f.

My own recipe and process… always start with a cast iron dutch oven. Saute diced onions and minced garlic in hot oil (with cumin, and some garam masala). Once spices are bloomed, add your fresh cut carrots, salt and cook some more.

Add chicken fat and stock just enough to lube up while you scrape the brown bits up. Lay in the shanks… sprinkle with parsley and rosemary. Roll shanks around a little and finally top up with stock until they are covered. Toss in 4 bay leaves. Celery would have been great, but I was out!

Braise for as long as you have (all day at 200, or turn up to 225 if you want faster). At the point several hours in where you can take out a shank and shred it with a fork, shred all.

The collagen and tendons will pull right apart and the thickest ones turn to a goo that as cooked starts working as a thickener. I then add in quick cook barley. Love this stuff. Then two tablespoons of horseradish. I also dumped in some leftover peas (because they were there) a can of tomato paste and actually, some fresh cilantro this time. I was easy on it because I plan to cut fresh and garnish with it too.

Stir, taste, cook some more if you want. Serve on some crunchy rye or sourdough. This is a stick-to-your-ribs dish from those shanks!!

Deboned shanks… but, you don’t have to!
Once you can pull out a shank and shred with fork, do it, then add back in.
Shred shanks with a fork.
Add in vegetables and quick cook barley.

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Filed Under: food/culinary, homesteading, recipe Tagged With: food/culinary, homesteading, recipe

Quest for the best Goetta

December 29, 2018 by Jason 13 Comments

This has been an ongoing post over the last 4 years that I have been updating as I tweaked my process and ingredients to make goetta. Not just goetta, but goetta that meets two simple criteria. 1. It tastes like what I remember as a kid, and 2. It cooks up well in the skillet. When I say “cooks well,” I mean, it crisps up on the outside, and doesn’t stick to the skillet so much that it falls apart. This has been the challenge for me. If you’ve read through this post before, try it once more. I’ve taken out the extraneous info and anything leading up to my previous attempts that I deemed unsuccessful.

Yes, you can find the recipe and my detailed process below. I’m not stingy. In fact, it’s my hope you will try it, and report back on your results, and thoughts. The recipe is not where good goetta is at since it’s subjective and everyone has different tastes. It’s the process we employ to make goetta that determines its success or failure. Read on to learn more.

It took growing up to realize that growing up in Cincinnati was cool. As a boy, I didn’t know or appreciate its history or wonder. As an adult now interested in heritage and tradition, I’ve learned so much about the Midwest, my ancestors, and their lifestyles during a certain place and time. It’s still cool to live here… but only now, I live 30 minutes west of Cincinnati. There’s a saying around Cincinnati’s west side…. ‘West-siders always move west’, and that’s true.

First, a little background…

Cincinnati and Goetta

Goetta loaded in ceramic mini loave pans, and put in freezer

In a quest to make the best homemade goetta, one can begin, and also end in Cincinnati. The original Porkopolis! While some argue, that “Porkopolis” was not a compliment to Cincinnati,  I say it’s all a matter of perspective. If you didn’t know, Cincinnati was the original hog butcher to the world until around 1860, after which Chicago exceeded Cincinnati in the number of hogs being killed each year. That along with the fact that the majority of Cincinnati’s population was of German descent looking to make sausage go a little further for their families, it’s safe to call goetta a rightful by-product of Porkopolis. “Like Pennsylvanian scrapple or North Carolinian livermush, goetta takes scraps of meat that would otherwise get thrown away—pork, sometimes beef, or offal—and combines them with grains. The resulting mixture is then spiced, smushed into a loaf, sliced, and pan-fried to crispiness.”

For better or for worse… we ate goetta… and a lot of it. Goetta is as familiar as a dollar bill to me and anyone in the surrounding areas… But, drive more than 100 miles in any direction out of Cincinnati, walk into the next Waffle House and order goetta, and they’ll look at you like you had two heads.

Respect to the spice mix, but the magic is in the process

Ground pork, pig skin, chicken hearts (diced chicken liver was added after grind).

You can find many goetta recipes around the internet, with many clever variations, but there’s not a lot of talk about the creation process. I have a goal to make the goetta I remember eating in the 70’s-80’s. It was mostly Glier’s… made just across the river in Covington, Kentucky. There were others too… but this is the one my parents bought, and so you might say I was indoctrinated. “Glier’s has the distinction of containing offal… pork hearts and pork skin, which appear as headcheese-like dark pink chunks in the otherwise pale gray raw patties and give Glier’s a noticeable funky smell before it’s fried. That funk, as pork enthusiasts are well aware, translates into wonderful depth of flavor.”

For this latest round, I didn’t have pork hearts, but I did have chicken hearts from my last harvest, so I used these this time. I also had some chicken livers. I hand-diced the livers in pea-sized pieces.

How it cooks, matters!

A past batch lubed up the skillet nicely, but the consistency was too mushy.

I cook my goetta in a cast iron skillet on medium heat and have a special splash screen I use to catch the many exploding oats. Goetta should cook up right, browning but not sticking or burning before it does. I shouldn’t have to oil or lube up the skillet either. Truly crispy on the outside, and soft on the inside. When the oats snap and pop while cooking, I think it’s close… because they were not overcooked during the initial cooking stage. These things matter when you are trying to recreate nostalgia. I’ve spoken to many people who have made goetta and the common suggestion is water reduction. After the goetta making process, the mixture is very thick, and bits do need to be scraped off the pan (or crockpot) periodically. The final mixture should be so thick that if you take a spoonful, and drop it back in the mixture, it sits on top, and doesn’t sink back in.

The recipe (and my process)

Prepare the meats. Here is where we’re bending the flavor-profile like a jedi. Typically, goetta calls for half pork and half beef. That’s fine, but I’m swimming in good quality pork, and so I used no beef, and all pork this time (with the addition of pork skin, chicken hearts, and livers.)

I typically grind all my meats for goetta, but you can buy and use ground.  For this recipe, it calls for a little over 2 lbs of meat. Here is what I ended up with this round.

1.5 pounds of 50/50 pork/fat.
(go 1 pound pork, .5 pound beef if you have)

.2 pound of chicken hearts
(I’ll go with pork heart next time!)

.3 pound chopped pig skin

For me, the skin is required. Not only because my childhood goetta calls for it, but the skin renders out an amount of collagen during cooking that breaks down with the fat to help congeal the final loaves and lets the goetta lube up the skillet more on its own. I always have an abundance of skin, and it keeps indefinitely vac’d in the freezer.

I grind the above through a course die. I don’t worry about keeping the meat and fat cold for grinding like we would for sausage.

Grind into a bowl, then add

.2 pound hand-diced chicken livers
(any liver you have will work)

It’s important here to not run the livers through the grinder. Hand dice, then mix into the farce. We want small chunks that don’t disappear into the goetta. Put in fridge until you need it.

Mix and aerate often during cooking

Put a large pot on the stove and add

  • 6 cups water
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp black pepper
  • Chicken boullion cube (optional)

Bring to a boil, hold for a few minutes until the boullion is dissolved, then add:

  • 2 cups steel cut oats (pinhead oats)
  • 1/2 cup bulgar wheat

You can skip the bulgar wheat and use 2 and 1/2 cups of pinhead oats. Reduce heat to low and put a lid on. Stir periodically until the oats have absorbed all the water. It will be thick and will stick to your pan on the bottom. Be scraping it up as you stir using a large metal spoon. This won’t take long (maybe 10 minutes tops). Many recipes in the past had us doing this for 1-2 hours! I feel like this is overcooking and a contributor to a starchy, sticky mess. It’s OK that the oats still have some stiffness before we add the meat. In another bowl, measure and combine:

  • More pepper if you like
  • 1 large onion, diced finely
  • 1/2 tsp sage (go fresh if you have it)
  • 4-5 bay leaves
  • 1 tsp MSG (Accent) Yes, I went there this time (if you think Glier’s is too salty, skip this)
  • Any other spice variants to your liking (I added nothing)

Grinding pig skin and pork, not seen ar the chicken hearts.

Frozen pig skin

This was a past attempt. It all fell apart. Delicious, but not there yet

Once the oats have absorbed the water,  it will be thick! Add 1 more cup of water to the meat farce along with all of the spices you measured and mix until integrated. Then, add all to the oats. Mix very well while still cooking on low.

Once everything is mixed, I transferred to a crockpot on high for 2 hours. This includes the time it takes for the crockpot to get up to heat.

You want to stir well at least every 30 minutes during this time. I still used my spoon to scrape the sides of the crockpot as the thick mixture will be evaporating more water out while it cooks. This is good.

Again, you know it’s done when you take a spoonful of the mush and drop it on top, and it doesn’t quickly integrate back in. Cut the heat and prepare your loave pans. I have used these stoneware mini bread pans that my wife has. They are perfect size and shape to make 6 loaves. I lined them with plastic wrap, and spooned the goetta filling into each, packing a little with the spoon to get the air out. I wrapped the plastic wrap over the top and put in the freezer to set.

The cook test

Goetta… cooking perfectly in my skillet!

In most of my past attempts, here is where things fall apart. I’m always excited to slice and cook up the first piece of goetta. I slice and toss in my iron skillet. It looks right. It seems to lube up the skillet the way it should. It smells awesome, both out of the freezer… and while it cooks. I wait a bit anxious to flip it and see how it comes off the skillet hoping the brown crispy side stays intact.

See a past attempt below that falls apart. This is the challenge with goetta and is the sum of all the handling of the oats, and the process employed.

I have added a pic below that is the most recent attempt. A huge success in my mind! It smells great, flips and holds together as it should, and has that crispiness outside that makes goetta what I want it to be.

Acknowledgments

During my quest for the perfect goetta, I spoke to a lot of people both on and offline. I want to thank my friend Chris N. for sharing his tips and a recent batch of goetta he made and also Johnny over at the Bakers Biscuit (recipe), who could totally relate to the goetta dilemma. Both of these guys had the advice of using less water… even only enough to swell the oats just so much before integrating with the rest of the ingredients.

I have also heard of people letting the oats soak overnight reducing the cook time on make day). I think there is merit to this.

If you have any thoughts or comments about goetta, your experience, or just a story, I’d love to hear from you. It’s my feeling that you need to be able to give a loaf of goetta to a friend and have them be able to cook it up and hold together without them having to be careful with it… or handle it a certain way. I’m sticking with this current process and recipe for now and think it has come a long way. Good luck in your own goetta endeavors.

Pig skin
Grinding beef
Grinding pig skin with beef and pork
Ground pork
Chicken boullion, water and bay, pinhead oats added
Mixing everything together.
Added in crockpot for 2 hours on high
Mix and aerate often during cooking
Everything mixed and ready for forms
Mini loave ceramic pan makes a good mold
Goetta loaded in pan and put in freezer
Test loaf ready to cook
Lubes up skillet nicely
Everything seemed to be cooking all right, but then…
It all fell apart. Delicious, but not there yet

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Filed Under: food/culinary, homesteading, how-to, recipe, Uncategorized Tagged With: food/culinary, homesteading, how-to, recipe

Nduja is a Spreadable Salame

April 28, 2018 by Jason Leave a Comment

Don’t let the moldy casing fool ya. The magic is inside. This has been drying for a while now. I just uncased a few more, rolled them in more Calabrian pepper powder, and vac sealed for some additional time in the fridge. It should be very spicy. We’ll know more later. I still have a larger caliber (about 2 pound) stuffed in a beef bung still in the drying chamber.

This is Nduja. It is a fermented, cured, spreadable salami. The highlights of Nduja is that it is typically spicy hot, made from a variety of Calabrian peppers, has a much larger percentage of fat than lean pork, and of course, it’s spreadable. One might even dispute it is salami. It’s still hung up to dry a considerable amount before cutting open and knifing it out.

The high-fat content is what makes it spreadable. The high-quality pork I started with had beautiful, stark white fat and the animal was harvested only a day earlier. I brought it home, sorted out 70% fat back, and 30% belly (which is about 50/50 lean/fat). So that brings us maybe closer to 80% fat! I used a 1:1 ratio of sweet and hot Calabrian pepper powders, and elected for Aleppo pepper instead of cayenne.

I got all of the fat close to frozen and made sure the grinder, attachments, and trays were super cold too. This is to prevent smear, especially since it was going through the grinder twice. I ground the fat first, then the belly separate through my medium die. I hand-mixed the farce, then folded in the spice mix. The white fat soaked up the brick red color of the pepper powders. I then added in the starter culture along with a 1/2 cup of dry red wine. I took all of that and put it through the grinder using the small die. It was closer to a paste now but still around 42F or so.

I put it into my stuffer (that was also pre-chilled in the freezer) and stuffed into 4 hog ends and 1 beef bung. I still have to truss them up, but there’s time since they will sit at 80F and 80% humidity for 72 hours to ferment, then go into the drying chamber for a good while longer. This will be an interesting one. I found myself salivating thinking about how it should taste when it’s done.

After watching and reading the many variations of how people make it, here is what I ended up with.

80/50 fat/lean pork
.25% #2
2% kosher sea salt
.3% dextrose
.9% hot Calabrian pepper powder
.9% sweet Calabrian pepper powder
.5% Aleppo Pepper
.01% B-LC-007 starter culture.
120ml dry red wine

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Filed Under: charcuterie, food/culinary, recipe Tagged With: charcuterie, food/culinary, recipe

Venison Neck Ham or Pepper Loaf

December 31, 2017 by Jason Leave a Comment

I tried a new variation on the neck roast from a deer I took this year. I always make it a point to harvest the neck roast from any deer I take and I take the time to get all of it and keep it as the biggest piece I can. If it comes out decent, I’ll try something new with it. But in most cases, it comes out kind of scraggly and it’s  ground along with the skirt meat from around the rib cages into sausage meat.

This year, I got it out in mostly one scraggly piece of meat. I took it and the skirt meat and weighed it out. I made up a spice mix (below) and added it with the meat, and tossed it in the fridge for a couple weeks, turning and massaging it every other day.

Venison Ham (It tasted like pepper loaf in the end)

2280 grams of venison neck and skirt meat
2.25% kosher salt
.25% Cure #1
2% turbinado sugar
12 juniper berries, crushed
.5 Blk. pepper
.50% basic steak seasoning

Add all spices to the meat, massage and add into plastic vac bag, scraping all of the spice and salt into the bag as well. It’s ok to wash the bowl out with a bit of distilled water just to drain ALL of the spices/salt into the bag. Seal and put in fridge for 7-10 days (or as long as you want if you are using EQ).

When I found a moment, I got it out, rinsed it off, and laid it on some clean dry towels just to soak up as much water as possible. I laid out a few layers of plastic wrap and I spread the neck roast out like a big carpet. I got out the transglutamase (TG, meat glue, that will bind proteins together) and sprinkled it directly on to the meat in a liberal fashion. I layered on the skirt meat and alternated sprinkling the TG. I was looking for a uniform thickness of meat that I could roll up in the plastic wrap like a big sausage. The pics below will illustrate it better.

Mind you, the TG I had expired in 2015… ugh, but what the heck, it was an experiment. Once it was rolled up tight in the plastic wrap, I slipped some netting over it, and pricked it with the sausage pricker to let all the air pockets out. Since it was a mass of shredded meat, I massaged it a bit to force all the air out that I could. Now it was to sit to let the TM set.

 

It sat in the fridge for two days before I took it out, slipped off the netting and carefully took it out of the plastic wrap. Then I slipped the netting back on to it and got the smoker going. The smoker was set 10 175F. It fluctuated between that and 200F for about 9-10 hours. I filled my water pan at the bottom with water to keep a decent amount of moisture going. You’ll smoke to an internal temperature of 155F. Remember, the smoke is handled first thing while there’s still a good pellicle. Once that’s gone, it stops taking smoke for the most part… so, add the smoke early on… then let finish out to the needed internal temperature. I also added a tin-foil tent at the half-way point just to try and keep the surface from drying too much. This let the moisture come straight up under the ham and the foil tent.

It was really hard to not rip in to this at this point, but I wrapped it good in tin foil and set on the counter until it cooled enough to go into the fridge. Yup… it get’s chilled over night, and then sliced in the morning.

Overall, it turned out great, and I’ll definitely be doing this more. The meat glue did it’s job… but since it was old, the seams did come apart a bit as you can see in the pics. It still wasn’t a big deal. When it was sliced, it kind of fell apart… the way you’d like if you were layering it onto some rye with a plop of saur kraut. It was good on crackers with mustard, and just straight up. I suppose you could fry it in a skillet too… but, it’s fully cooked at this point, and it really just works as a lunchmeat.

I should mention my inspiration for this project was from Chris Varner’s “Ham-Grenade” that is posted in the Salt Cured Pig group on Facebook. Chris is another daring salumiere I like to watch among the many other talents there. If you’re really in to curing and drying, I whole-heartedly recommend these groups on Facebook. They provide a wealth of inspiration and knowledge… and have a passionate readership who’s highly engaged.

  • Salt Cured Pig
  • Salumi, Charcuterie, Wurst

Hope you can try it this with your next deer harvest… and let me know how it goes!

Deer, hung and aged for a solid 12 days! Look at the color.
Venison neck and skirt meat trimmed, and seasoned in the spice mix.
Mixing the spice mix thoroughly.
The meat and spice mix was in the fridge for about 2 weeks.
Out of the cure, the meat was rinsed, dried and layered on plastic wrap. Transglutamase was sprinkled on between each layer.
The meat was rolled up into a tight log and tied on the ends, then netted, pricked.. and massage out all the air.
Once out of the wrap, it was re-netted and then hot smoked at 175F for 10 hours.
The ham came out of the smoker, was wrapped in foil and then left in fridge overnight.
Finally, we get to slice. Notice the meat glue didn’t hold up completely.
It worked good on a soda cracker with mustard.
Slicing.
Well enough to make some good ruben-style sammies.
Here is it packaged up for family gifts.

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About AllMorgan

AllMorgan started as a family blog to keep extended family and friends around the world apprised on what's going on at the Morgan Ranch. Over the years, it grew in to something so much more.

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Welcome to AllMorgan

AllMorgan started as a family blog to keep extended family and friends around the world apprised on what's going on at our Indiana homestead. It always been a cross between a family diary and photo … Read more

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