sausages 2: the en-longing

Today I learned two valuable lessons: Ignore Alton Brown at your own peril, and there is no way to write a blog entry about sausage packing without being heavy on the sexual innuendo. So just to get it all out of our systems, go look at this clip.

As for the former lesson. Today I made another attempt at making sausage. Since last we spoke on this subject I viewed the sausage episode of Good Eats, one of Alton Brown's Food Network programs. The fortuitous viewing of this program contributed greatly to directing my current effort at encased meat production. His two recipes from the show can be found here and here. My recipe is something of a blend of the two.

The program also reinforced two lessons from my last attempt. 1: I need to use more fat. 2: I need a meat grinder. In remedying the first lesson Alton helpfully directed me to his favorite cut of pork for the purpose of sausaging, the shoulder, noting that it has a proportion of fat that is right in the sweet spot for sausage making, namely 20%. Alton added fat on top of this in one instance, but I'm trying to be relatively healthy, so I'm sticking with the naturally occuring fat in the shoulder. I was able to find such a cut at the local shopright, but stupidly forgot the proper name (it is also called Boston Butt) and let slide some fine boneless cuts last night. Today I returned to the meat department to find a plethora of store made sausages and a solitary, bone in, package of shoulder meat.

There is no finer way to learn to appreciate the job butchers do that to attempt to de-bone something, especially something as irregularly shaped as a shoulder. I am not burdened with the horror of raw meat some people feel, on the contrary being rather fascinated by it, but it is a huge pain in the ass to cut meat from a round joint with a straight knife. It is easier on strait bones, but not buy much.

The second lesson of brown was one I chose to ignore. I am strapped for cash at the moment, having just purchased a shit ton of text books for a large sum. I have found a 20$ grinder on Amazon, but given the delayed gratification of online shipping I could not bring myself to drop the cash. In my previous attempt my issue with the lack of a grinder came down to the consistency of the meat, which was also Mr. Brown's main complaint. Deciding I would rather have some tasty but mealy sausages than none at all, I decided to forge ahead with the food processor and pastry bag method I attempted previously.

So then to the attempt. I altered Alton's arangement based on comments on the rescipie's website (that it was not seasoned enough) and on the availability of fresh herbs. As I have rosemary and parseley growing in the garden, I decided to throw it in. As I very much enjoy sage in sausages, I decided to buy a box at the grocery. I dare you to tell me I was wrong. I had also bought some scallions. I decided to throw some in. I like scallions. They were handy. Fuck you.

sausages

1.5 tsp fennel seed, toasted and ground

2 tb chopped parsley

3 tb rosemary

4 tb sage

2 scallions

1.5 tsp pepper

1 tb garlic minced

2.5 lb pork shoulder

5 ft of pork casing, soaked 1/2 hour before use.

The fennel I did first. I dry toasted it in a pan for five minutes, as recommended by Mr. Brown, and then ground it in my gal Friday’s much abused coffee grinder. The grinder is intended for her flax seed, and other more mild aromatics, but certain of my relatives keep grinding coffee in it. I doubt my grinding of toasted fennel seed was much help. I’m sorry baby; ill buy you a new one after we move. Buying you one now would just see another grinder polluted by my relatives. After grinding and heartfelt guilt, the fennel was placed in a large bowl with the garlic and pepper.

After I acquired, washed, and chopped the herbs, these were also placed in the bowl with the garlic. Once the meat was deboned, I chopped it into pieces as small as I had the patience to create, at least an inch or less, and then threw it into the bowl. Finally, I spread the salt over the meat, and then mixed it all together by hand so the herbs and spices coated the meat. I then covered the bowl securely with plastic wrap, such that there were no vents to the outside, and placed in the fridge. My fridge has smelled poorly recently, and I didn’t want the sausage contaminated by bad smells. The point of the refrigeration is to cool the fat and allow it to take the flavors of the spices. Letting it get infected with the refrigerator smell would be counter productive. I let it rest for several hours, but one should be sufficient.

Then the destruction began.

I ground the meat very, very thoroughly in the food processor. I thought it came out well. It reminded me of dough. I think if I ever make meatloaf in the future I will use this method rather than a meat grinder. I may even be able to make meat hamentashen. That would be funny. Ha. I am enjoying that joke. But seriously. It was like dough. It was kinda gross.

I proceeded to stuff my dough meat into my meat pastry bag. I carefully did prep work on my casings, running water through the full length and tying off one end. As pastry bags are not made for sausage casings, the usual method of forcing meat out into the casing, like rolling a condom onto my erect penis (or pushing my erect penis into a rolled condom which is being held in place over a tube…), was not workable. I could not bunch the casing onto the pastry bag due to its rapid growth in size. Instead I had to hold one end onto the bag and force the meat into the casing. This was hard to do, so I would try to work the meat down the casing, away from the bag. Much like trying to force my erect penis into a used condom I found by the side of the road. not that that ever happened. Just hypothetically. That would be hard. Or like, putting it into a candy wrapper using only rainwater for lube. That sucks. amirite? Not that I’ve done that. That would be hella weird.

I was just musing on how long this was going to take, and how much my wrists and feet already hurt, and how I had two pounds of meat and five feet of casing to work with the meat wasn’t even near the end yet, when i first burst the casing. I paused. One fears this when working casing this way but it had ended up not being an issue last time. I found I could work the meat past the hole if I squeezed it hard enough. I continued to work the meat down the casing, and began to plan a contingency of tying off in the middle and working the meat in from both ends. Then the second hole appeared. And the third. I attempted to tie off, and created a fourth. This is when I gave up.

The sausages at tomorrows’ bbq will be patty style, and after this I will go ahead and order the meat grinder. it is just way too much of a pain int he ass to work the meat into the casing. Simply not practical. This is lame, because grinders are kind of expensive, and somewhat specialized. On the other hand, the one I have my eye on can also be used for pasta making. After I finally make a successful sausage, you may all be subject to the pasta series. So, don’t you go enjoying life yet.