More Meat

As a home-warming gift to ourselves, R and I got a sausage making attachment for my fancy mixer. We’ve done it twice now, the first time taking about 3 hours longer than our second attempt. What resulted were recipes for the following: Sun-dried Tomato and Jalapeño Chicken, Southwestern Pepper Pork, Scallion and English Cheddar Pork, Jerk Pork, and Bloody Mary Pork. Our second batch was good ol fashioned, Spicy Pork.

We bought chicken breast and pork butt from my second home, Los Paisanos. Cut them in large 2″ chunks and froze the meat, which makes it much easier to grind. Freezing the pork is most important because grinding fat, which is all up in the pork butt, is tough on the machine unless it’s as cold as possible.

We used all natural hog casing preserved in salt. The casings need to soak in cold water for 30 minutes prior to sliding onto the stuffer. The only part of this process that grossed me the hell out was using the casing. For some reason, the smell of the rawness, which is not strong at all, stuck in my nostrils for days. I washed my hands 72 times, but I would still wake up in the middle of the night smelling hog intestines. Will this stop me from becoming the Snausy queen of NY? No.

I don’t have explicit amounts cause we didn’t do it like that. We just perused the fridge, grabbed, chopped or grinded, and threw that shiv together. Here’s the list:

Chicken Sausage: Chicken breast, fresh jalapeño, oil-marinaded sun-dried tomatoes, lots of fresh garlic. All ingredients went through the grinder, pureing it all. No extra fat was added. This caused for a healthy, but crumbly sausage.

Southwestern Pepper Pork: B’s sis came through after her trip through the southwest. She brought a very spicy, sweet, and delish pepper relish. We folded tons of this stuff to the pork and a fresh chopped jalopeno.

Scallion and English Cheddar Pork: This was B’s idea and it was inspired by a traditional sour cream and onion dip. We grinded the scallion and cut the cheese in chunks so that when it cooked, the cheese would be gooey and melty. This was inspired by those crappy cheese stuffed hotdogs.

Jerk Pork: This was my second favorite sausage. But I’m not going to lie to you. The reason why I can’t claim it to be my fave is cause we used a jarred jerk. BUT, I’ll tell you why. This jerk seasoning is so damn delish, it’s the whole don’t fix-it-if-aint-broke thing. Do your self a favor and go buy Grace Jerk Seasoning. Anyway, we added a whole bunch of this spicy goodness to the pork, and damn, all jerked out.

Bloody Mary Pork: Now, this is my ultimate fave, mostly cause the ingredients were most original. We just added the best of what you would add to a Bloody Mary, besides the tomato juice: prepared horseradish, Tabasco, worchester sauce, green olives with pimento, spicy pickled green beans, salt and pepper.

All in all, the sausages were pretty good but they need some improvement. Since they were all pretty cumbly, we decided we would add more fat to the next batch. Also, the flavors could have been a bit more strong, so we’ll double that next time.

Good ol’ Spicy Pork: Our second batch we did a traditional spicy pork sausage with more fat. This time the sausages were perfect in texture, but again, we still need to add more flavor crystals. We added onion powder, garlic powder, cayenne, thyme, mustard powder, salt and fresh black pepper.

In conclusion, making sausage is not all that hard. Making it good, thats another thing. But watch out Jimmy Dean. I’mma comin.