Local Food Heroes Blog

Thursday, 02 09 10 - 20:38

Genoa Salami

To try out my new drying fridge I wanted a simple salami recipe and chose one of Len Poli's (adobe .pdf file). It's a Genoa salami, but it's not of Italian origin; the famous Italian salami from the Genoa area is Salame Sant'Olcese, this recipe's wholly American.

I adapted the recipe slightly to use cure #1 and saltpetre instead of cure 2, also to replace the wine as my wife can't have alcohol and to increase the salt slightly. I also used acidophilus instead of the starter cure. Ridiculous though it may seem, the starter cultures used in the US aren't available in the UK even though the Danish manufacturer has UK offices. I normally use Bessastart or LS-25 instead, but in the absence of either, acidophilus is an acceptable substitute.

The meat was stuffed into 60mm casings as against the 100mm ones in the original recipe. They were fermented for 48 hours and have been drying for a further 4 days:

So far, I'm pleased with the way the new curing chamber/fridge is working. I guess that the final "proof of the pudding" will be in the tasting though. I am slightly worried that I have estimated the airflow incorrectly - this can result in the outside hardening before the inside of the salami is dry. For fear of this, I've set the fan to operate only when the fridge motor is running, rather than continuously.

Sunday, 08 08 10 - 20:13

British Sausage Week 2010

What: British Sausage Week 2010

When: Monday 1st to Sunday 7th November 2010

Where: Nationwide

Who: Organised by the British Sausage Appreciation Society

The most hotly anticipated food event of the year, British Sausage Week 2010, launches on Monday 1st November.

To celebrate British Sausage Week, independent butchers and supermarkets alike will be running events and special offers and look out for special sausage themed menus in local pubs and restaurants. For those looking to experiment with sausages at home, the British Sausage Appreciation Society will be launching their new and exclusive recipe booklet for 2010.

Visit www.Britishsausageweek.com for recipes and further information about the week.

Saturday, 19 06 10 - 14:43

Mortadella with Pistachios

It's great to get back to doing some real sausage making. We're fast running out of ham, bacon and sausage from my last mammoth session, so it's time to clear all the frozen meat out of the freezer to make way for the next lot.

Given that the meat's been frozen, it shouldn't then be refrozen unless it's been cooked - making fresh sausage is therefore a no, no. I was going to make hot dogs, but the weather looked a bit iffy and I'm very much a fair weather smoker, so that left a choice of the many and various other cooked sausages/luncheon meats.

I enjoy making emulsified sausages, not least because they taste good, but also because no-one expects you to. Big headed, I know: I don't care, it makes me feels good!

Mortadella is a traditional Italian cooked pork sausage that varies in size from quite small to massive. It's major characteristic is the small pieces of fat dispersed throughout it. To be 'traditional' these should make up at least 15% of the total sausage - this version has less. The addition of pistachios or pine nuts is optional.

I take no credit for the recipe, it came to me via Jason Molinari who I understand got it from a book by Paul Bertolli: no doubt it's had a few tweaks on the way! Salt seemed to have been omitted along the way - the amount I added was too little, I will increase it next time - I have altered the recipe to reflect this.

I won't say that the recipe is easy, it isn't. However, there's nothing difficult about it if you're careful. The cardinal rule is that everything must be kept very cold.

Here's a very 'snatched' photo of the finished product perched on the edge of the fridge. Trust me to find a bit with badly dispersed nuts and fat, and air-holes to boot!

Ingredients

Pork Shoulder 630 gm
Pork Fat (1) 420 gm (Hard fat from the back or throat)
Crushed Ice 310 gm
Garlic Powder 1.7 gm
Dextrose 15 gm
Mace 2 gm
Coriander 1 gm
Cinnamon 1 gm
Cayenne 1 gm
Cubed fat (2) 75 gm
Pistachio nuts 25 gm (weighed after shelling and peeling)
Black Pepper lightly Crushed 2 gm
Salt 23 gm
Cure #1 1.9 gm

Method

Firstly get everything really cold. Put your pork fat (1) in to the freezer for about an hour before you will use it, put the pork shoulder in to join it for about ½ hour. If you can get your mincer and food processor attachments in as well, all the better.

Cut the Pork Fat (2) into small cubes and blanch them in boiling water for a couple of minutes, cool in iced water and drain. Return them to a cold fridge.

Shell the pistachios then pour boiling water over them and leave them for one minute. The brown skins should now slip off quite easily. Refresh them in iced water then dry.

Weigh out your dry ingredients.

Mince the pork and pork fat (1) separately through the medium plate on your mincer, then mince again through the finest plate you have. If, like me, you don't have a mincer plate smaller than 4.5mm, mince three times through this plate. With a small mincer you may want to put the meat and fat back into the fridge between mincings. (I didn't because I have a large powerful mixer that doesn't heat the meat up like a small one may).

Return the meat to the freezer for 10 - 15 minutes.

If you've not had your food processor bowl in the freezer, cool it with some ice. I crushed my ice in the processor but I'm not sure that this does the blade any good!

Put the pork shoulder in the food processor with ½ the ice and all the other ingredients except the pork fat, pistachios and the black pepper. Process it until it's a smooth emulsion. Check the temperature often, stop if it gets to 8°C. Add the pork fat (1) and the remaining ice and process until it becomes a smooth paste. Do not let the temperature rise above 15°C

In a bowl, mix together the meat paste, pork fat (2), pistachios and black pepper.

Fill into a large casing, maybe a beef (ox) bung or cap, try to avoid air pockets, tie the casing tightly when filled: I used a 90mm collagen casing, 120mm would be better.

Poach in water at 75 - 80°C until the internal temperature has been at, or just over 68°C, for at least 10 minutes. You could bake it at 75 - 80°C instead (but not with a collagen casing: they melt!).

Cool it quickly in iced water. When cool put it in the fridge for a day for the flavours to mingle.

This sausage contains none of the binders or phosphates so often used in this type of sausage to 'lock in the fat and water'. It relies entirely on careful formation of an emulsion between the water and fat, along with careful cooking, so as not to split. The chemical reactions are similar to those found when making mayonnaise.

The recipe made a sausage approximately 10 inches long (250mm) in a 90mm casing. For larger sausages/casings you will need to increase the quantities - but make sure that you have a pot large/wide enough to cook it in!

Friday, 07 05 10 - 21:31

Irish White Pudding

Some time back I posted about my trials of an Irish White Pudding recipe that I developed in collaboration with my forum mate John. His blog is mainly about curry but he also makes sausage, bacon, hams and luncheon meats.

Now, I have to admit, I can take-or-leave these Irish delicacies but I believe that this recipe is as close to the commercial ones, that I was sent, as we can get.

The final recipe stood up to the 'John's mother-in-law' test and passed with flying colours. John has since amended his version, but I'm happy with the original one. I may increase the amount of onion, not just for the fun of it, but because I have recently found the ingredients specification for Clonakilty White Pudding and notice that it has significantly more onion.

Ingredients

395gm Pork Shoulder (with plenty of fat)
265gm Medium Oatmeal
250gm Water
30gm Onion
23gm Potato Flour
15gm Salt
18gm Seasoning Mix - see below

Seasoning Mix

5gm White pepper
5gm Ground coriander
5gm Ground ginger
5gm Powdered sage
3gm Mace
3gm Nutmeg
2gm Allspice

Only 18gm of this mix is used in the sausage above.

Method

Soak the oatmeal in the water for 1 hour or so. Grind the meat and onion through the fine plate of a mincer, I used a 5mm plate, then add all the other ingredients and mix well. The sausage-meat will be on the stiff side. Stuff into large pigs' casings and boil/steam at 75°C - 80°C for 1 minute per mm of width of the sausage. The final internal temperature of the sausage should be 72°C Hold at this temperature for 2 minutes then cool in ice-cold water. To eat, slice crossways into 5 - 10mm chucks and fry until brown.

That reminds me, we had a postcard from St Ives in Cornwall today. Now, in that 'neck of the woods' they make a mean hog's pudding, a very similar beast to the white pudding but with more meat. I can feel a further experiment coming on!

Monday, 22 03 10 - 17:28

Pork and Apple Sausage

I've been tied up with other projects recently so have had little time for cooking and curing. It never ceases to amaze me how dear the supermarket's meat is, when I compared what I had bought last week from the abattoir with supermarket prices I found that I had saved a minimum of 30%.

I'm making a new control box for my air-drying fridge so I was restricted to making fresh sausage, bacon and ham, although I've frozen a fair amount of pork shoulder for making cooked sausages, hot-dogs, polony and luncheon meats, later.

I don't write much about fresh sausage, mainly because we generally stick to the two recipes I've already put on-line, my Thurlaston sausage and fellow sausage-maker Oddley's Lincolnshire sausage. However, I thought I'd do something different for a change and chose to make Pork and Apple sausages. Now I've tried these before and wasn't happy with the results, so I trawled the web to see what I could plagiarise off other people! The results received rave reviews from the family, so here's my recipe with thanks to Welsh Wizard and Parson Snows from the sausagemaking.org forum on whose recipe's it's loosely based:

Sausage Seasoning Mix

16g Salt
3g White Pepper
1g Fresh Rosemary
0.5g Dried Sage

Chop Rosemary then mix together well. I mixed them in a coffee grinder.

For 1kg of meat

1kg Locally Produced Pork Shoulder (about 20% visible fat)
85g Rusk
40g Dried Apple
110g Apple juice plus extra (see below)
20.5g Seasoning mix (above)

Start with about 400ml of good quality apple juice. Boil it in a pan until it is reduced by half and leave to cool. Then soak the dried apples in it for about 1 hour before chopping them finely.

Having kept the pork in a very cold fridge, mince it. I minced it through a plate with 6mm holes and then through one with 4.5mm holes. Add the rusk and seasoning and then pour 110gm (110ml roughly) of the remaining apple juice over. Either mix by hand until you think you're going to get frostbite or use a Kenwood type food mixer (not food processor) to mix it for 3 or 4 minutes until the the mixture is sausage-meat. That is, it changes from just a burger type mix into a sticky mass, the smell seems to change too. It's hard to describe but you need to do this to develop the myosin in the meat that will stop the sausage becoming dry and crumbly when you cook it. You may need to add a little more apple juice to get a good mix. Don't add more than an extra 20ml - 25ml though, otherwise the sausage will spit like a camel when you fry it!

Stuff the sausage into pre-soaked casings (follow the suppliers advice for soaking the casings), then hang to 'bloom' (develop flavour) in the fridge for 6 - 8 hours. Some fridges are very dry so check the sausages regularly and if they appear to be drying out too quickly put them on a tray and cover them for the rest of the 'blooming' period.

You could use cider instead of apple juice in this recipe. Preferably a local one from Rockingham Forest Cider. On that subject, why not check out Karen and Mark's cider blog at rockinghamforestcider.blogspot.com.

The only disappointing thing about these sausages is that I had to buy foreign dried apples; it looks like I'm going to have to dry some myself when they're next in season.

Friday, 30 10 09 - 17:09

More Chorizo - New Recipe

When I started making my latest batch of chorizo on the 17th October it was my intention to photograph everything and create a sort of mini-tutorial. Need less to say when I got involved with making them I forgot to take most of the photos!

I started off with a big chunk of pork collar, also known as spare rib, and cut it into strips. If you have a small mincer you will have to cut it smaller. I prefer strips to chunks as the screw in the mincer pulls them through with very little need to use the pusher.

The meat with plenty of fat attached was cooled right down and then minced through an 8mm mincer plate.

The rest of the ingredients were weighed out and the culture activated in a little blood heat non-chlorified water for about an hour.

Ingredients as a percentage of the meat's weight:

0.133% ls-25 Starter culture
0.4% Dextrose
1% Fresh Garlic
2.533% Salt
0.4% Black Pepper
0.8% Smoked Hot Paprika
1.2% Smoked Sweet Paprika
0.133% Cayenne Pepper
0.2% Oregano
0.267% Cure 2

Friday, 02 10 09 - 18:48

The Monster Bresaola - II

The bresaola has now been curing for 21 days. I have taken it out of its cure, washed it briefly, and have strung it for drying. Regrettably, I don't have a casing large enough to fit it, so I am looking at other ways to ensure that it dries evenly, maybe a coating of lard or olive oil.

I've also been trying to formulate a recipe for Irish White Pudding. A pudding that seems similar to a West Country Hog's Puddin', and a completely different product from the Scottish one. The problem is that as I've never tasted it I'm reliant on my mate John in Dublin to let me know whether I'm getting anything like the real McCoy! Initial attempts have been hampered by the lack of ingredients lists from commercial products. Now I have these, I've just got to get the ingredients and I'm sure I'll be able to reproduce the recipe.

The efforts so far:

Monster Bresaola - Part I

Saturday, 12 09 09 - 17:07

Chorizo Version 2

My second attempt at chorizo has certainly turned out better than the first, despite the crisis when the casings proved to be too small. My nephew Mickey reckons they're just like ASDA's; I'm not sure whether that's a compliment or not! My own opinion is that they're too hot and don't have enough paprika or smokiness. Next time I'll increase the paprika, reduce the chilli/cayenne or leave it out altogether and increase the hot paprika. I'll also probably give them a few hours in the cold smoker.

The ingredients were:

Pork 1500gm
Fresh Garlic 15gm
Black Pepper 3gm
Smoked Hot Paprika 18gm
Smoked Sweet Paprika 4gm
Chilli Powder 6gm
Oregano 4gm
Dextrose 6gm
Cure #2 - 4gm
Starter Culture 2gm

Powdered dextrose is sold in many chemists as powdered glucose.

The method was:

The meat was ground with an 8mm mincer plate. The starter culture was mixed with a little blood hot water to activate it and added with all the other ingredients to the ground meat, and mixed well. The mixture was put into 60mm collagen casings and fermented at 22 -24°C with a 90% Relative Humidity (RH) for 2 days. They were then dried at 12 - 15°C with a relative humidity around 75 - 80% until they had lost 37% of their starting weight.

There's a slight hardening around the outside edge due, I think, to the air circulation fan in the fridge being too powerful; it's since been replaced with a smaller 40mm computer case fan, set to come on only when the fridge is cooling.

Wednesday, 29 04 09 - 15:46

Pork 'Haslet' Luncheon Meat

Maybe it's not the time to be writing about another pork sausage, with the pork futures market in free-fall, due to the outbreak of flu in Mexico from the H1N1 virus. Commonly called swine flu, even though the link to pigs has yet to be established. The FT reports today that: "The Mexican virus appears to contain porcine, avian and human genetic components", so no more chicken either folks!

The fact is that eating properly cooked pork is not going to give you 'swine' flu, even in the very unlikely event that the meat contains the virus.

Anyway, back to the luncheon meat. It's not my recipe, but the idea of my online buddy John at the sausagemaking.org forum, however I claim ownership to at least part of it as it's based on my 'every day' sausage blend.

...and the recipe? Simplicity itself - just replace the rusk in this recipe with 155gm of breadcrumbs, and increase the water to 200gm. Add 1.5gm of marjoram, or other herbs of your choice prior to stuffing.

I poached mine in a large collagen casing for about 1½ hours at 75 - 80°C until the internal temperature was 72°C. John, I now notice, cooked his in the oven at 180°C in a fibrous casing (large collagen casings aren't suitable for oven use). The resulting sausage is a sort of mild tasting haslet:

...and the verdict? Well to be honest, next time I think I'd either base it on this Lincolnshire sausage and cook it as a meatloaf, or just make the traditional haslet recipe from my 1938 copy of "Handy Guide for Pork Butchers"!

Tuesday, 07 04 09 - 14:22

She Bent My Sausage!

Well I made the Ham Luncheon Meat on Sunday, and what a kerfuffle! You see, you shouldn't make a sausage this size...

...unless you've got a pan large enough to cook it in:

Sliced thinly, no-body's the wiser:

Personally, I'm not keen on it, but everyone else likes it. However, when pushed, they agreed that it wouldn't be their first choice but would be fine in a mixed plated of different meats. To me it was predominately garlic, too salty and with a strange after-taste. I'll certainly do something similar again though, maybe with more ham, or even use cured ham raw, and less garlic.

The recipe is by Len Poli.

Friday, 03 04 09 - 17:05

Spend, Spend, Spend

It's been a week of spend, spend, spend. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining 'cos it's not been that sort of spending, you know the sort when things go wrong. No, it's been the pleasurable sort, but it still gives you funny pains in the wallet!

Some time ago a fellow forum member who lives in the US got in touch to say he was coming to the UK and was there anything I wanted bringing over? Why, you may think did he do this? Well sausagemaking supplies, not only equipment but ingredients as well, are so much easily sourced in the quantities used by non-commercial curers in the US. Obviously, we thought twice about him bringing any cures and powdered ingredients just in case UK Customs didn't see the funny side! So I settled on asking him to bring some large collagen casings (sausage skins), well very large actually, they're 90mm (3½") wide and about 680mm (27") long!

It turned out that my forum pal Laurence, known as This Little Piggy has an uncle in Loughborough and was visiting him, so it was great to go in person to collect my goodies. I also got him to bring some smaller 60mm casings, hog rings, and hog pliers. What are hog rings I hear you ask? They're those metal rings that seal off the end of cooked sausage in the supermarket. The pliers make it easier to use them. In all £50's worth.

I'm going to use the casings to make luncheon meats; not the cheap and nasty stuff that we all remember as children, but bologna, mortadella and some of the ones of German origin. The first one I'm going to try is a Ham Roll Luncheon Meat from the great sausage maker Len Poli's website. I've got a piece of ham curing and will hopefully cook it on Saturday and make the sausage on Sunday.

I also ordered sausage making and curing supplies from Sausagemaking.org and Weschenfelder's. Cure from Sausagemaking cost me about £16 and casings, vacuum packs, stockinette and a mincer plate from Weschenfelders, about £80. All-in-all the week was shaping up to be an expensive one!

To cap it off, last Friday was my birthday so I used this as an excuse to treat myself. Now, the luncheon meats and the hot dogs that I make are what are termed emulsified sausages. They're not just minced, but processed to an emulsion with a little water. Commercially they're done in a machine called a bowl cutter. No, I didn't buy one of those; the smallest ones are £1-2 thousand! The nearest we can get to this at home is a powerful food processor.

One of the best for home use is the Magimix with it's 1100w motor. The hairy biker's review of it can be viewed here. They don't come cheap though. The top of the range one cost me £240 but, if it's anywhere near as good as the ones I've owned before, it should last for years.

Wednesday, 04 02 09 - 21:18

Hot Dog Sausages - The recipe

When I wrote about my first attempt to make hot dog sausages I posted the link to the original recipe that I adapted. It's by Big Guy at the sausagemaking.org forum. I've just realised that some of the ingredients he mentions aren't available in the UK. Here's my anglicised version.

This recipe has cure #1 in it, a chemical that needs treating with great respect, the recipe may seem to have unnecessarily accurate measurements, the reason for this is that it allows me to maintain a consistency between 'batches', also because of the conversion from spoon & cup measurements, and in the case of cure #1 it is necessary to ensure a safe product. Digital scales to weigh to a tenth (or even a hundredth) of a gram are usually available for a tenner or so on ebay.

Saturday, 17 01 09 - 16:06

Hot Dog Sausages

Whilst the chorizo I made looked great, they were actually very crumbly when cut. I have since found out that the recipe I used originally didn't have citric acid in it, it was its addition that caused the crumbliness. The recipe has subsequently been amended. I will post it online after I have made some successfully. What with Christmas, and everything else, I haven't got around to it.

It's about time to get another half pig, but in the meantime I thought I'd have a go at making a good hot dog sausage. Now, I know many people consider hot dogs junk food, and turn their noses up, but they're just boring kill joys, there's nothing better than having a bread roll full of hot dog and onions, with lashings of mustard and tomato sauce.

The recipe's an adaption of Big Guy's at the sausagemaking.org forum. I used beef instead of the chicken and smoked them over oak for an hour, or so, rather than add liquid smoke.

All in all they've turned out really well.

Thursday, 11 12 08 - 16:34

Chorizo

If I can make it, so can you.

Before drying.

After Drying.

Recipe and instructions? Shortly.

Thursday, 25 09 08 - 17:00

Air Dried Meat and Sausage

From childhood I was told never to eat raw pork or sausage, so the concept of air drying meat, and then eating it without cooking, is somewhat alien to me. Therefore, it never ceases to amaze me how many people are happy to jump feet first into making air dried sausage, even in the middle of summer, without any form of temperature or other controls. I value my family and friends too much to take those risks.

For making air dried meats successfully, and more importantly safely, you need somewhere with the correct temperature and humidity to dry them. If you have a cool enough cellar or other area then it's fine. I don't, and with the fluctuating temperatures we now seem to get at any time of year, air drying outside or in the shed doesn't appear to be an option.

To solve the temperature problem I bought a second-hand wine fridge. However, whilst it will run at 10°C quite happily, it won't maintain the 12 to 15°C that I need. Fortunately, a friend's business makes electrical control systems and he offered to make me an independent controller for the cooler. Had I have realised that I needed this to achieve my goal, I could have adapted an old fridge which would have been a lot cheaper. Doh!

With the temperature problem solved I then had to worry about the humidity. Too high and the meat won't dry; too low and the outside will harden before the inside is dry enough to be safe. Ebay provided me with a thermometer/hygrometer for about a tenner and I found that my wine fridge fluctuates between 20% and 90% relative humidity - not good as I want to achieve 65 to 70%. I think that I have found an answer by making a box to fit inside the fridge to isolate the environment that the meat is in from the fridge itself. My woodwork is at primary school level but I have managed it - better still, it works.

When I get the temperature controller I think I'll try some chorizo first - they don't take as long to dry as salami.

If you want to make air dried sausage - chorizo, salami, pepperoni etc - a good place for information is Adam Marianski's WedlinyDomowe.com website. Further advice can be found on the sausagemaking.org forum and Len Poli's website.