Thursday, December 8, 2011

Mein weisswurst brings ze krauts to the yard...

Hog casings, ice cubes. Strangely enough, not gross at all in this form. I wouldn't want to be the guy that turns the hog guts into this, but they don't even have a smell, really.

Tonight we're doing our first emulsified sausage. All of the hardware has to be chilled to keep the emulsion from "breaking." If this happens, the sausage will taste fine but will apparently have a texture so unpalatable we'd throw it out.

Not terribly hard to crank but I'd love to mount this on a sturdier bench. Missy is off camera bracing the table. I am clearly going ape-poopy on the grinder.

Once through the coarse die, partially refrozen, mixed with salt.


Once through the fine die.

And then we beat the bejesus out of it with the paddle attachment. By this point it's like a meat mousse, all of the ingredients are fully incorporated.
A quenelle (a bit of the stuffing wrapped in plastic) lets us test-cook a bit and see if we need to adjust the flavoring. This one wasn't wrapped that well, tasted salty and a bit white-peppery. Oh well, onward.

No pictures of the stuffer in action because missy wasn't feeling well* and this was a solo operation. The links, once filled, are gently poached to 150 degF internal temperature, then dropped into an ice bath, setting the emulsion.


They are then refrigerated.
I had three for lunch today, it was amazing.

The end.

*I was washing dishes while Toby decided to thoroughly sanitize the counter and floor beside me. The smell of isopropyl was so bad that I had to go to another room and lie down.

**
She was already queasy, the isopropyl just brought it on. Who gets so sick they go lie down from a whiff of something that non-toxic? WHO?

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