Rillettes Encore

Nothing says love like potted pork. I haven't made rillettes in a while and I have forgotten how good they can be. I also had them in a restaurant a few months ago and I was reminded how bad they can be. The secret, don't chop them too long in the cuisinart lest they turn into what Jane Grigson describes as a "Porridge-like slush"



I pounded mine. But wait, this post is running like a Tarantino movie, I've started in the middle, now I've go to flash back to the beginning and work my way to the end.



I wrote about rilletes in this post from 2007. Like then, I made lard then slow cooked cubed pork in it. But here's what I did different:

Pre-salting. Nothing new here, Elizabeth David mentions it in her rillettes recipe, I salted at 2% of meat (i.e. 20g for 1000g of pork). I cut the pork into small chunks, salted it and let it sit overnight.

Slooow-cooking and not too long. 200F oven until the pork just falls apart. I did mine for four hours, and they were sightly overcooked. What's overcooked? Dry fluffy fibers that feel like sawdust on the tongue. But don't worry, adding back some melted fat will remedy the situation. Again I am getting to the end when I need to get back to the middle.



I melted about 1000g of lard for my 1000g of salted cubed pork shoulder. The pork should be completely under the lard. I added a sachet: A bulb of garlic, Handful of peppercorns, fresh bay and thyme tied in a muslin cloth. Place this in a 200F oven for 3 to 4 hours. Once done, drain and reserve lard, discard sachet, and allow the cubes of pork to rest for a half an hour. After resting, mince then pound the pork. While pounding add back some of the reserved lard, to achieve a nice pate. At this point you can add some seasoning, salt, quatre épices or some acid (lemon, wine). I didn't add any of these things, the pork stood on its own. Pack the rilletes into old jam jars or a crock, leave a little headroom then cover with a half an inch of melted lard. Store in the refrigerator, but allow to come to room temperature for service. Put the rillettes out with some pickled veg and grainy mustard. My German pal likes a little lard and rillettes spread on bread with a sprinkle of flaky salt. However you do it make it yours.



Cheers.


Further Reading:

Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery by Grigson

French Provincial Cooking by David

Pork & Sons by Reynaud

Charcuterie by Ruhlman and Polcyn

The Chicago Hot Link

If you want to make Chicago Style BBQ, then you gotta make hot links. I have always liked having sausage as part of a BBQ spread, but I never realized the hot link is part of what defines our regional style. In this episode I have two hot link recipes to share and I'll talk a little about why I think they represent the sausage known as the Chicago hot link.



I made my first hot links in 2007. I molded the recipe from several online variants which I later learned all came from a single recipe in Hot Links and Country Flavors, Bruce Aidells. At the time most of my searching associated the hot link sausage with Texas style of BBQ. I always wondered how did a Texas sausage end up in BBQ joints in Chicago? Turns out it didn't, The Chicago hot link was born right here, founded on a tradition that came up out of somewhere a little east of Texas. This revelation came to me in the form of a video titled "A Barbecue History of Chicago" by Michael Gebert. In it Gebert presents a thoughtful history of Chicago BBQ and defines the BBQ Style of our region. Take the time to watch it.



Since I first saw the documentary last September, I been mixing batches sausage and searching the internet trying to find he right link. I have had a few hot links around town and they all can be described, as they were on one food forum, as a "Spicy breakfast sausage." But before I could work on that, I came across another description a hot link containing only salt, garlic and crushed red pepper flakes. I'm sorry I have since lost the page where I read this (it's in the LTHForum somewhere), but author claimed to have fashioned these hot links while working at Hecky's in Evanston. Hecky's is a special place for me because it was the first place I had BBQ in the Chicago area way back in 1990. Misty reminiscing aside, I liked the idea of of those three ingredients making a tasty sausage. Well, it didn't work, batch after batch, it always seemed to be missing something. I finally got it right, with a few more ingredients thrown in.



Chicago Bacon Hot Link

Per 1000g of Meat
80% pork shoulder
20% bacon
16g salt
10g fresh garlic, minced
10g paprika
7g ground black pepper
7g mustard powder
5g sugar
2g red pepper flakes

20g milk powder

100 ml water or beer.

Hog casings soaked at least a half an hour.

Cut pork into manageable cubes toss with the salt. Dice the bacon. Put both in the freezer for half an hour. When the meats are crunchy but not quite frozen, run them through the grinder. Using a stand mixer with paddle attachment or a big wooden spoon beat in spices and milk powder. Gradually add liquid and continue to stir until you get a nice paste. Stuff into hog casings, twist into links (or not) and let them hang in to fridge for at least 24 hours. Slow cook hot links over a gentle wood fire into done, about half an hour depending on your fire.

Substituing Chicken for the pork and cured jowl for the bacon also makes a nice link, here's one stuffed into a lamb casing for a bite sized portion.



I realize bacon may be a surprise ingredient for a hot link. I use it to get more smoky flavor, without having to hot smoke sausage for a long time. I cooked the chicken hot link pictured above in the oven, and the bacon gave it a fresh off the smoker taste.



I really like the Bacon garlic hot link, but for that authentic South side flavor, you've gotta go for with the spicy breakfast sausage.



Chicago Sage and Beef Hot Link
Per 1000g of Meat
60% pork shoulder
40% beef chuck
20g salt
7g paprika
7g ground black pepper
5g sage
5g fennel
3g coriander
2g allspice
5g sugar

20g milk powder

100ml water or beer

Hog casings soaked at least a half an hour.

Cut up the pork and beef and toss with salt. Put both in the freezer for half an hour. When the meats are crunchy but not quite frozen, run them through the grinder. Using a stand mixer with paddle attachment or a big wooden spoon beat in spices and milk powder. Gradually add liquid and continue to stir until you get a nice paste. Stuff into hog casings, twist into links (or not) and let them hang in to fridge for at least 24 hours. Slow cook hot links over a gentle wood fire into done, about half an hour depending on your fire.





Of course these sausages get a better with age, after cooking let them hang in the fridge unwrapped for a couple days, then reheat when you're ready to serve. Or you can chomp on them cold, or roll them in bread dough, and you've got a party in a bun.



Anyway you put it, The Chicago Hot link is a tasty part of our food history that you can now make at home.



Cheers.

Curing a Ham for Christmas Part 3 and The Year in Review

Happy New Year! I hope you had a good 2011, I did, let's take a look back. But first let's close the book on this Christmas Ham.



I started it at the end of November using my bacon brine recipe. Incidently I recently read on LovePork.co.uk, that a ham made with a bacon cure is called gammon. I learn something new every day.



After a week and a half in the brine, I put the ham out to hang. Ten days in the larder and its getting close to Xmas. I smoked it for 10 hours.







The ham turned out pretty good, next time I think I will let it brine a little longer. And that's how 2011 ended for me, Good, but I gotta do better.

2011 began with me wondering if Saucisson MAC was over. I started working full time at Three Floyds Brewpub, and I had little time to experiment at home. But that doesn't mean I wasn't having fun. Every week we got in several Gunthorp Farms pork bellies that we turned into bacon. I used the bacon scraps and the trimmings from our Duck Frites dish to create the monsterous Bacon Duck Dog.



We butchered a goat for tacos,



we butchered a Red Wattle hog from South Pork Ranch for a Cochon555 event.



And we went vegetarian for the Green City Market BBQ.



Then in August I took time off to spend with my family in Hawaii. We made some beautiful food.

In September, I found more time to blog and I have been slowly trying to get the sausage locomtive back on track.



I started out with making chicharones from bacon skins.



For British Sausage Week, I made some Cambridge Sausages.



For St. Martin's Day, I made some Snout Bacon.



Smoked a turkey for Thanksgiving,



And cured fish and made eggs for Christmas Brunch.

In the New Year, I resolve to bring new sausages that you can make at home. I will share with you my recent obessions with Kimchi and French Fries. And I'll introduce you to some new friends along the way. In the meantime I have to grout the tile in the kitchen and walk the dog.



Cheers.

Thanks Nate.

In this episode, Sausage and Modernist Cuisine.

A good cookbook inspires you to cook. Even if the book is loaded with recipes that require expensive equipment or use hard to find ingredients, if it sets your brain a percolating, then it's worth it. Ok EVEN IF the recipes don't inspire, and the galactic reams of scientific jargon make your brain numb, if you glean a small nugget of information that improves your cooking, then it's worth borrowing from the library.



Over the past month I have been receiving various volumes of Modernist Cuisine, by Nathan Myhrvold, Chris Young, Maxime Bilet and Ryan Matthew Smith. I requested them from the library. So far I have gone over (in the order that they were received) Volumes 1, 4, 5 and 3. I laughed, I cried, it's was better that Cats.

I read Volume 1 just about cover to cover (I couldn't stay awake for chapters 5 and 6). I found the the history tracing the "Modernist Movement" and the chef profiles very interesting. I immediately searched out books by Keller, Blumenthal, Ferran and Achatz.

However the surveys of cooking history , microbiology for cooks, food safety, and Nutrition (called "Food and Health" in the book) were well trodden and bland. Anyone who has been to culinary school and/or read the New York Times would find themselves in familiar fields. Albeit in some parts these vast fields are described down to the single blade of grass. So who is this book for? It's pedantic for the trained cook, and tediously technical for the novice. I contend it's for no one, except for the writers. Volume 1 is subtitled "History and Fundamentals," and in it Myhrvold and his crew lay a base of general cookery engineered to support the thesis that Modernist Cuisine movement will/has revoulutionize(d) how people cook and think about cooking. I think it has changed the face of fine dining, but we are a long way off from seeing mini science lab set-ups as part of the home kitchen routine. Nonetheless these volumes are worth a gander.



Other volumes varied from "Ooo that sounds interesting" to "Oh, we were doing that at work."



For instance a few months back I decribed a method for making chicharones at home. It's boil, dehydrate and fry. In volume 4 page 302, there's a table of "Puffed snacks." Chicharones are not specifically on it but the process is.



Volume 3 is pretty cool, especially the chapter on sausage, titled "Restructuring." Again a lot of the information shared here can be found in other places, but the tables listing industrial additives are informative. Not that I will ever get my hands on any of this stuff. One product I have worked with is Activa. Yogurt you say? No, meat glue. At the restaurant we used it to glue together pork shoulder roasts that we were curing as hams. You can read the book for a more scientific description, but suffice to say Activa replicates naturally occurring enzymes that binds proteins together. We would form our roasts, sprinkle on the powdered glue and roll them tightly in plastic. The next day we would have solid boneless footballs ready to smoke.



Sausage making is all about binding meats, or was Myhrvold calls it in a most Mary Shelley way, Restructuring. Forming a good emulsion (that's binding)is something with which I am always tinkering, and this book explained a couple of key concepts that for me, resulted in very nicely textured sausage.

Pre-salting. Somewhere in the sausage chapter Myhrvold mentions salt on meat draws out the enzymes that bind proteins together, and that salting the cut up but not ground meat helps the prepare for the bonding activity. Seasoning before grinding is a concept I first read in Ruhlman's Charcuterie, and I did it for a while, but when I would want to make different sausages (ie Sausage Mania)I found that adding the seasonings later meant that I could do all my grinding at once, and it didn't taste all that different to me. But pre-salting for binding, I would have to try that. I salted the cut up meats, (in this case duck and chicken) and let it sit for 24 hours.

Water. Some of the Modernist Cuisine sausage formulas call for 10% added water. In their book Home production of quality meats and sausages, Stanley Marianski and Adam Mariański describe the water absorbtion values of lean meats. Also most of the sausage recipes in Charcuterie, call for the addition of liquid. My point here is that "Modernist Cuisine" puts forward information that has been previuously published, however it is nice to see the information in a table, and the easy to remember percentage sticks in my brain.



I made two sausages for a party recently, A Chicken and pork hot link,



and a coffee and lavender duck sausage. Using the two tips from the sausage chapter, I ended up with some beautiful sausages. I'll write more about these specific sausages in the coming weeks.

To conclude, I heartily suggest you check out these books from the library, they provide a glimpse to what is in evolving in commercial kitchens today. I haven't received Volume 2, Techniques and Equipment, really the meat of the matter in Myhrvold's quest. The overall idea you should take away from these volumes that cooking with precision makes tastier food, and now with instant read thermometers, and better cooking tools, it's become easier to cook with precision. In short, don't overcook the sausage!



Cheers.

Curing a Ham for Chirstmas Part 2

Sorry it's been a little more than a week since we last talked. The ham came out of the brine last Thursday and it's been hanging in the fridge. I'll let it go a few more days, then I'll put it on to smoke.