Oktoberfest Brat

In this episode: Oktoberfest bratwurst recipe.

October, the shank of the year. For the past couple of weeks we've had such wonderful weather here, it's been hard to get any work done. But we've managed to have some fun.



In Columbus last weekend mom dug purple potatoes.



We picked pumpkins and wore funny paper hats.



And we grilled some sausages.

Fall and sausage go hand in hand, no wonder Germany has Oktoberfest around this time of year. Our annual sausage fest took this year off, but I did make some special sausage to celebrate the season.

Oktoberfest Bratwurst Recipe

Yield: About 20 sausages

2.2kg (that's 5 lbs.) pork shoulder
40g salt
7g ground white pepper
5g ground ginger
5g whole mustard seed
2g ground nutmeg
bunch of parsley, chopped
110g milk powder
225 ml (1 cup) beer, preferably Marzen style

Medium hog casings, rinsed and soaked for at least an hour.

To make this sausage extra special, I ground it twice. Start by cuting the pork shoulder into manageable chunks and run them through the grinder. For grinding I use the Kitchen Aid food grinder attachment on the stand mixer. Spread out the ground pork on a lined baking sheet and throw it in the freezer for half an hour.



Once crunchy, run it through the grinder again.



Five pounds of pork doesn't fit into my 4.5 quart mixing bowl so I did the next steps in a couple of batches.

Using the paddle attachment mix together the pork and the dry ingredients, then slowly add the beer. Continue to mix until the mixture comes together, 1 to 2 minutes.



Stuff into hog casings and twist.



Serve with German potato salad, braised red cabbage and mustard.

Cheers.

South African World Cup Braai

In this Episode

World Cup Boerewors (Farmer's Sausage)

Pap

Train Smash

Rhubarb Fluff

Remembering Merle Ellis, "The Butcher"

Where are you going to be when the World Cup kicks of this Friday? I'll be at work, but hopefully they'll have the TV tuned to the matches. I'm not a huge sports fan, but I really like international sporting events. They are a chance to get away from my small suburban existence and see a diverse world coming together to play. They are also a chance to eat and celebrate and a chance to learn how different peoples party. Every corner of the world has its sausage, so during this year's World Cup, I want to discover a few.

I start with host country South Africa. Boerewors is the sausage that is standard for any Braai (Barbecue)in South Africa. Sounds kinda like bratwurst huh? I don't how how to prounouce it but I suspect if you use an Austrailian dialect with a Dutch accent you'll come pretty close. Boer means farmer and wors is sausage (btw Bratwurst means grilling sausage). I found many different recipes, but most were made up of a combo of beef and pork heavily spiced with coridaner. I found a couple of formulas that called for bacon, I think that sounds good but since I was out (I'm curing some right now), here's what I did:



900g/2lbs Chuck roast coarsely ground
450g 1lb Pork shoulder coarsely ground
21g salt
10g Coriander, whole (toasted if possible)
5g Black pepper
2 whole cloves
pinch of mace

5g milk powder (optional helps with texture)
60ml/2oz/ 1/4cup white wine vinegar
60ml/2oz/ 1/4cup water

Grind spices with salt and beat into meat mixture. Then add milk powder and liquids, continue to beat until mixture comes together, maybe two minutes.



Stuff into hog casings, leave in a continuous length. Try to let the sausage rest a day before grilling. Cut to desired lengths and cook.

So what to serve with sausage? Starch and gravy of course. Mielie Pap is just as it sounds, corn porridge, or as it's pronounced in Italy, polenta. As in many cultures, pap is a staple in South African cuisine. White corn meal is typically used, but all I had was yellow so I went with that. I softened one chopped medium onion in some butter then added three cups of chicken stock and a teaspoon of salt. Once it came to a simmer I slowly stirred in 2 cups of corn meal. And I stirred and I stirred. once it started to bubble, the mixture seemed smooth but kinda bland.



I unstrapped and removed my Authentico Foodie Helmet, and phoned in East Africa for a little help. Berbere, a spice mixutre from Ethiopia consists mainly of dried red chillies, cardamom, cumin, fenugreek, coriander and other lesser variations. It's a spicy red curry powder. A tablespoon of this added a nice zip to my porridge.

Finally a sauce. I hate saying gravy, but it is what it is. I found several different names for the same sauce: Sous, Sjeba, Sheba, and my favorite, Train Smash. It's onions, tomatoes, green peppers and brown sugar stewed together. Sounds a lot like ketchup. But it's not, it's better.



I chopped up a bunch of tomatoes, added that to 3 cups of tomato sauce and put it into a hot satoir that contained one chopped onion, already softened. I roasted and skinned a poblano pepper, chopped it and threw it in. Once that mixture had cooked down a bit, I drew it out with about a cup of stock added a bouquet garni and let it simmer some more. For the sweetness I dribbled in a couple of ounces of molasses, for zip I sprinkled some hot paprika. After an hour it was about right. Let's eat.



For desert we shuffled back to the Midwest for a seasonal favorite strawberry shortcake. Remember when strawberries were seasonal?



Our patch has gotten large enough to produce berries in quantity. Bonne Femme made up some shortcakes, and I made some rhubarb fluff to go with. For the fluff I chopped up some rhubarb, sprinkled it with a heavy hand of sugar, some salt and a splash of tequila. I let it sit overnight in the fridge.



The next day I threw it in a pot with some water and cooked it down. The mash went for a whirl in the Cuisinart and then strained.



I folded the purée into some whipped cream and voilà, fluff.

let's eat.







A fine feast for World Cup. What are you going to fix?


Merle Ellis, The Butcher, 1934-2010.


When I was researching boerewors, the first recipe I found was in an old newspaper article written by Merle Ellis. In the 70's and 80's he wrote a nationally syndicated column titled "The Butcher." Can you imagine a weekly feature dedicated to home butchering and sausage recipes? He wrote hundreds of articles. He wrote several books and had a TV show called "Cut-up and Cook." He was the Original Rock Star Butcher. What I liked most about is writing was his plain straight forward approach and he could tie a recipe to a story. His recipes had soul, something that's missing from a lot of modern cookbooks. Mr. Ellis passed away in January (read the Obituary here). I became familliar with him when I found the items pictured above stuffed into two separate sausage books at used books sales. It's hard to find information about him on the internet, he stepped out of the lime light many years ago. On the blog I'm Mad and I Eat, there's a nice account of a chance meeting the author had with Mr. Ellis, and a recent comment on the the post The Ultimate Breakfast Sausage Recipe attests to kind interactions with Mr. Ellis as he worked behind the counter at a market in Petaluma, CA.

I have a copy of his first book Cutting-Up in the Kitchen. In it he dedicates the book to his wife:

"To Neva, Without her help it could have not been done. Without her it wouldn't have been worth doing."

Food and love forever, we should all be so lucky.

Cheers.



Resources used in this article (Links to WorldCat.org)

Another good Boerewors recipeThe Sausage-Making Cookbook by Jerry Predika

About Berbere, Cooking with Herbs and Spices by Andi Clevely et AL.

General Information about SA cuisine, The Oxford Companion to Food by Alan Davidson

The Ultimate Breakfast Sausage Recipe

Savory Breakfast Sausage Recipe.

After several weeks of research, thirteen pounds of pork shoulder, numerous taste tests, I collated the comments (i.e. what's that flavor?), tabulated the results, and today I present to you the Ultimate Breakfast Sausage Recipe.

I sent myself on this quest, after longtime reader, George from Ohio, wrote for a recipe. I felt bad (and never responded) because I did not have an answer. Well George, this one's for you, The Ultimate Breakfast Sausage recipe.

[BEEP BEEP] Wait, stop the Dictaphone, I'm getting a message across the Telex. It's the Beard Foundation.

[CLICKING NOISES, THE PHONE RINGS]

Yes, yes I understand.....But I have documentation showing the decline of American Cuisine starting in 1896....Uh-huh, why yes there was a distinct American cuisine that started with the earliest settlers, but this is about a truly American sausage, and I have discovered....

[INDISTINCT MUMBLING]

Ok I will tell them.

[THE PHONE RINGS AGAIN, IT CONTINUES TO RING]

Sorry about the interruption, it has been brought to my attention, that I do not have the Ultimate Breakfast Sausage Recipe, it actually rates only fifth or sixth...out of seven.



When I started my search the first thing I did was scratch the word "Breakfast" and replaced it "Country." We have been making Country Sausage in America for centuries. In his book Cutting-up in the Kitchen, Merle Ellis* decribes Country style sausage with sage. He tells how his grandma would stuff the sausage mixture into 3 x 12" muslin bags called 'pokes," then simply cut rounds as needed for breakfast. Jerry Predika's The Sausage-Making Cookbook, lists nearly thirty recipes for country or farmer's sausage. But the oldest recipe I found was in Mary Randolph's The Virgina House-Wife. First published in 1824, it's America's first cookbook. Randolph's recipe, found on page 66, calls for salt, pepper and sage. She notes that "(The) Sausages are excellent made into cakes and fried." Let's start there.


Old Sage

Just like many foodies before me, I have chortled at the notion of using dried herbs. Fresh is better and with the convience of modern groceries (and gardening) I can get a variety of fresh herbs. But wait, did I just pay three bucks for an ounce of "fresh" sage? Yeouch. I decided once and for all to compare fresh to dried, and I have concluded that dried is fine for sausage. For my tastes using 1/2 the measurement of dried sage for fresh is good. So, am I buying dried sage? No, I did for this project, but I grow my own. Do I carefully harvest and dry sage leaves? No...



I just grab whatever I can find in the snow and go with it. Growing sage is pretty easy, it's a perennial(it comes back year after year) and as you can see you can grab leaves from it anytime.



With Randolph's recipe in hand I made some sausage. Was it the Ultimate Breakfast Sausage? Not really. I started thinking about the flavors I wanted, I asked my wife (Bonne Femme), what she thought should go in it, and here's the recipe we finally settled on for the Ultimate Breakfast Sausage:

Savory Breakfast Sausage

1350g/3lbs Pork shoulder ground fine
20g/ 3tsp Salt
15g/ 1T Black peppercorns
18g/ 1/2c Dry rubbed sage
6g/ 1T Whole coriander

60g/2oz/ 1/4c Maple Syrup
120g/4oz/1/2c Water

Finely grind the spices with the salt and mix well into the ground pork. Beat in the maple syrup and water. Continue to stir until the mixture comes together. Stuff into sheep casings or form into 1 pound logs (Pokes). The logs can be wrapped and frozen then later sliced as needed. Fry until pink, do not overcook.

Here are a few additions I tried along the way:

Winter Savory. Another easy to grow perennial, it's flavor is a combination of Rosemary, thyme and mint. But be careful, this stuff is strong, no more than a gram per pound.

Fenugreek seeds. Ever since I read that the extract of this seed is used in maple flavoring, I wanted to use it. While the aroma is very 'mapley' it doesn't come through as well as actual syrup. This spice is an essential ingredient in many curries. It's a form of clover (Greek hay), I might try to grow it this year. In the sausage try 2 grams ground per pound.

Kelp powder. Don't tell the vegetarians I'm using kelp in sausage. Bonne Femme got this stuff for the dog, but I'm using it in bread baking. Scientifically it's Laminaria digitata, a form of brown seaweed. It's known as a superfood and it's loaded with iodine. I tried it in sausage because it enhances the umami, or as the pros say, it add some zip. Folks over in Japan have long known that seaweed triggers our taste buds just like monosodium glutamate. I don't really care one way or the other about MSG, but since I didn't have any, and I did have some kelp, I tried it out. It's noticeable, I want to play around with it some more. Try 1/4 teaspoon per pound.



So it's the Ultimate Breakfast Sausage Recipe, right? Well maybe not. While I was working on this project I happend to thumb through John Thorne's Mouth Wide Open: A Cook and His Appetite. In it he states:

"'Ultimate' recipes are something you earn, not find."

Boy if that ain't a sucker punch to the gut. I spend all this time cramming recipes through my "test kitchen" when I realize it's gonna take me a long time to perfect the Ultimate Breakfast Sausage recipe. In the meantime, YOU can make one too. You've got the basics, start with the three ingredients, and then think would what would taste good. Basil? Garlic? Thyme? Make it yours and it's gonna be good. If you have any questions I'm happy to help.



Cheers.

Resources used in this article (Links to WorldCat.org)

*Merle Ellis, I think he's still around, but the seventies and eighties he wrote a syndicated column called "The Butcher." He had a TV show and a catalogue, A true food star. I like his no nonsense approach. One day I wanna be in a movie where I try all his recipes. It's called MAC and Merle.

Try to find Ellis' Great American Meat Book, it pretty interesting.

The Sausage-Making Cookbook by Jerry Predika

The Virgina House-Wife by Mary Randolph, annotated by Karen Hess

About Savory and Sage, The Herbfarm Cookbook by Jerry Traunfeld

About Fenugreek, Cooking with Herbs and Spices by Andi Clevely et AL.

About Seaweed and MSG, The Oxford Companion to Food by Alan Davidson

Mouth Wide Open: A Cook and His Appetite by John Thorne, Matt Lewis Thorne

Sausage Mania Part Deux

The post holiday sausage wrap-up.

Recipes for Kielbasa and Venison Sausage.

Nothing says Merry Christmas like sausage. About a week before the big day, me and Neighbor J, got together and stuffed thirty pounds of holiday cheer. In the previous Sausage Mania we made a few different kinds of sausage. The time we planned on making only Kielbasa, but again we also got some venison from Neighbor K, so we worked that into the schedule too. We adapted recipes from The Sausage Making Cookbook, by Jerry Predika. I got my autographed copy as a gift from one of my readers in Europe who picked it up in San Diego. What a small world.

Kielbasa.

Predika's book has ten different Polish recipes. We did three versions. We used a combination of beef and pork. What are the essential ingredients to a Kielbasa? Garlic and marjoram. You can improvise from there.

One nice thing about winter is that you can put stuff outside to keep it cold.

Venison.

The book has thirteen venison recipes. Again we picked three. All the recipes call for the addition of pork.

The venison was already ground, so we ground our pork then mixed all the meats with the seasonings.

The next day I fired up the smoker.

I hot smoked a few to a internal temperature of 150F.

I took my batch to share in Columbus.

The day after Christmas the smoked sausages made a good hiking snack in the Hocking Hills.

Here's the ingredients we used:

Polish Kielbasa 1
3lb Beef
2lb Pork
40 g salt
1-1/2T 15 g pepper
1-1/2t 2g dried marjoram
½ t 2 g allspice
6 large cloves of garlic
2T 18 g paprika

This one was really spicy compare to the others, a few tasters said it was too strong.

PK 2
3lb Beef
2lb Pork
40g salt
10g Pepper
3 g dried marjoram
6 large cloves of garlic
½ t 2g cayenne

PK 3
2lb 9oz Beef
12 oz Pork
2lb 4oz Pork belly
45 g salt
8 g fresh marjoram
1g allspice
1 T fennel seed
10 g pepper

This one we just made up. I put too much salt in it. It should be only 35g.

Venison 1
3 lb Venison
1 lb pork
1 lb beef
40 g salt
10 g pepper
2 T 3g Sage
1T 1g thyme
½ t 2 g nutmeg
½ t 2 g cayenne
2 bay leaves


V2
2-1/2 lb Venison
2-1/2 lb pork
½ lb butter
38 g salt
3 t 10 g pepper
1 t 3 g cayenne
2 g sage

We ended up with big chunks of butter in this one. The neighbor said it grilled up real nice.

V3
4 lb Venison
1 lb pork
37 g salt
2t 9g sugar
2t 8g pepper
1t 1g dried marjoram
4 cloves garlic

Of all six sausages I think this one was the best. I don't have a particular affinity for venison, but I was surprised how well these few ingredients turned out such a good sausage. It worked well both smoked and fresh.

Now go make some sausage, give me a call if you need help.

Cheers.