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sausages for breakfast

I wound up with a copy of Michael Ruhlman's Charcuterie mainly because I wanted to figure out a way to make a better poultry breakfast sausage. This month, with breakfast-sausage sized casings ordered from the internet, I finally made a first attempt at that goal, egged on by Charcuteapalooza's May challenge.

The challenge was for loose breakfast sausage this month, but in the spirit of learning something new, since I've already had plenty of practice in grinding sausage, my sausage was destined for breakfast sausage sized collagen casings. And we experimented with turkey and chicken sausages (both with just the natural poultry fat). The goal was something tasty, healthy, and even able to be eaten by people who don't eat pork. The bonus would be if I could pre-cook the links and freeze them, for later quick breakfast needs.

In the end, most of that sausage did wind up being loose. We did a small batch of chicken (with purchased boneless chicken thighs) and a small batch of turkey (with turkey drumsticks that required butchering off the bone... a project in itself.) Then, we got to the stuffing phase, and at least so far, I didn't figure out how I could actually make links that stay put in collagen casings, oops. Possibly soaking it first was my problem, and all the other sausage hobbyist posts I found on the internet complaining of the same thing made the same mistake as me. Or possibly collagen sausage just won't form links by twisting. I have more casings in the fridge to experiment with next time, and the rest of the meat went to some straightforward breakfast patties. For breakfast, with pancakes.

In the meantime, since I couldn't make links, the only thing I could think of to do with my coiled length of stuffed sausage was to poach it (as Ruhlman describes for doing with emulsified sausages, though these aren't emulsified) and then once the sausage was cooked and wasn't going to escape the casings, cut it into cylindrical links. Not stylish, but functional. They're in the freezer, waiting to be tested out this week to see if they are good enough to do again.

Boring but functional may be the biggest problem. Homemade sausage is definitely still a project, even after making it enough times over the past few years. Practice does not make you faster at cleaning raw meat off of bowls, trays, and Kitchenaid parts, or at slowly feeding meat through the grinder or at sausage filling through the stuffer. It might help with making links out of collagen casing, if that turns out to be a learnable skill. It might make me faster at butchering turkey drumsticks, but I don't know if I'm going to be practicing that one quite often enough either - the turkey tasted better, but not quite better enough to be worth all that extra trouble. So is all of that worth it for a sausage that I precook and stick straight into the freezer, (and one that's good enough but missing all that tasty tasty extra fat, too) rather than one that I make very special and eat very fresh for a special occasion meal?

But at least in theory, I've finally done what I set out to do when I bought Charcuterie, and will have a breakfast this week one morning that I made myself, that is healthy protein that tastes good and can go straight from freezer to microwave when I'm in a hurry.
Posted by Abbe at 6:16 AM No comments: 
Becoming a smoker Labels: charcutepalooza, meat


a few days early for St. Patrick's Day Labels: charcutepalooza


Pancetta Starts with P Posted by Abbe at 6:15 AM No comments: Labels: charcutepalooza, charcuterie, meat, preserving, winter


Duck Prosciuitto Chicken? Duck Prosciutto Bacon.
 Posted by Abbe at 1:08 PM 4 comments: Labels: charcutepalooza, charcuterie, meat, preserving


Rutabaga salad

I may just be the poster child for liking just about any vegetable just about any way, but I found another simple easy root vegetable preparation for our winter root vegetable bounty the other day. I wanted to get out of the mashed rutabaga rut, even though I love them that way.

If mashing them like potatoes worked, I decided to see if boiling them like potatoes worked too. One of our potato salad standbys in this house is just to boil potatoes, then toss the potato cubes with olive oil and salt, and we also do something similar with celeriac, garlic, lemon juice, and olive oil. (and salt of course. Maybe I should title this post "fat and salt" too.) Before boiling, I peeled and cubed the rutabaga, then boiled long enough to be tender but not falling apart, tossed with a little bit of vinegar, olive oil, and salt.


2 lb rutabaga, peeled and cubed

1 tsp dill seed

1-2 tbsp olive oil

about 1/2 tsp salt, to taste

1-2 tsp red wine vinegar

Boil rutabagas in salted water with dill seed until tender (15 or 20 minutes worked for us.) Drain, then toss with olive oil, salt, and vinegar and serve. Can be served room temperature as a salad to accompany sandwiches, or warm to accompany other warm food.
Posted by Abbe at 7:05 AM No comments: Labels: CSA, recipes


Fat and Salt

I stumbled upon a monthly blogging project that will get me to use a bit more of my favorite new cookbook, Michael Ruhlman's Charcuterie, and now in addition to pondering it I've bought ingredients and gotten started.
The project is called Charcutepalooza, and a number of bloggers will be making cured meat, sausages, and whatnot once a month and blogging about it throughout 2011. Today I started duck breast prosciutto by putting a large raw duck breasts into a containerful of salt. (This project should have happened and been finished by 15 January, but I hadn't heard about it yet.) February's project is pancetta, which is cured and tightly rolled up bacon. I am making a smaller quantity of both of them than the recipes call for - if they turn out great I will perhaps feel silly, but if they're a disaster I will be glad not to have ruined quite as much expensive meat.

I will report on how the projects go, hopefully in time for February 15 with the pancetta...

(also posted at my shared blog at Always Be Cooking)
Posted by Abbe at 11:47 PM No comments: 
spicy italian sausage

In yesterday's post I mentioned that I usually love the creative inspiration of cooking whatever I found in the box or in the fridge, and that, not the cost savings, is one of the main reasons I like to participate in our CSA.

Our meat CSA usually doesn't quite work that way - in a "best of both worlds" arrangement I get to pick and choose my meat from a larger CSA assortment of over 25 lbs of frozen meat. So I get the "ooh, yay, there's a brisket!" moments and still get to plan what meats inspire me, at least a little bit. But the last meat delivery, I got without personally going to choose things - the friend who I share the distribution asked me for some guidance and then dropped off the meat at my front door. Mostly a big favor (thanks, Megan!) but in this case, landed me with a package of hot Italian sausage - our least favorite of the sausage varieties, although I did say "I'll take some sausage, since that makes a quick easy meal."

My standby meal is to just bake the sausages with potatoes and eat them, but the spicy ones are too spicy for me to want to eat forkfuls of. (Plus, too spicy for a certain little girl to be willing to eat at all.) I'm pleased with how I've wound up using it as in ingredient so far, though.

Step 1: I cooked the sausages plain in a covered cast iron frying pan on medium-low heat. (This gets the skins nicely browned and crispy but by covering the pan, contains enough heat that they cook through, if you do it patiently.) This makes fully cooked sausage ready to add to whatever you want.

The first one was sliced into a quart of potato leek and arugula soup that I had previously frozen - small bits of sausage added plenty of protein, and the seasoning was subtle.

The second one went into some very quick burritos. Yes, they were supposed to be "Italian" but mostly they are just the right level of spicy to read as a spicy Mexian sausage if one isn't shooting for authentic - chopped into cubes, reheated with leftover cooked squash and some garlic, and put into some flour tortillas with cheese melted on them along with salsa and Greek yogurt-as-sour-cream.

The third one will probably get sliced onto a pair of sandwiches, maybe with roasted red pepper and sauteed onion if I am feeling inspired.
Posted by Abbe at 6:50 AM No comments: Labels: CSA, meat


market analysis: summing it all up

November 11, Week 22 Posted by Abbe at 11:26 AM No comments: Labels: CSA, market analysis