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madbakerThis week's Resolution Recipe: To make a sausage.
Take Martinmass beef [salt beef], or if you can not get it, take fresh beef, or the lean of bacon if you will. You must mince very small that kind of flesh that you take. And cut lard and put it into the minced meat, and whole pepper, and the yolks of seven eggs, and mingle them altogether. And cut the meat into a gut very salt, and hang him in the chimney where he may dry. There let him hang a month or two before you take him down. (The Good Huswife’s Iewell, 1596)
1 kg (2.2 lbs) beef cross-rib or chuck roast
350 grams (0.75 lbs) pork back fat
10 grams whole pepper (lightly crack if you want to)
3.375 grams curing salt #2
25 grams salt
2 large egg yolks
casings: beef casings of desired thickness
1/4 cup distilled water
1/4 teaspoon Mold-600 Bactoferm Sausage Mould
Chop the beef and fat together; thoroughly mix with salts, pepper, and egg yolks. Rinse casings as needed. Knot bottom of each casing used; stuff and twist at desired lengths, piercing with a needle as necessary. Knot to finish.
Cold smoke the sausages for one to four hours, depending on thickness and desired smokiness. Half an hour before removing the sausages from the smoke, whisk together the Bactoferm Mould culture and the distilled water. Let sit for 30 minutes to activate. Coat the sausages with the mixture and then hang them in a cool spot around 50-53° F and 75-80% humidity to dry. Depending on the width of the casings used, they should hang 4-8 weeks until the sausages have lost approximately 30% of their weight.
Modern egg yolks are generally larger, so I reduced the number. Other measurements have been converted to grams to make scaling easier.
I added the curing salt #2 for safety reasons; it helps prevent botulism bacteria from forming during the curing process and does not noticeably change the flavors. As I used fresh beef I added salt.
I used a cold smoker and separated out the smoking and drying process, as I do not have a wood-fired chimney in which I can hang sausages. The drying instructions come from modern sausage and salami recipes that similarly call for smoking and then drying. The Bactoferm sausage mould is a commercial culture of harmless edible mold used in modern processes to help prevent more toxic molds from forming; it also adds flavor and aids in the drying process.
What worked: So far they are okay, but they taste like a (not-processed-with-lots-of-filler) Slim Jim. While they will hang longer I suspect they'll continue to taste that way. There just isn't that much to these.
What didn't: Two major problems contributed to the Slim-Jimitude. The first was the organic pork back fat I got from our CSA farmer's neighbor: it's good quality and cheap, but apparently she mixed in belly fat with it. Belly fat is softer than back fat and it completely liquified when chopping. Then I let the cold smoker get too hot and the already-liquified fat completely rendered out.
Will I make it again? Not in a hurry, but I'd like to get it right. Although if it still ends up tasting like a Slim Jim, I'll just make it in sheep or lamb casings and declare it a 16th c. equivalent. (Maybe I'll throw in a fermenting culture to give it a bit of zing...)
Take Martinmass beef [salt beef], or if you can not get it, take fresh beef, or the lean of bacon if you will. You must mince very small that kind of flesh that you take. And cut lard and put it into the minced meat, and whole pepper, and the yolks of seven eggs, and mingle them altogether. And cut the meat into a gut very salt, and hang him in the chimney where he may dry. There let him hang a month or two before you take him down. (The Good Huswife’s Iewell, 1596)
1 kg (2.2 lbs) beef cross-rib or chuck roast
350 grams (0.75 lbs) pork back fat
10 grams whole pepper (lightly crack if you want to)
3.375 grams curing salt #2
25 grams salt
2 large egg yolks
casings: beef casings of desired thickness
1/4 cup distilled water
1/4 teaspoon Mold-600 Bactoferm Sausage Mould
Chop the beef and fat together; thoroughly mix with salts, pepper, and egg yolks. Rinse casings as needed. Knot bottom of each casing used; stuff and twist at desired lengths, piercing with a needle as necessary. Knot to finish.
Cold smoke the sausages for one to four hours, depending on thickness and desired smokiness. Half an hour before removing the sausages from the smoke, whisk together the Bactoferm Mould culture and the distilled water. Let sit for 30 minutes to activate. Coat the sausages with the mixture and then hang them in a cool spot around 50-53° F and 75-80% humidity to dry. Depending on the width of the casings used, they should hang 4-8 weeks until the sausages have lost approximately 30% of their weight.
Modern egg yolks are generally larger, so I reduced the number. Other measurements have been converted to grams to make scaling easier.
I added the curing salt #2 for safety reasons; it helps prevent botulism bacteria from forming during the curing process and does not noticeably change the flavors. As I used fresh beef I added salt.
I used a cold smoker and separated out the smoking and drying process, as I do not have a wood-fired chimney in which I can hang sausages. The drying instructions come from modern sausage and salami recipes that similarly call for smoking and then drying. The Bactoferm sausage mould is a commercial culture of harmless edible mold used in modern processes to help prevent more toxic molds from forming; it also adds flavor and aids in the drying process.
What worked: So far they are okay, but they taste like a (not-processed-with-lots-of-filler) Slim Jim. While they will hang longer I suspect they'll continue to taste that way. There just isn't that much to these.
What didn't: Two major problems contributed to the Slim-Jimitude. The first was the organic pork back fat I got from our CSA farmer's neighbor: it's good quality and cheap, but apparently she mixed in belly fat with it. Belly fat is softer than back fat and it completely liquified when chopping. Then I let the cold smoker get too hot and the already-liquified fat completely rendered out.
Will I make it again? Not in a hurry, but I'd like to get it right. Although if it still ends up tasting like a Slim Jim, I'll just make it in sheep or lamb casings and declare it a 16th c. equivalent. (Maybe I'll throw in a fermenting culture to give it a bit of zing...)
