- May 18, 2021
- 498
- 405
The last time I attempted to follow
I
I-am-Chorizo
's recipe, I minced the meat a bit too much. So I wanted to try a batch that really has chunks of meat in it. I also wanted to experiment on a lot of other things:
Here's how it goes:
The above is the pre-grind chunks and the diced meat. I did try to show a preference to dicing lean out of habit and because it simply felt like the right thing to do for "show meat."
This is from pork shoulder butt, but it looked a tad lean so I supplemented with 70g of pork back fat for a total of 1000g meat (was 1070, but I lost 70 in the grinder, which worked out fine for me).
Here's how it looks after the grind (500g dice, 500g ground), with the ingredients and prepped casing.
The amounts per 1000kg I used were:
Normally when I add minced meat, I add a bit of binder, but since it's not in this recipe, I didn't use it and paid extra care with protein extraction.
The paddle mixer didn't do as well as it normally did. Possibly because less water than usual at 30g or possibly because of large chunks. I added another 10g of water to no avail, so I got in there with my hands to finish the job. Looks extracted.
I then stuffed into the natural casing and Fine-T casing (since I was going to experiment more with Fine-T, that's why I did more of that one).
Here's the obligatory post-stuffing patty burger:
Since I had more fat in the dice than I usually allow for, I was worried at this point that I would bit into some unappetizing gristle or whatever but it was delicious as usual. The chunks of meat added a bit of extra texture that I liked and felt appropriate. I think the dice worked!!
However, I did find that the garlic flavor was a bit more muted than last time. I think I'll go back to the roasted garlic. As for the increased spice amounts, I think as the spices stand out more, the cilantro / green onions stand out less. I think this is slightly less ideal, as I really liked the "pop" of the fresh ingredients. That being said, they also get more muted anyways as the sausage ages, so I'm on the fence. I think there's a sort of beauty with this recipe with the fresh ingredients on one side contrasting with a typical well-flavored sausage -- I love the duality there, so I sort of want the fresh ingredients to remain strong (which is why I skip the wine). That being said, I think it's in the realm of preference. Either way, with more or less spice it's still really good.
Letting them rest overnight in casings and will smoke em tomorrow.
- How a dice of half the meat impacts this recipe
- Fine-T collagen casings. I'm hosting a sausage party and I'm considering using a hot-dog roller to have a lot of sausage readily available. The idea being to make a fine-quality sausage but put into a straight casing so it can work on the roller. I ordered 30mm Fine-T casings to test this out. I want to see how the compare against natural, and will split into cohorts and cook differently to try out. .
- Leveraging granulated garlic instead of roasted garlic.
- Increasing spice amounts (generally following D Dave in AZ 's recipe except for the wine and cherry tart powder for my antioxidant).
Here's how it goes:
The above is the pre-grind chunks and the diced meat. I did try to show a preference to dicing lean out of habit and because it simply felt like the right thing to do for "show meat."
This is from pork shoulder butt, but it looked a tad lean so I supplemented with 70g of pork back fat for a total of 1000g meat (was 1070, but I lost 70 in the grinder, which worked out fine for me).
Here's how it looks after the grind (500g dice, 500g ground), with the ingredients and prepped casing.
The amounts per 1000kg I used were:
- 15g salt
- 1.5g black pepper
- 2.3g paprika
- 4.4g granulated garlic
- 15g green onions
- 7g cilantro
- 2.5g cure #1
- 0.5g sodium erythorbate
- 0.4g cherry tart powder (subbing for ascorbic acid from D Dave in AZ recipe translation)
- 30g water (subbing for Wine from D Dave in AZ recipe translation)
Normally when I add minced meat, I add a bit of binder, but since it's not in this recipe, I didn't use it and paid extra care with protein extraction.
The paddle mixer didn't do as well as it normally did. Possibly because less water than usual at 30g or possibly because of large chunks. I added another 10g of water to no avail, so I got in there with my hands to finish the job. Looks extracted.
I then stuffed into the natural casing and Fine-T casing (since I was going to experiment more with Fine-T, that's why I did more of that one).
Here's the obligatory post-stuffing patty burger:
Since I had more fat in the dice than I usually allow for, I was worried at this point that I would bit into some unappetizing gristle or whatever but it was delicious as usual. The chunks of meat added a bit of extra texture that I liked and felt appropriate. I think the dice worked!!
However, I did find that the garlic flavor was a bit more muted than last time. I think I'll go back to the roasted garlic. As for the increased spice amounts, I think as the spices stand out more, the cilantro / green onions stand out less. I think this is slightly less ideal, as I really liked the "pop" of the fresh ingredients. That being said, they also get more muted anyways as the sausage ages, so I'm on the fence. I think there's a sort of beauty with this recipe with the fresh ingredients on one side contrasting with a typical well-flavored sausage -- I love the duality there, so I sort of want the fresh ingredients to remain strong (which is why I skip the wine). That being said, I think it's in the realm of preference. Either way, with more or less spice it's still really good.
Letting them rest overnight in casings and will smoke em tomorrow.