I've been taking a look at another Marianski cooked sausage: Hunter's Sausage (Mysliwska). The fact that these recipes are rooted in tradition hundreds of years old is fascinating, and I think it's awesome that I can cook something really hard to find to relive that history a little bit...
Here's a link to the recipe: https://www.meatsandsausages.com/sausage-recipes/mysliwska
And because I think that snack sticks are basically the best delivery mechanism of non-heated meat, I will make this in snack stick form as usual. (Also because I'm dieting, and small portions that I love to eat really helps with that. Basically my diet is small portion shellfish sous vide, jerky, and snack stick. But I digress..).
I started with a ~450g tenderloin and 70g brisket, which is about half the Mariansky recipe. Although it seems that Mysliwska is supposed to be lean, since Mariansky didn't specify amount of fat, I decided to add a little pork backfat to the mix:
I ground my juniper berries (which smelled AMAZING), mixed up spices, and planned on making my typical set of alterations for snack sticks:
Here's the mix after resting a bit:
I then stuffed, hung to dry at room temp for two hours, and then began smoking at 122F, then 140F, then 179F for 90 mins. Afterwards, I baked at 176F for 15mins and 194F for 10mins until I reached an IT of 155F.
Sticks went from 141g to 101g after this step, losing 28% weight.
The recipe calls for two smokes in between a warm rest, which is fascinating. Way back in 2021, I found that performing two cook/dehydrate events after an amount of moisture equalization really helps push the dryness further. If I had tried this recipe way back then, I would've saved myself a lot of needless experimentation (i.e., they already figured this out centuries ago).
However, the resting step calls for air drying overnight (presumably > 8hrs) at high temperatures (86F). Since the salt ratio was 2.25% and I had lost over 25% weight, I felt that this was probably be safe, but I wanted to be sure so I ran a StaphTox model on the recipe with worse-case parameters:
Worst-case starter meat riddled with S. aureus showed no significant toxin present, so I felt better about proceeding with the 8hr 86F rest and the subsequent 6 day rest at 62F:
Nevertheless, when handling the sausage between steps, I made extra sure to sterilize everything in contact with the meat.
So I set my chamber to 70%RH and 86F and rested them overnight. I then cold-smoked at 86F for 4 hours (on the lower end because snack sticks) and at the end the looked like this:
Total weight loss was from 141g to 77.6g, for a total of 45% weight loss. Given that the next step is to keep at 62F until 65% of it's original weight, it looks like I had finished prematurely as they are already at 55% of original weight. However, as I always put my sticks in a bag + o2 absorber anyways for further equalization, that worked just fine for me:
I then took one of the sticks and put it in the chamber at 62F simply out of curiosity.
I have to say, these sticks were DELICIOUS! I love how delicate the seasoning is, and the texture/mouthfeel was spot-on (so it looks like I won't have to manually mince anymore, the key was lean in 12mm plate, fatty meat in 8mm place, and a small portion with 4-5mm plate for binding). I think these may be better than my normal pepperoni snack stick, in fact. (Edit: Wife thinks pepperoni is still better. In a way I'm relieved)
Here's a link to the recipe: https://www.meatsandsausages.com/sausage-recipes/mysliwska
And because I think that snack sticks are basically the best delivery mechanism of non-heated meat, I will make this in snack stick form as usual. (Also because I'm dieting, and small portions that I love to eat really helps with that. Basically my diet is small portion shellfish sous vide, jerky, and snack stick. But I digress..).
I started with a ~450g tenderloin and 70g brisket, which is about half the Mariansky recipe. Although it seems that Mysliwska is supposed to be lean, since Mariansky didn't specify amount of fat, I decided to add a little pork backfat to the mix:
I ground my juniper berries (which smelled AMAZING), mixed up spices, and planned on making my typical set of alterations for snack sticks:
- Increase water amount to 75ml/1lb for wrinkles (so I upped Mariansky recipe from 100ml/kg to 166ml/kg).
- Pack in 15mm collagen casings, as this is the proper size of a stack stick imo. (The extra water also helps with this)
- Coarse grind combo with fine grind. Gets you the mouthfeel without need of a binder (and this is exactly what Mariansky recommended, lol. Also something that would've saved me time if I just started making recipes without as much experimentation).
- Over-dry the sticks, then finish with equalization in a bag with a little air and an o2 absorber. This seems to further dry the stick by (I believe) the meat "claiming" more water and also equalizes moisture which fixes minor case hardening. I found an old bag in my fridge 2 years later with this approach and it was perfect. Far better than when I first bagged it.
Here's the mix after resting a bit:
I then stuffed, hung to dry at room temp for two hours, and then began smoking at 122F, then 140F, then 179F for 90 mins. Afterwards, I baked at 176F for 15mins and 194F for 10mins until I reached an IT of 155F.
Sticks went from 141g to 101g after this step, losing 28% weight.
The recipe calls for two smokes in between a warm rest, which is fascinating. Way back in 2021, I found that performing two cook/dehydrate events after an amount of moisture equalization really helps push the dryness further. If I had tried this recipe way back then, I would've saved myself a lot of needless experimentation (i.e., they already figured this out centuries ago).
However, the resting step calls for air drying overnight (presumably > 8hrs) at high temperatures (86F). Since the salt ratio was 2.25% and I had lost over 25% weight, I felt that this was probably be safe, but I wanted to be sure so I ran a StaphTox model on the recipe with worse-case parameters:
Worst-case starter meat riddled with S. aureus showed no significant toxin present, so I felt better about proceeding with the 8hr 86F rest and the subsequent 6 day rest at 62F:
Nevertheless, when handling the sausage between steps, I made extra sure to sterilize everything in contact with the meat.
So I set my chamber to 70%RH and 86F and rested them overnight. I then cold-smoked at 86F for 4 hours (on the lower end because snack sticks) and at the end the looked like this:
Total weight loss was from 141g to 77.6g, for a total of 45% weight loss. Given that the next step is to keep at 62F until 65% of it's original weight, it looks like I had finished prematurely as they are already at 55% of original weight. However, as I always put my sticks in a bag + o2 absorber anyways for further equalization, that worked just fine for me:
I then took one of the sticks and put it in the chamber at 62F simply out of curiosity.
I have to say, these sticks were DELICIOUS! I love how delicate the seasoning is, and the texture/mouthfeel was spot-on (so it looks like I won't have to manually mince anymore, the key was lean in 12mm plate, fatty meat in 8mm place, and a small portion with 4-5mm plate for binding). I think these may be better than my normal pepperoni snack stick, in fact. (Edit: Wife thinks pepperoni is still better. In a way I'm relieved)
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