Showing posts with label sausages. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sausages. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Making Blood Sausage

Blood sausage is a messy job, And can get even messier in a cramped kitchen with four guys prepping around you, but despite what many people might think, its actually very easy to make once you have all the key ingredients. The basic ingredients are blood, cream, bread, onions, back fat, and spices. We have made it numerous times and we have always had an issue of the diced back fat (which gets blanched before adding to the blood) setting uneven in the casing due to gravity and the fact that the blood is so thin. Basically, as we filled the casing, all the back fat and onions would fall to the bottom half and set when we poached it so that when you sliced into the sausage 1/2 was pure blood, the other 1/2 had all the fat.
We couldn't find any information on how to fix this so we put our heads together and figured that if we slowly warmed the blood there would be a point where it thickened but didn't fully coagulate.
Here's Branden wisking away, keeping the blood moving as we applied the heat. We found that at 146/147 degree's F the blood began to thicken without seizing .
It's pretty important to move quickly at this stage, make sure you have an ice bowl to chill down the blood as quickly as possible. Strain it out as there will be a bit of coagulated blood bits that will just not look pretty in the final product.
We begin whisking it over ice to bring the temp down as quick as possible.
We also tried making blood foam as a joke and it tasted like crap. Actually, it tasted like blood. We figured that wouldn't be something one would want to taste on a dish at the hoof or anywhere for that matter.
Thoshon got to stuff the casing. One thing you must do is check your casings for any holes by tying one end and filling them with water. Thoshon forgot this step, hence why we had to tape up this link. This is a messy part of the recipe any way you try so give yourself some space to get messy. We use our sausage stuffer instead of the traditional funnel to fill the casing.
Cook the sausage at 80 degrees for about 18 to 20 minutes. Longer if your not pre-thickening the blood. immediately take it out carefully and shock it. Let the sausage rest for a day before slicing. Sear and enjoy!
Posted by Grant van Gameren at 6:44 AM 6 comments
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Monday, February 2, 2009

Alheira


Portuguese bread sausage. Actually, it should be called jewish bread sausage because it was originally made by jews back in the day who lived in portugal but didn't eat pork. You see, every portuguese and there cousin makes and smokes chorizo. So during the portuguese inquisition, the jews had to figure out ways to "blend in" with the people around them. Due to there religion they don't eat pork. So they had to come up with there own sausage that would resemble the typical chorizo. So they would use any meat but pork, mix it with bread for consistency, season heavily with paprika and smoke em'.  
The term "using any meat" quickly translates to most cooks as "clean out the freezer". So this is a great way to use up all those left over tid bits that didn't make the cut in the last salami. I'm talking about duck, rabbit, beef, pork, bacon, belly, even a little bit of lamb if it floats your boat.  I mean ANYTHING, save it all!!! Fill that freezer up till it wont shut properly and then thaw it all out and into one big pot. Cover it with some water or stock, throw a bucket of duck fat in there and boil it for hours. 
In the meat time, make sure you have some old baguettes, and by old i mean just a day or two... not everything is fair game here. slice em down the middle and expose that tough crunchy interior. Put them in a bus pan or something that can hold liquid. 
Now back to the pot of yummy odds and ends. Your goal here is to simmer the meat till all the water/stock has evaporated and your left with clear fat. Once you have reached that point. strain the fat and pick through the meat. Now pour the fat over the bread. Not too much that you over saturate the bread but dont be shy with it. 
At this point you have a big batch of braised miscellaneous meat and soggy fatty bread. Sounds good already doesn't it? Chill the bread while you dice up the meat. hack away at it, finesse is not an issue here. Then do the same with the bread, chop it up and then mix it with the meat. I like a 65% meat/35% bread ratio, too much bread and you'll notice it. 
Season it heavily with salt, pepper, garlic, smoked paprika and piri piri spice blend. This is a spice blend, not Emerils bbq sauce you toss chicken wings in. Its available here at our local spice store, so i'll assume its available wherever you are.  It looks like smoked paprika and has whole juniper berries in it. Why those whole berries are in it i have no clue, but i'm sure you'll find it just as annoying as i do while picking them out. 
Now pipe them out into sausage casings, hang them for four days, then cold smoke them for as long as you can and hang em a bit more before vac packing , freezing, eating, whatever. 
The way to eat these is to peel off the casing and fry them. 
They are so fatty and rich so keep in mind what your serving them with. I've always found they go nice with some nice crunchy vinegary pickles of your choice. 
There is no standard recipe. 
Its straight cowboy on this one. 

 

Posted by Grant van Gameren at 12:27 AM 1 comments
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