Homemade Sausage Making

That certainly looks good.

Red,
Congratulations, colour of the meatpieces look great. I made some this past week as well but added Hungarian Paprika and garlic and more broth than yours.
My wife won't eat it so I don't have to listen to any standing ORDERS at all.
The grandkids all think this style of sausage is wonderfull and can't get enough of it.
Regards,
Jan.

For the past few months I have been saving different cuts suitable for a head cheese product. I left extra meat on bones from hams and shoulders and cut off the hocks from picnics and hams that I processed for sausage. Bought a few tongues and a set of trotters and ended up with this pile of goodness.

First I prepared a savoury vegetable stock. The spots on the onions are cloves.

After 3hours in the broth with a bit of nitrite and sodium erythorbate.

L to R: unusable bones and fat; selected pieces of mostly lean meat, cubed; skin, tougher meat pieces, a few soft tendons for grinding.

Skin and tougher pieces ground through a 3mm plate.

Made two different kinds: a Polish salceson and a German style sulze. The salceson was seasoned generously with fresh Argentinian garlic, caraway, pepper, and marjoram. The sulze was seasoned exactly with the proportions used by Idakraut in his Bavarian sulze presented a little while ago. And of course, vinegar was added as well.

Into the jacuzzi for a two hour bath. Held the temp around 85°C.

What's this? Well just as I was removing the two beauties out of the pot after draining it, tragedy struck. The bung with the sulze blew open! **&^%$# After the initial shock and my heart in my feet, I scooped up everything off the counter and put it into the glass pan. Still had some broth left over so I added it to the mix and placed it into the fridge overnight.

Sample of the sulze, or rather what was supposed to be the sulze.


The salceson turned out great.

Red that looks sensational! I am drooling on my computer.
What a lot of work, but what a lovely result. Much nicer than the bland stuff you can buy.
What's the little round black things near the onion for your stock? Is ist juniper berries?
And is the herb below the parsley thyme?
Ursula

Red,
What a fantastic effort, bad luck about the busted skin but as a experienced charcuterier
you saved the day.
Matter of fact, my mother always made them in moulds from real small to large oblong ones.
Nobody ever complained, they were that good.
Congratulations Mate,
Jan. ( Shit, I am jealous)

Chris,
That project looks absolutely delicious. Congrats... even if you had a "blooey". It still turned out very nicely - but it reminded me of a little story.

My "ol` pappy" had a terrific sense of humor and an imagination that often ran wild. When I was a little boy, he used to take me fly-fishing quite a bit. One day we were standing in the middle of the creek as he watched me whippin` the water into a froth.
"Slow down Highpockets", he said.
"Will it rain today, Pop"? I asked.
"Depends on the weather" he answered.

The in one of his best moments, he rubbed his chin and looked skyward.
"Son, do you know what "oppo" is?
"No pop, I don`t know", I replied.
"Well, `oppo` is poop spelled inside out!", he said.
About ten minutes later, he asked:
"Son, do you know what a `blooey` is?"
"Nope, sure don`t pop", I replied.
"Well, a `blooey` is a two-pound bag with three pounds of `oppo` in it", said my pop!

Best Wishes,
Chuckwagon

Hey, thanks for the condolences everyone and it's nice to receive accolades from all the way from the other side of the planet!

Ursula, you are correct that is thyme, one of my favourite herbs. And I'm lucky enough to live in a part of Canada that my thyme plant thrives year round, so I can go and snip some whenever I want. And the spots on the onion are cloves. I had intended to to cook the onion in the broth only until they got partially soft and then grind then together with the skins. I forgot to remove then and ended up tossing them with the rest of the vegetables used to make the stock.

CW, thanks for the blooey definition. I learned a new word today! Send this to the people at Webster's.

I think the little round things are peppercorns. From the top left I see parsley, celery, carrots, onions studded with whole cloves, just below that, garlic, beside the onions, pepper corns, bay leaf and Thyme
The results are fabulous.

ssorllih wrote:I think the little round things are peppercorns. From the top left I see parsley, celery, carrots, onions studded with whole cloves, just below that, garlic, beside the onions, pepper corns, bay leaf and Thyme
The results are fabulous.

You have good eyes Ross! I misunderstood Ursula's question. They are indeed peppercorns.

That looks good.

All that recent enthusiasm for headcheese emanating from Rick reminded me that I have not had any of that wonderful stuff for a few months. So yesterday I undertook to make some. I used a couple of small beef tongues, hocks, picnic meat and a couple of trotters. I used all the traditional seasonings for a Polish style salceson, and also added some sweet and hot Hungarian paprika. All went well until the last stage of the process: poaching. For some reason the beef bung I used started to leak, and by the time I took it out of the pot, most of the liquid was gone. This resulted in a dry tasting product, since there is no mouth feel of the congealed liquids. While it's very edibible, especially with some rye bread, I'm a bit disappointed. I closely inspected the casing and could not find where it might have developed a leak.

Beautiful work.

Butterbean, that looks beautiful! I like that nice red meat, which I'm sure you added some cure to your cooking water? That pressed look gives nice eye appeal too. I have a cheese press that I might consider using too for that very look.

I like the thought of beef tongue also. Although beef tongue being an offal product sure commands a high price around these parts of mine. Shoot, just the other day I was looking at a frozen beef heart for $16! Can you believe it?

Yup, that sure is some good eating!

I'm sorry Redzed, I meant you in my last post, rather than Butterbean, although I'm sure Butterbean could have done a beautiful job also!

I have to know, you used a beef bung cap correct? Did it have that extra hole in the side about 3-4 inches down from the opening? The hole would have been about 1 1/4 - 2 inches in diameter.

Thank you

Instead of making one or two large pieces, yesterday I made 5 smaller head cheese chubs each weighing a little over a pound. Classic Polish recipe and used collagen casings. But this is another headless head cheese, made from a couple of beef tongues, pork hocks and trotters.
Not too pretty but nice flavour.