Chris Hennes

Tonight for dinner I made Linguini Carbonara: I used the Guanciale I just finished making (see Charcuterie topic for details) and use a recipe from one of Bugialli's books as a starting place. Sometimes I wonder if Bugialli ever bothers to read his own recipes: he has you saute the Guanciale over "the lowest possible heat" so that the fat all renders out "to make the dish as light as possible." But he doesn't discard any of the fat, so you just end up with a fat slick on the pasta. It tastes good, but it has a quite greasy mouthfeel. He also has you add additional olive oil, which seems completely unnecessary. And you add the garlic at the beginning of cooking the Guanciale, which causes it to brown... is that intended? I hope not: I hold the garlic out until just before combining with the pasta at the end. I also like to add a bit more egg and a lot more cheese than he calls for.

Guanciale (1st ed., pp. 47) Fresh off my pig head adventure (documented here, not for the squeamish), I had a whole bunch of jowls, so my first thought was to make them into Guanciale. Due to a somewhat sloppy slaughter, and a downright poor fabricator (yeah, that'd be me), they were in various states of "wholeness" and so despite having eight to work with, I only ended up with four times the weight Ruhlman mentions, so I made up a quadruple batch of his seasoning (which is very heavy on the garlic and thyme), complete with a small amount of pink salt: I poured the mixture into the Ziploc bag with the jowls: And attempted to massage it into submission, or at least even distribution: I was trying to avoid getting my kitchen any messier than in already was from all the hog head action, but to no avail. I ended up dumping the whole lot into my last clean big bowl and mixing it up there, then dumping it back into the bag: Then it was into the fridge for a week. After a week, it looked like this: I rinsed it off the best I could (a lot of the thyme was resistant to being removed): Here are half the jowls ready to go into the curing chamber (documented here): And here they are three weeks later, ready to come out of the chamber: They were quite firm, more like prosciutto than bacon (I've never had the stuff so I don't know if they are supposed to be like this -- any thoughts?): I vacuum-packed most of them and froze them, but of course I had to sample some, so I shaved one up very thinly on my meat slicer: Fried a bit of it up: Victory! The first taste is almost sweet, then you get the garlic and thyme, and then the salt kicks in. Hard. I think I let it go too long in the fridge: since the pieces were smaller than Ruhlman's, I should have taken it out after 4-5 days, rather than giving it the whole week. It will still be good in stuff (where I can just reduce the salt in the recipe), but plain it's too salty to really enjoy. I guess I'll have to get me some more pig heads!

Are you talking about the Phillips? Here? If so, I don't think that's what we're talking about here, since it's refrigerated and not shelf-stable. It is my crabmeat of choice, however, for crabcakes (mostly since it's the only kind I have access to!).

What didn't you like about them? I haven't tried the recipe, but from Kim's photo I am certainly tempted to.

Some of those chocolate-maker-types here have put together some pretty nice paper-based packaging, which may fit your requirements? Have you looked over in P&B for ideas? Obviously they are usually going for a different style than even an upscale takeout container, but I bet the companies that they get their boxes from make stuff that may be more appropriate for your situation.

Shelf stable kind, unfortunately. ← Scratch the crabcake suggestion, then. I foolishly jumped in without stating my assumptions...

The Odense that I have in my cabinet right now has no vanilla of any kind: are you specifically trying to find one with vanilla, or just without extract?

My first thought was crabcakes... is that too obvious? I can blow through two pounds making crabcakes no problem.

Absolutely -- I have a batch in my freezer right now. I personally like to reheat them in water just above 150, treating the sausage basically like Sous Vide (which in a way it is). I don't find that the Andouille benefit much from sauteeing or roasting, since they pack a powerful flavor punch on their own.

First off, you probably don't really want to mix in any dry chips: the problem with dry chips is that they actively burn, rather than gently smolder. I guess getting them a bit wet with the soaked ships probably cuts down on this, but nevertheless I'd recommend only using soaked chips, and make sure they aren't getting much oxygen (by putting them in a foil packet). Your wood chips will smolder if they hit around 600 degrees F: the propane flame on your grill is (probably well) over 1000 degrees even at its lowest setting, so if you get the chips right up near the heat source, they should smolder no problem (I'm omitting some technical complications here...). It will take 30-45 minutes before you have significant visible smoke: I generally don't put my meat in the smoker until 30 minutes in. I like the taste of this Andouille recipe even unsmoked, so I'm sure your sausages aren't ruined .

I frequently soak wood ships overnight, so it should not be a problem. They will just become completely saturated, which I would think would enhance the smoldering action. Did you have your grill set as low as it would go, with only one burner turned on? 45 minutes is a really short smoke.

Using the very scientific method of noting that I do not need to replace the water in the bottom very often, but do so about once every 2-3 weeks, I would say, OK. I know, I know, I need a hygrometer, but I don't have one yet. I know that the air circulation is quite good due to the fans frequent running, and I'm hoping it's not too good. We shall see...

I smoked them at a very low temp this last time (170 F) so it took a LONG time, something like 8 hours. What temp are you smoking at? That's what will govern how long it takes.

So far, so good... the first batch of guanciale will be ready next week, I think.

I've had it - it's pretty good. The bacon doesn't come across as very "bacony" though: more like little salty nuggets in the chocolate. There is a slight hint of bacon, but I think if you didn't know what it was that would not be your first guess. I just like the combination of salt and chocolate...

A refrigerator is designed to keep food cold: they generally can't be set above about 40 F without modification. A wine cooler is designed to keep things in the 55-60 range, which is where I wanted to be for charcuterie. A wine cooler is, in general, going to be quieter and more efficient, since you are using it in the temperature range for which it was designed. I am using a thermoelectric-type wine cooler, which has very few moving parts (just the fans, which are easy to replace if they die/get too loud). It is louder than I would like, but still quieter than my refrigerator. I also like having the glass door on the wine cooler: it lets me check on things without opening the door and messing with the temperature/humidity. Just remember to cover the door when you aren't checking on things, since light is an enemy of fat.

It it's just beef and pork I think lamb would be a reasonable substitute, though you will need to be careful to make sure you get enough fat in there. And since you can't use pork fat to fill, and I am not familiar with the properties of lamb fat, I don't know how well this will work. The same goes for doing it as a venison sausage, or a poultry sausage: I don't know how to best go about getting enough fat in there, since I use pork fat as the extra fat in any sausages I make. The flavor should not pose much of a problem: Andouille is so heavily seasoned that the underlying meat is very much a secondary flavor.

I can't say whether it does or does not, but it seems conceivable. The flames on your gas grill are pretty far away from what you are cooking---the combustion byproducts have plenty of places to go besides the surface of your steak. When using a torch, you are basically throwing the combustion products directly at the surface from a very short distance. Whether there are enough byproducts to matter is another question...

My concern is not food safety, but rather a fouled seal: I'm new at this whole FoodSaver thing (I bought mine this weekend) and don't know how careful I need to be.

I'm an engineer, that's what I do!! That said, I slice the bacon in batches because I have never come up with a good way of stacking it up so I don't make a big mess. I mean, slicing a full belly results in a LOT of slices, so I just start laying them out in "package formation" and then I figured as long as I was doing that, lay them out on the scale while I am at it, and when I reach my 12 oz package size, pack it up.

My workflow while packaging up a batch of homemade bacon yesterday morning consisted of: 1) Seal one end of Foodsaver bag 2) Slice 12oz of bacon on the slicer 3) Wash hands 4) Tear off one sheet of parchment 5) Shift bacon from slicer to parchment 6) Wash hands 7) Cut out parchment to conform to bacon 8) Gently move bacon into bag (careful not to get bacon on the seal area) 9) Wash hands (always ended up with some bacon on me) 9) Seal bacon 10) Put in fridge 11) Repeat until out of bacon I wanted to see if there were better/more efficient techniques out there: in particular, that would reduce the number of times I had to wash my hands. I am putting the bacon on parchment to make shifting it into the bag easier, and to help prevent getting bacon grease on the seal area of the bag. Anyone have any other handy techniques I should know about?

When I make my own bacon I always end up with a fair bit of "trim" left over from slicing it. Does anyone have any good suggestions for what do do with it? I typically fry it up and add onions and garlic to flavor a big pot of beans, but I'd love some ideas for other things to do with these heavily-flavored end-bits.

When I've done meat SV, I've always just cranked up the cast iron skillet to full blast and let it preheat a good ten minutes. Is there any particular advantage to using a torch? It seems like more work...

How would you do it? Process it in a food processor, then stuff into the PJ container and freeze?

Are you layering them purely for visual reasons, or do you have another reason for preventing their premature mixing (i.e. some kind of reaction that will take place)? If you are looking for a reaction you will have a tough time avoiding at the interface, I would think, no matter how carefully you layered them. If you have items with different densities, is it something you can serve chilled? I am thinking that you could be somewhat cavalier in the layering if you could do it 24 hours ahead and let the ingredients naturally separate into layers (thinking here of the way a stock separates into the fat/clear stock/solids layer resting in the fridge overnight).