BadRabbit

I agree with Rotuts. AE's recipe is very good. If you can't smoke it, a little liquid smoke in the brine will make it taste like you did. Lots of people are scared that liquid smoke is some weird chemical but it is really just smoke that's been distilled. If you have a large crock pot, you could also use the Ultimate Cheater Pulled pork recipe. It makes a pretty decent product in a situation where you can't smoke. It does not create any bark though so it will not be texturally the same as a roasted or smoked butt. http://thebittenword.typepad.com/thebittenword/2008/11/ultimate-cheater-pulled-pork.html

I am looking for good online collections of sausage/bacon/ham recipes and reviews on the quality of the recipes. So far I've located: Jason Molinari's excellent blog: http://curedmeats.blogspot.com/ Len Poli's Collection: http://lpoli.50webs.com/Sausage%20recipes.htm The Spicy Sausage: http://thespicysausage.com/sausagemakingrecipes.htm

I'm cold smoking the sausage but I just got my smoke generator and this is the first time I've used it. I wouldn't have worried at all if I was hot smoking (though it appears I shouldn't have worried regardless).

Yeah. I've bought the 1/2" plate already on someone here's recommendation (it may have been yours). I was looking for the actual knife. When you say you ground it down, do you mean you had to change the size of the interior of the square hole or do you mean you ground down the thickness of the overall knife?

Thanks. I was hoping you were around. The only reason I was wondering about the cure is I compared a bunch of recipes online for Polish Smoked Sausage and easily 25% called for Cure #2. Just didn't want to make a mistake though I was pretty sure that #2 was not correct.

Will any other blade fit the Kitchenaid grinder or am I stuck with what came with it? I was hoping that if another type blade won't fit it (e.g. a #5 grinder blade) that there was at least a quality aftermarket blade.

I have made both of the Kielbasa recipes and really prefer the Holiday one with pork, garlic and marjoram. However, I really would like to try smoking it instead of just roasting as Ruhlman suggests. I've looked through the smoked section of the book and it looks like they all have slightly different recipes than non-smoked items. What adjustments would I need to make to the recipe? Do I need to change from #1 to #2 cure? Should I add something to help maintain moisture (e.g. dry milk powder)?

A week isn't long enough to brine cure a half ham (about 5 lbs)? I've done it plenty of times and had great results and it's absolutely not just flavored pork roast (I've just never tried other flavorings). Len Poli, Ruhlman, and about ten other authors I've read all say that you can do a full ham in 10 days or less. And when I mentioned pumping I was referring to injections. Edit: Corrected weight

This thought was the impetus for this thread. I'm wondering if the other flavorings will move through the meat at the same speed as the salt. My biggest concern is that i'd end up with a ham that tastes overly like juniper around the edges with very little flavor making it to the middle. I'm thinking I might could avoid this issue by pumping the flavored brine around the bone before dropping in to cure.

I am planning on brining a fresh half ham over the next week and was wondering if it would do any good to add some additional herbs\ flavors to the brine. I will be using a brine similar to Ruhlman's (i.e. cure, salt, brown sugar) and will be smoking it after the cure. I was thinking of juniper and sage or perhaps just some fresh thyme. Will the flavors penetrate the ham well during the cure or am I just wasting my thyme? What other flavors would work well in a ham?

I have some temp probes but I usually only use them for meat. I kind of figured that thickness would be the deciding factor. I don't imagine thickness/time is linear either. I know that Doug Baldwin has done a chart with meat thicknesses but is there something similar somewhere for veggies? Or are the thermal properties close enough that I could at least get an idea of timing?

We are doing a very large Thanksgiving this year with my extended family + my brother's in laws. Everyone is making a couple of dishes. Given the size of the crowd (around 25 as compared to our usual 12), what are the tricks to enlarging the recipes? Specifically, I'm making potatos gratin and will need to make at least double my usual amount. I have a VERY large gratin dish but I am wondering what doubling will do to my bake time (it usually cooks for 45 minute at 375 and I use about 2#s of potatos). I'm also wondering if I should just cook two Pyrex dishes with a recipe per (same oven) instead of using one big dish. Is there a general formula for how additional mass will effect cook time? Is it just related to overall mass in the oven or does it have to do with how thick\deep the ingredients are in the pan? Any other tips to doubling\trebling recipes?

My problem is that after making a recipe once I never use the proportions as written again (and often tweak it a lot the first time). I'll consult the recipe to make sure I have all the ingredients but then I mostly just wing it. Sometimes it will turn out spectacularly and I have no way of ever making it exactly that way again.

One more thing I keep on hand that makes for quick meals and (at least in my part of the country) will please most guests: Bayless's ancho chile seasoning from his Mexican Kitchen book freezes really well and can quickly be added to beef, pork or chicken to make really great tacos, burritos, chimis etc... It's so much better than using dried seasonings. I also keep pickled red onions on hand that I like as a topping along with the typical lettuce, tomatoes, cheese etc... Mexican style rice is an easy and quick side and doesn't require anything that most people don't keep on hand.

I used Prime but burger meat is generally made from fairly inexpensive cuts so it's not that expensive. I've found that it produces a far superior burger to meat ground from Choice. When I can get it, I buy trimmings from dry aged steaks from my butcher and add that into the grind (he charges me $5/lb for the trimmings off ribeyes that are $24/lb). The meat I ground last weekend was about $9/lb average. A little expensive for hamburger meat but you can't buy 4 Quarter Pounders from McDonalds for $9 and I guarantee my burgers would kick Ronald's teeth in.

I keep some tasso ham (Polcyn's recipe) frozen in 1/2 lb chunks for easy thawing. If I have last minute guests, I use the tasso and either dried or canned red beans for RB & rice (I use dried if I have time and canned if I don't). Tasso also works in jambalaya. Neither of those dishes require anything that I don't keep on hand at all times (trinity vegs, tomatoes for jambalaya etc...). I will also add shrimp to the jambalaya if I have some on hand. I keep Besh's recipe for cajun seasoning mixed up and it works for either of the above dishes though the tasso is strongly flavored so you don't need a lot.

Not claiming this is a scientific experiment but just passing along the results of my weekend burgers as I ended up doing something I had not intended to do. I ground the burgers on Friday night (about 11PM) with the largest KA die and put a light amount of salt (.5% to meat weight) and pepper in right after the grind. Meat was 50% chuck\ 50% short ribs (USDA prime). I formed patties as loosely as possible and then lightly salted the outside. My intention was to cook them for lunch at around 11AM on Saturday. We ended up doing the burgers for dinner at around 7PM. So the total time salted was about 21 hours. The burgers were perfect in every way. They stayed together very well on the grill. They were very tender and had a perfect level of seasoning throughout the patty. My wife said they were the best I had ever made. Questions this brings up: Is 21 hours of being salted any different than 12? That is, at what point has salt done all it will do? Can perhaps the "sausage texture" issue be prevented by a very light touch when forming patties and a larger grind?

So did anyone else do a better controlled test of this? I usually grind my burgers and then lightly salt and toss the ground meat before forming the patties. Now I'm wondering if I don't want to salt right before I grind, do it the old way or hold off until right before cooking. Also, I'm planning on forming the patties tonight but won't cook until tomorrow. If I salt tonight will they be any different then if I wait and salt tomorrow and form the patties then?

Charcuterie preparation took place in the fall and winter, in cool cellars, outdoors after a kill, and so on. I wouldn't have thought a cool cellar would have been enough. I've had forcemeats break on me even when I've had the bowl sitting in ice (and after the meat has been partially frozen in the freezer) and running them through a grinder\stuffer that has frozen as well. I could see doing it outside when it is below freezing but forcemeats seem rather finicky to do any other way.

Having spent a good bit of the last year learning to make sausages, I have some questions about how things were done before modern conveniences were available. 1) I've had a few broken forcemeats because my ingredients got too hot. How did people avoid this problem before the ubiquity of ice and refrigeration? 2) Since curing requires fairly narrow bands of humidity and temp, how did people control these variables before electricity? I understand that basements and caves were employed but I've found that a basement is often insufficient (at least mine is). With the broad occurence of sausage production across vastly different climates, it would seem that in some places basements wouldn't be enough.

Just making sure you realize that most traditional bitters are alcoholic (e.g. Angostura). They are strong enough flavored that you wouldn't use enough to render the final drink what I would consider significantly alcoholic but if you are avoiding alcohol completely, I would not use them. I've never seen the one linked above but it looks more like a non-alcoholic wine cooler than a real bitters. Some people try to avoid even a drop while others aren't quite so picky. I just wanted you to have all the info. Edit: added qualifying language

Here are mine. Pink Brandywines, Flammes, Homesteads, and there is a yellow Dagma's Perfection under the big one. Picking some Green Zebras today and I'm going to do a rainbow Caprese salad with county ham. I use Benton's country ham, my homemade mozz and I'm reduced some La Piana 10 Year old balsalmic to lightly dress.

Over the weekend I made the Tasso ham and it turned out really well. I was initially concerned that the spice mix was going to be overpowering because there is a ton of allspice but it is actually pretty well balanced one you add it to a dish. Marjoram is not something I use a lot but I really like the herby flavor coupled with the allspice. I used the tasso to make the red beans and rice from Besh's "My New Orleans" (subistituting for the ham hocks) and it was easily the best version of the dish I've ever had (I mentioned this in the thread for that book as well). I'll post pictures of the tasso when I get home. I can't post a picture of the red beans because they didn't last long enough to snap a picture.

This weekend I made the Red Beans and Rice but I substituted the Tasso ham from Ruhlman\Powlcin's "Charcuterie" for the ham hocks. It was quite frankly the best red beans and rice I have ever had (and it's one of my all time favorite dishes so I've had it a lot). The depth of flavor provided by the allspice and marjoram in the tasso was really great. Anybody who owns both books and has the means to make the tasso should do so immediately. They are truly a match made in heaven.

Feeding a cow nothing grain for their entire life would be prohibitively expensive unless you could get Kobe prices for it. All cows in the US are raised mostly on grass with occasionally some supplemental feed. The exclusive feeding on grain doesn't happen until they arrive at the "feed lot", hence the name. I am not speaking from second hand knowledge. My father is a Veterinarian and when I was growing up he handled large animals (mostly cattle). I've never known a producer to feed strictly grain (or even mostly grain) until they arrive at the feed lot.