Curing and Cooking with Ruhlman & Polcyn's "Charcuterie" (Part 4)

[ronnie_suburban]

Abra, that looks FANTASTIC!

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I agree; just beautiful.

=R=

[Abra]

Everybody should give the shrimp and salmon terrine a try - it's just such an easy bang for the buck. Takes no time to make, slices nicely, makes people on diets happy, and looks cool. I do advise cooking up a bit to taste for seasoning - that's what led me down the baharat road.

[FoodMan]

Everybody should give the shrimp and salmon terrine a try - it's just such an easy bang for the buck.  Takes no time to make, slices nicely, makes people on diets happy, and looks cool.  I do advise cooking up a bit to taste for seasoning - that's what led me down the baharat road.

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I'm sold on it and your picture looks fantastic. How did it taste? What did u serve it with?

[Abra]

I served it almost as shown. Cool, with a preserved lemon garnish, and a little salad with hazelnut oil and fig balsamic. I think it would be really good with a finely-diced potato salad of some sort, but besides the no-mushrooms person there was also a carb-avoiding person at the dinner.

As to taste, it's pretty subtle as written. It's awfully hard to get shrimp that taste like much, anymore, so there wasn't an intense shrimp flavor. I could have improved that by infusing the cream with the shrimp shells before adding it, and next time I'll do that. And because I didn't use the mushrooms, there was no caramelized or buttery flavor. But with the touch of baharat and preserved lemon it was mysterious, haunting, delicate. Most people here don't recognize the flavor of baharat, so that added to the mystery. The salmon should have been seasoned before I set it into the terrine, and I'll do that next time too.

Thanks for the compliments, everybody. It's ridiculously easy, so I really don't deserve them, but I'm happy to accept them anyway.

[Michael Ruhlman]

An update on the charcuterie revision. alas, our ed at norton, maria, wanted only small revisions that wouldn't change the layout or page count, so a broader revision has proved to be impossible right now.

maria asked for a recipe for guanciale, and though it's basically a pancetta style cure, she wanted people to better understand this item which is growing in popularity. so that will be in there.

i was never happy with the hot dog recipe and so worked on an alternative method. there wasn't a lot of time to get it done and abra was the last to bring it up so i asked her to help me test a new method and she did. i'm very grateful to the many others who volunteered.

abra took interesting pix of the various methods tested and did an extraordinary job. abra, please post your pix if you feel like it.

It's impossible to make a hot dog at home identical to the big good producers (such as vienna beef, which makes the best commercial hot dog there is) due to the power of their choppers, so the main goal for the hot dog was to devise a method that could give a home sausage maker a good dog with a firm texture and a good bite.

The main innovations of this recipe, if you will, is to use the meat from beef shortribs, which are very fatty, rather than using suet or pork fat and leaner beef. the flavor of beef fat is very important to the hot dog. this soft fat emulsifies well. second, and this i learned at the vienna beef factory, the salt and pink salt and water are added to the ground shortrib meat at least a day before regrinding and mixing. myosin is salt soluable and this brining stage helps ready the protein that will give the sausage a solid texture.

the main flavors of the hot dog are beef fat and beef, paprika, garlic and smoke. the smoke is more critical in a hot dog than i'd imagined. abra tried adding some liquid smoke to what she felt was an insipid batch and she thought, "There's the hot dog flavor."

they don't need a lot of smoke, just a little. I smoked a batch for twenty minute and finished them in a warm oven and they were extraordinary.

so any, that's the hot dog story. abra, please feel free to weigh in with your comments if you wish.

[ronnie_suburban]

Interesting, Michael. When I was at my butcher's shop just a couple of hours ago, he gave me a full tour of the shop. I'd never been behind the counter before and it was very cool but I digress.

In his walk-in were several racks of beef ribs, hanging on hooks. When I asked about them, he told me that the meat from those racks was specifically for hotdogs. I chalked it up to personal preference but now, after reading your comments above, I understand his method much better.

Thanks for the additional information

=R=

[Bombdog]

i was never happy with the hot dog recipe and so worked on an alternative method.  there wasn't a lot of time to get it done and abra was the last to bring it up so i asked her to help me test a new method and she did.  i'm very grateful to the many others who volunteered.

abra took interesting pix of the various methods tested and did an extraordinary job.  abra, please post your pix if you feel like it.

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TEACHER'S PET!

At least if Abra let's us in on the recipe I won't have to buy another copy so soon!

[Abra]

Well, I'm sure we all agree that Michael's a great teacher, but I have to confess to being an unruly pet at best. I have a tendency to talk back and do things my own way, but it was tons of fun in this case.

I started with some wonderful short ribs (and my new show-off knife that I got myself as a birthday present)

after dicing, the meat was ground once before the cure, and then once again after.

Here's a nice clean grind with little to no fat smear

and as Michael mentioned above, there's a lot of fat. In the bowl it looked like about 45-50%, just eyeballing it.

Then the meat cured overnight before being futher seasoned and ground again. I was amazed by how much the coriander is the mystery flavor of hot dogs, something I'd never actually detected before.

One thing I checked out for Michael was whether there was a big textural difference when you do the bind in the food processor, as opposed to the stand mixer. Here you can see that when raw it looks like the mixer ( left dog) produces a much coarser bind than the processor (right dog).

It was easier to stuff the meat from the mixer, I think because more air was incorporated and it was less dense and pasty. My intrepid husband helped me with the stuffing, and we managed to do it all into sheep casings without mishap, a personal first. Later we decided that the result is a bit too skinny for a good hot dog, as you get too much bun-to-meat ratio in every bite.

I was also testing cooking the dogs in the smoker vs. cooking them in a low temp water bath. I hung the dogs to be smoked in the fridge for an hour to develop a pellicle. The soon-to-be water method dogs just rested patiently on the shelf.

This is a great use for those new silicone food loops, by the way.

Then came the hard part. The water bath-dogs went into a shallow pan to slowly cook, and I hung the smoker dogs in my smoker by one of the most improvisational systems imaginable. This is my Hot Dogs in Hell shot.

The tough thing was trying to follow Michael's instruction to smoke the dogs for one hour at 120. Have you ever tried to keep your smoker at 120? It's a total PITA, let me say. I sat by the firebox for the entire hour, feeding it one little chunk of cherry wood after another, with all the vents closed down, and even cracking open the smoking chamber from time to time, and it was still next to impossible.

So then I did a little comparison of the methods

From left to right: mixer-bound water-cooked dogs, processor water dogs, mixer-bound smoked dogs, processor smoked dogs. Here, although you can still see a mixer/processor difference in texture, it was pretty negligible in your mouth. However, the water/smoker difference was huge. To level things out a bit, I stuck one of the water dogs over the remaining flame in the smoker

So here we have a water dog that's been grilled, which is WAY better that a water dog that's just been cooked in water, but is still not nearly as good as a smoked dog.

So, you hardcore smoker folks, get ready for some finicky fun. Plan to make these on a day when you need solitude. This project will let you legitimately shoo everyone away from the smoker, as it will require your full attention, and a considerable portion of your vocabulary of colorful words and phrases as well. It's hard to do properly, but then, we love that, right? Dog challenge ahoy!

Oh, and be sure to roast those short rib bones for stock, demi-glace, or your favorite canine. And then take the fat and drippings, get them hot in a cast iron skillet, fry up some croutons of good bread in the drippings, quickly and gently add some beaten eggs and scramble them with the fat and croutons. Plop this concoction over a salad of mixed garden greens and a light vinaigrette, and there you have a really delicious and offbeat lunch that you never would have had otherwise.

[snowangel]

Abra, thanks for taking "one for the Gipper." You mention in the sheep's casings part of your evaulation that there wasn't enough dog to bun ratio. Do you wish you'd used hog casings?

BTW, magnificent display. Thanks for taking the hit for us.

[Bombdog]

Absolutely terrific Abra! Thanks so much!

Oh, BTW, don't give the cooked bones to the dog, just the raw ones.

[ronnie_suburban]

Thanks, Abra, for the terrific information. It's much appreciated -- as are the great, illustrative pictures.

BTW, how do you like that Ken Onion multi-chef knife? I bought one about 2 years ago and it instantly became one of my faves.

=R=

[Chris Amirault]

Triumphant. An inspiration. Thanks, Abra!

[Abra]

Ron, I love love love that knife. It's my instant fave too. The grip is just phenomenal, and since I always rock, it's the exact thing for me. I do have huge hands, bigger than lots of guys do, and it fits me perfectly. A person with small hands might not love it that much.

And yes, next time I'd use hog casings. Skinny dogs might be authentic to Chicago, but I like more meat in my bun, if you know what I mean.

Edited September 8, 2006 by Abra (log)

[snowangel]

Abra, forgive me if you've covered this in the preceeding 61 pages (!), but what kind of stuffer do you use?

Michael, do you wish to share a recipe with us? I sure don't want to buy another book because the one I have is so nicely marked and splattered up!

[Abra]

I use the Grizzly vertical stuffer. It's wonderfully easy to use, although it does go better with four hands.

[Michael Ruhlman]

that's a fantastic report from abra. notice the clean grind, love it. the abundant fat! the difference between the smoked and non, the difference between the texture of the KA and the food processed.

no secrets, recipes are a dime a dozen.

what I like about this that i haven't seen before is using short rib meat, good ratio of meat to fat, not that expensive, and the fat is soft enough to be emulsified. 2.5 pounds diced

second, the ground meat and salts are combined for a day or two so that the salt can work on the salt-soluable myosin, which will help develop a good texture, the main problem with do-at-home emulsified sausages. have i already said this--can't remember if i was writing this in the headnote. 1/2 ounce and one tsp pink salt with 8 oz of ice water

meat is then mixed with seasoning and ground again (garlic, paprika, coriander, mustard, sugar in proportions listed in current recipe, but i encourage improvising), partially freezing each time to ensure the emulsion. than processed for a minute or two, stuffed and smoked to 150. the smoke is really important on this sausage.

so there it is. I had one today on a soft bu with onion and dijon and it was outstanding.

Edited September 8, 2006 by Michael Ruhlman (log)

[FoodMan]

Abra-

Thank you for the fantastic report. How many pounds of short ribs did you need to make 2.5 pounds of diced boneless meat?

1/2 ounce and one tsp pink salt with 8 oz of ice water

So is that 1/2 oz or 1 tsp? or is 1/2 oz = 1 tsp?

Thanks for sharing Michael.

[Michael Ruhlman]

sorry, you need about 4-1/2 pounds of bone in short ribs.

salt ratio is 1/2 ounce kosher, one teaspoon pink.

[mdbasile]

Hey All,

Been somewhat remiss in my charcuterie lately, but getting back on track...

You all have been doing some nice work - it would be interesting to compare what we have all been making now vs a few months ago... just seems that the quality has really increased....

I just made the cold smoked Chirizo - it says only 3-5 days for hanging - I assume this means the sausage should still be cooked and not completely dry?

Also - I have a Guiancale question.

I have 2 one I will hang, but the second one I want to smoke.. recomendations please... Cold or hot and for how long ---- and then do I hang it?

Thanks

[Abra]

I have to say, even though it's anathema and heresy, that adding 1/8 tsp of liquid smoke to the meat will give it much more of a recognizable hot dog flavor, for better or for worse.

I got extra meat for another purpose, and I got 10 lbs of meat and fat from a little over 12 lbs of ribs - it really depends on the ribs. I had the butcher bone them out, and she probably did a lot better job of cleaning the bones than I would have.

I've never heard of smoking guanciale, so I'll be interested to see what poeple have to say about a method. I made a good guanciale using Mario Batail's recipe, but it still wasn't as good as what his Dad Armandino makes at Salumi in Seattle. With no samples or hints, I just asked Armandino "why is my guanciale boring in comparison to yours?" and he right away said "Did you use juniper?" Why no, I didn't, but next time I will.

Edited September 8, 2006 by Abra (log)

[tristar]

Hi Abra,

Fantastic documentary, very well done, that is the sort of thing which will encourage newcomers into our 'hardcore' ;-) world!

Regards,

Richard

[mdbasile]

Here is my last Guiancale - 1 week cure and 3 weeks hanging:

As I said above trying to decide what to do with the next 2 - smoke one for sure...

..and cooking some up... man is it good stuff... and really rich...

Edited September 9, 2006 by mdbasile (log)

[Wurst Case]

i have no idea where Rulhman or Brian got the idea that coppa is made with chunks. It NEVER is. It is made from a piece of the pork shoulder, a very specific piece, which is basically behing the head of the pig.

It is hard to explain without pictures where the coppa is located. In italy this is a butchered cut that is sold in supermarkets as a roast. Here you have to buy the whole shoulder (from costco or sam's or whereever) and "carve" it out yourself. Some shoulders come so mangled from the packers that it is almost unretrievable.

jason

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I deferred to brian on that one. I'd had a discussion about it with Anne Burrell, the ace dry curer at mario's italian wine merchant, where it is a whole muscle, shoulder, but she didn't say that it was a particular cut from within the shoulder.

I'd love to know specifics of inner shoulder cut if anyone knows them.

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Hi Michael,

Len Poli's site has photos of the muscle used for coppa. Here's the site: http://home.pacbell.net/lpoli/page0005.htm

[ronnie_suburban]

Welcome aboard, Wurst Case. Thanks for the link.

Love the handle, btw

=R=

[mdbasile]

So I decided to smoke one Guanciale and cold smoke(for about 1hour) and hang the second.

Here is the smoked one.... totally fell apart when I took it out... but man is it tasty...

Looks like a turkey doesn't it...

Here it is after and then a close-up of a small piece: