Summer Sausage - Food Wishes

Hi, I'm Chef John from Food Wishes Comm with Summer Sausages. That's right, it takes months to make a proper

summer

sausage

, but as I'm about to show you, we can make a bad one in just a few days and despite taking some huge shortcuts. The results are truly impressive and beyond the wonderful flavor and texture, it is always nice to eat a

sausage

where we know exactly what it contains. I mean, I like a little mystery in my life, but not that kind, so let's move on. and start by crushing some diced celery with a little salt in this mortar and by the way, if you want, you can chop it up really well with a knife, but by crushing it I think we'll end up with something else. a little juicier and in case you were wondering, we not only do this for the flavor but also because celery contains nitrates which will actually help cure our sausage, but anyway if we use this method we will move on and we will work on that. until it looks something like this, at which point we'll add it to two pounds of freshly ground beef, which doesn't have to be freshly ground by us, but you should actually go to the butcher counter and ask them to grind it for you or at least make sure they are freshly ground in case what we want to avoid is buying the things that are already packaged and then to this we will also add some garlic powder, which is not garlic salt, it is just garlic dehydrated that has been ground.

We'll also add plenty of smoked paprika, as well as a generous amount of whole mustard seeds, followed by copious amounts of freshly ground black pepper and kosher salt, not to mention exactly three shakes of cayenne and then we'll finish with two technically optional shakes. Ingredients a little pink salt to cure which I will talk about in detail on the blog. I know it's not the same as pink Himalayan salt and last but not least, I'll add some sugar and that's it. Now we've got everything together, let's go ahead and mix it really well, preferably with our clean, bare hands, and this is one of those rare moments where our fear of undermixing should be greater than our fear of overmixing, so We'll want to get in there and dig in and continue mixing until we're absolutely sure that everything is perfectly laid out and then what we'll do once we think everything has been carefully combined is transfer it to a piece of parchment paper where we'll do that.

We try to shape it into a uniform log and as usual we want to give it a touch with our fingers so the meat doesn't stick to our hands and as we do this we want to try to avoid any big air pockets. so it doesn't get caught inside so make sure you press and push this in firmly and what we're looking for here is something about three or four inches wide and then what we're going to do once that's accomplished is we're going to go ahead and roll this up. and as we're doing this, not only are we trying to make it nice and uniform, but we're also trying to make it as compact and compressed as possible and then once it's rolled up, we're going to go ahead and twist the ends as tight as we can. to create what is basically a giant beef spleen and then once that SAB, we're going to go ahead and transfer it to a tray with paper towels because before we wrap it in foil and cook it, we need to put it in the refrigerator like this. for 24 hours so that's exactly what I did and then the next day we're going to take it out and prepare it for the oven which means we're going to first cut off the excess parchment paper from each end and then go ahead and unroll it and proceed to smoke it and when I said smoke it I made the air quotes because we're not actually going to smoke it but we're just going to simulate it using a little bit of liquid smoke and then I'm going to dilute it in a little bit of cold fresh water and although of course you can add a little of this liquid smoke to the meat mixture, I prefer this method because if we add it together with the other ingredients it is very easy to overdo it and when we really smoke.

Something, the flavor of course, comes from the outside in, so I feel like this method gives us something much closer to the real deal and what we'll do once we've mixed it up is go ahead and brush it liberally all over, like this as well as. We can also brush these onto the paper and then once our liquid smoke mixture has been applied, we'll go ahead and roll this up again, at which point it'll be ready to transfer to a large piece of heavy-duty aluminum foil or several sheets of aluminum foil. regular aluminum and just like when we roll this in the paper, we really want to make sure we compress it and compact it as much as possible and again, that's to avoid any big bubbles or cracks in the middle once it's baked well, so we'll roll it up. nice and tight and when we're done, what we're going to do is take both ends and twist them in opposite directions, which will help compress things even and then with that said, we can transfer it on top of a baking rack that we put out. a baking sheet and once we know where the bottoms are going to be, we'll roll it up and poke about five or six holes in the foil, which will allow some of the excess moisture to drip out and that's it, now there's our sausage. ready to transfer to the center of a 275 degree oven for about an hour and a half or until we have reached an internal temperature of exactly 150 and by the way, under no circumstances exceed 150 otherwise too much fat will melt. comes out and the texture won't be as good, so I like to use one of these probe thermometers that will sound an alarm when it reaches the target temperature and then what we'll do as soon as it comes out will be absolutely nothing. just let it sit there until it reaches room temperature, at which point we'll give both ends another twist to compress it even more and then refrigerate it at least overnight, that's fine, a couple of nights is probably even better, at which point the one we'll finally be able to take out and unwrap it real quick and I'll be the first to admit that this may not be the prettiest piece of meat you've ever seen, but we'll get to what it looks like in a minute, for now I'm just going to cut it up. to see how we did on the inside and if everything goes to plan we should get a nice smooth solid cut with no giant cracks or air pockets.

I mean, you'll always get a few smaller bubbles here and there, but as far as Homemade Summer Sausage goes, it's about as good as we can hope for, although I did have a brief moment of panic here because I thought, what the hell is that red stuff? I don't remember putting any red ingredients in it, but then I remembered the smoked paprika. so that must have been caused by a small piece of that thing that didn't break and what are the chances that my knife would hit that exact small spot when cutting this hole apparently about a hundred percent, but despite that small defect Was he absolutely thrilled? with how this came out and I celebrated by eating a small piece of the end which really was magnificent and if we wanted we could just cut it up and serve it as is but I like to do an extra optional step and that would be dusting the outside with a little bit of freshly ground black pepper to help improve the outside appearance which, by the way, once cut will be fine, but I think it looks a little better if we put powder on something, so what I like to do here is that with black pepper and then transfer it to a piece of crumpled aluminum foil and then let it air dry in the refrigerator uncovered for another day, which I think will not only give it a more finished look on the outside, but will also allow our sausage to dry out. . a little bit and allow those flavors to concentrate and develop even more so you can go ahead and decide if you want to do this or not.

I mean, after all, you are the MVP of your homemade charcuterie, but if you can wait one more day, I recommend it. and that's it, the next day we can take it out and go ahead and cut it up and try the official flavor of something that we cut a couple months off of production time and don't actually let it ferment and cure properly or even if it's smoked properly , the results are still very impressive. I mean, this product has pretty much the same flavor and texture of that

summer

sausage you're used to in gift baskets and, as far as serving goes, you can just make it off the cutting board or take it to the next level and include it in your own custom-made charcuterie plate garnished with some of the usual suspects and if you've never tried this before, it's basically like a garlicky, lightly smoked salami, so of course it's great with a little mustard on a cracker accompanied by some cheese and, once again, I regret throwing away the package.

I'm not sure what that is, although it appears to be a washed Rhine goat cheese, and by the way. Speaking of salami, don't think of this video as a recipe, it's all about technique and by changing the meats, spices, aromas and size you make it, you can produce other similar sausages, like maybe a pepperoni or a sopressata. or even those little spicy meat sticks, what are they called fine James, something like that, but anyway, if you follow this exact formula or create your own very special variations either way, I really hope you try this soon, so head to the

food

whistle quietly for all the amounts of ingredients for more information as always and as always I enjoy you