Sausage Bomb

Jason and Natascha came over yesterday to do the next batch of meat curing. Our pancetta is just about ready to be unwrapped, but it was still a bit soft so we're giving it a few more days to hang. Natascha brought over an aged gouda and a lemon stilton; Jason brought some spicy coppa and breasola; and I made some marionberry caramel sauce, an angel food cake and poured the apricot mimosas. It was time to begin.

We decided earlier this week what we were making and split up the ingredients. Here's the meat menu:

Fresh ginger and sage breakfast sausage (some in links, rest in bulk -- note: sheep casings are a pain and it's doubtful that I'll be making breakfast links again anytime soon. That said, the bulk sausage was great and would be perfect in any sort of sausage application. It just wasn't worth the time to stuff the small links)

Spanish Chorizo -- this was the dry-cured sausage we were most excited about. It's a pork sausage seasoned with lots of paprika that is currently hanging in my basement. It can be smoked, so I'll probably smoke half of it for comparison. Mmmmm chorizo taste test.

Italian Sausage -- It was lunch time, so we made a half batch of italian sausages (sweet and just a bit spicy). I made the carmelized onions, Natascha brought the buns. We sat around and ate our freshly made sausages while drinking apricot mimosas -- we even toasted the fennel seeds ourselves. That was fun.

Breasola -- Breasola is an eye of round beef roast that is cured in salts and seasonings for 2 weeks and then hung to dry for another 3 weeks. Jason brought some from the store for us to try. My goodness, here's hoping ours turns out half as good. I am excited about this one. Especially since it's $30/lb at the store yet only cost us $5.10/lb to make, not including labor. Jason's tending it for the next two weeks before hanging it in his basement. Did I mention this stuff was good?

Pepperoni -- We were a bit overwhelmed and running behind by this time. Jason and Natascha were playing in a bowling league at 6. I (and my kitchen) were covered in meat. But we hunkered down and ground the last 5 lbs of beef round for the pepperoni, added the seasonings and I stuffed the mixture into 10-12 inch links after people left. I poured myself the last mimosa for motivation.

At final tally, I calculate that we cured 14 pounds of pork and eight pounds of beef in a variety of ways. I have the spanish chorizo and pepperoni hanging from hooks, dry-curing in my basement. I have 7-8 twelve inch links of each. I'll probably smoke half of each next weekend, or tonight, which ever comes first. It will then continue to cure, and in 12-18 days, I'll have either awesome, home-cured sausages or a giant moldy stinky mess of rotting meat*. I can't wait.


* Note: I'm saying rotting meat for dramatic effect. Both dry-cured sausages and the breasola have appropriate levels of sodium nitrate, a long-lasting preservative used in making dry-cured sausages to prevent botulinum toxin from being formed in the low oxygen environment (read: inside the sausage). It sounds sketchy but I take solace in the idea that it's been done for hundreds if not thousands of years by people who didn't understand the science, may not have had the cleanest of equipment or access to consistent levels of salt and/or preservative. Still, fingers crossed.