Recipes from Charcuterie

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dataz722

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I know many of you have the book Charcuterie and have made things out of it. I have read the book cover to cover and used the processes and concepts out of it but last night was the first time I actually followed one of the recipies. I made the breakfast sausage and the mexican chorizo. When I fried up a test piece neither of these were really that great at all and I will not be making them again.

What have you all made from the book and what were the results?
 
I've made a few things, although it has been a while. The biggest success I can remember was the bacon, oh my god it was so good. It was helped by the fact that I live in Austria, where "American" style bacon is not very prevalent. Yes yes, we have things similar to american bacon here, but not the same; I get into a lot of arguments about that...

anyway, I've also made the duck confit, which I found to be really great as well. My one failure thus far has been trying to preserve lemons; I think I used the wrong salt, and they never dried out, but just rotted. Gross.
 
I've also made the bacon and SWMBO and I love it. We're American, but it's just better. I made the pastrami and it was good, but not worth the effort.
Oh, and I've made the cold-smoked salmon and the people who've tried it rave about it.
 
I've made hot Italian -better than average, bratwurst-better than average, breakfast sausage-not to my taste, bacon-is a staple around chez Jass, corned beef-good but liked Sean Paxton's recipe better.

I enjoyed the book and learned some good techniques. Some of the recipes don't found very appealing to my palette.
 
Ok so I am just not alone then I guess. The breakfast sausge has way to much ginger and not enough sage for me. I was afraid of that much ginger and should have just gone with my instincts.

The chorizo is too salty and just has a weird taste to it. I need to try it some more to try and norrow down exactly what I don't like about it.
 
Ok so I am just not alone then I guess. The breakfast sausge has way to much ginger and not enough sage for me. I was afraid of that much ginger and should have just gone with my instincts.

The chorizo is too salty and just has a weird taste to it. I need to try it some more to try and norrow down exactly what I don't like about it.

I never tried the mexican sausage, but, youre right, breakfast sausage had way too much ginger. I found a recipe for jimmy deans sage sausage I've been using. It's really good.
 
I never tried the mexican sausage, but, youre right, breakfast sausage had way too much ginger. I found a recipe for jimmy deans sage sausage I've been using. It's really good.

Link?

I normally don't follow recipies on anything other than baking but I decided I want to try a few then come up with one of my own.
 
No link, but here's the recipe:

5# ground pork
5 t salt
2.5 t parsley
1.25 t sage
1.25 t course black pepper
1.25 t thyme
1.25 t crushed red pepper
1.25 coriander
1.25 msg - I omitted this

I've made it several times. It's not perfect yet but it's a pretty good starting point.
 
I liked the brats, sweet italian, the breakfast sausage (could use more sage but still thought it was passable), smoked venison (chef milo's?), the hot smoked andoiulle was good...

The smoked venison and the andoiulle aged well also. We stuffed up a bunch of each and smoked them on Thanksgiving one year. We froze a lot and it was amazing at Christmas when we did sausage and cheese trays!

I make the corned beef every year. The sauerkraut is good.

I've been asking for a pate pan for years but haven't got one yet... been wanting to try some of those.

I think I've made some other things from the book but I read the book while in my Garde Manger class so I get my Garde Manger book mixed up with Charcuterie. I do know what I mentioned above was from Charcuterie and not the garde manger book.
 
the roasted poblano sausage is off the hook, i would definitely suggest trying that one. the hot italian sauage had too much corriander for my taste. i'm gonna try out the chicken/sun dried tomoato/basil one this weekend i think.
 
OH i did one of the smoked chicken sausages and i think i ended up throwing most of it out. I could not find a recipe to use it in and I wasn't too thrilled with the taste or texture.

I made some pink sauce with the sweet italian sausage last night and my wife was crazy for it. She took the leftovers for lunch (after stuffing herself to the point of hurting last night!)
 
+1 on the roasted poblano sausage... I thought that sausage was really really good. I thought it was good straight up but I also actually used it in jelapeno poppers. I melted some of that crumbled sausage in some cream cheese and shredded cheddar and then stuffed jalepenos with the mix. daaaaaaaaaaaamn. I had hot chics throwing their panties at me Tom Jones style over those.

I have separate "tried and true" recipes I use for breakfast sausage and mexican chorizo (both get rave reviews and I can post 'em if you want once I am home).

I've done the pancetta and thought that was awesome. I thought the pastrami was solid. The regular dill pickles are KILLER after cutting down the cinnamon in the "pickling spice" recipe and adding a clove or so of chopped garlic to the jars.

The duck and roasted garlic sausage was pretty good I thought.
 
Mexican chorizo


Ingredients:

1 pound of ground pork

3 dried guajillos

1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

1/4 medium onion, diced

3 cloves of garlic, chopped

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon cumin

1/2 teaspoon paprika (not smoked paprika as Mexican chorizo is decidedly not a smoked sausage)

1/2 teaspoon oregano

1/4 teaspoon cayenne

2 teaspoons salt

Stem, split and seed the dried peppers. Sear the peppers on a hot pan until crispy and just starting to show some black (less than a minute). Break up the pepper and soak in a small bowl with the apple cider vinegar for at least a half an hour.

Add rest of ingredient (except pork) to the peppers and cider. Put it all in the blender and puree until smooth.

combine puree with pork. Done.
 
Breakfast sausage. It is really basic but I really like it and friends rave about it at tailgates.


1 lb boned pork shoulder

1 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/8 teaspoon sage

1/8 teaspoon thyme

1 egg, beaten

Bone the pork, trimming out any gristle or connective tissue. Cut it into 1 inch cubes and grind it through the medium plate of your meat grinder.

Combine the spices and beaten egg with the ground pork and mix until well incorporated.

Let the sausage mixture sit for at least 30 minutes to allow the spices to bloom, then form the sausage into patties and fry until brown.

You can keep this sausage in the refrigerator for a day or two but it doesn't freeze all that well. Don't make more than you will use in that time unless you plan to freeze it after it is cooked.
 
I had a piece of landjager sausage that I think came from that book - it was incredible, like a giant delicious beef jerky

Has anyone else tried it or have the recipe ??
 
Thanks cape. I would have never thought to but egg in the mix. I wonder if one of the binder additives would replace it and make freezing better.
 
Just dont put the egg in it before freezing. Defrost and add it before cooking.

What I usually do is grind up the pork, freeze it in one lb packages and when I want breakfast sausage, I defrost it and mix everything into it right then and there. It's a really light recipe (obviously) so it only takes about 45 seconds.
 
a few weekends ago, i made the chicken sausage with basil and sun dried tomatoes. i succumbed to my wife's request and made it with mostly chicken breast, and although a tad salty, it is really friggin good.
 
I know many of you have the book Charcuterie and have made things out of it. I have read the book cover to cover and used the processes and concepts out of it but last night was the first time I actually followed one of the recipies. I made the breakfast sausage and the mexican chorizo. When I fried up a test piece neither of these were really that great at all and I will not be making them again.

What have you all made from the book and what were the results?

I love that book because of the detailed explanations and the straightforward recipes, but I have found that I have to adjust many of the recipes to my own taste.

The Corned Beef was the first recipe I tried. I used his recipe for pickling spice. I found that the amount of allspice, mace, cinnamon, and cloves in his pickling spice mix is way over the top for me. Nex time I made it, I cut all those seasonings in half, and that was still plenty of those aromatic spices for my taste.

I made his Pastrami after adjusting the pickling spice mix to my taste, and it came out very good.

The Canadian bacon was another one of the first recipies I tried from the book. I like it fine with the fresh sage and thyme, but the second time I made it, I used dried herbs, and it was equally good. This is now a staple at my house. I make it both smoked and unsmoked. The smoked Canadian bacon adds an unusual touch to pizza.

I used basically the same process to make Chuletas Ahumadas, smoked pork chops, which isn't in the book. I just left out the sage and the thyme.

His Mexican chorizo recipe is good, but I also added ground dried chile pequin, which adds a flavor that I think is essential to Mexican style chorizo.

I made his Tasso along side of some using Alex Patout's recipe, and I didn't like either one. Allspice and marjoram, yech. I'm working on my own recipe, trying to recreate the flavor I recall growing up. I like it hot spicy, not aromatic.

The Green Chile Mustard recipe is exquisite.

I haven't tried any of the stuffed sausage recipes yet. Getting ready to. I have casings in my refrigerator. I think I'll try the hot-smoked Andouille, but definitely without the mace, allspice, and cloves. That's just plain weird and those flavors don't belong in Andouille. I'll use the Nola Cuisine Andouille Sausage recipe. That one is authentic.
 
I just checked this out of the library last night. I have been interested in getting into curing and sausage making and since I saw this thread, I thought it would be a good introduction. Looking forward to giving some of these a shot. I am especially looking to make bacon, canadian bacon, andouille and italian sausage.
 
I just checked this out of the library last night. I have been interested in getting into curing and sausage making and since I saw this thread, I thought it would be a good introduction. Looking forward to giving some of these a shot. I am especially looking to make bacon, canadian bacon, andouille and italian sausage.

It is a great book for techniques, processes and what not but the recipes in it seem to be pretty hit or miss.
 
i made the kielbasa this weekend and it's really tasty. my former boss was of polish descent and he used to give us his family made kielbasa every year for christmas and this one tastes exactly like it. REALLY heavy on the garlic, which I'm fine with. i tried the rope-like linking tonight (), it didn't go that smoothly but yielded decent results. anyway, other than the weird coriander bites in the italian sausage, i've been pretty happy with the recipes so far.

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