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.