Sweet Italian and Fresh Chorizo
Jamie and I recently had a mini-marathon sausage session. (Perhaps that didn't come out right...) We made about 12-13lbs of fresh sausages in hog casings. Gotta admit using the fresh casings that are not salted, wrapped around the plastic thingy, is much simpler than washing and threading salted casings. That being said, the salted casing is much cheaper.
We made two recipes, both from the Charcuterie book, with variations. In fact, this is the first time we ever made adjustments based on the post-seasoning/mising, pre-stuffing tasting ritual.
1) Chorizo - 5lbs.
At first taste this didn't have near the chili punch we expected. Not looking for heat, just a deeper chili flavor. Since we lacked ground chili in my kitchen (Jamie pre-seasoned at his house) we tossed in some smoked sweet Spanish paprika after the taste test. It adds a nice zest. Not a traditional chorizo, but one we're proud of. Still a bit salty, as are most recipes from the book.
2) Sweet Italian - 7+ lbs
We've made this several times and it's always a hit. But this time we wanted less salt and more fennel. We nailed it! We doubled the fennel and used about 1/3 less salt. We also doubled almost every other spice (I think...). We coarsely ground 1/2 of the fennel in a mini food processor and this kicked up the fennel punch to a lofty level. Very, very good. Looking forward this this one on the BBQ.
We also made a large sausage spool, Argentine-style, with the Sweet italian. The spool weighs 3lbs. This will be good. White beans, anyone?
Stats:
12+ lbs of pork + fat
6 Sierra Nevada Torpedo IPAs
1 burst casing
1 "dude, where's my car?" moment
0 arguments over method or recipe
4 hours from start to finish
Enjoy the pics! (Jamie always dresses the part.)
