Lessons 104 & 105: Sausages and Terrines

Yesterday's class involved making basic grind sausages and emulsion sausages. Making sausages involves a lot of steps that must be done properly. My group worked on making a Szechwan-Style Sausage (basic grind) and a Frankfurter (emulsion). The other groups made sweet Italian sausages, fine Swiss bratwursts, green chile sausages, and chicken & vegetable sausages.

Kim, Matt and I prepped our Szechwan sausage by trimming the sinew and fat from pork butt. This took FOREVER, so we also took some beef from the refrigerator to add to our meat. We used the meat grinder attachment on the Kitchen Aid to grind up the meat and some cubed "fat back":

Next, we added the seasonings: prague powder #1, crushed peppercorns, dried sage, cayenne, sauteed garlic, anice seeds, powdered dextrose, sugar, chili powder, 5 spice, red chili flakes, soy sauce, and vodka:
We always kept the meat over an ice-bath to keep nice and cold. After making a test patty to check for seasonings, we cranked the meat into the hog casings:
We eventually tied up individual links from this spiral:
Rob, Allison, and Nora made the frankfurter out of beef shoulder, fat back, salt, TCM, Dextrose, onion powder, white pepper, coriander, nutmeg, garlic powder, and non-fat dry milk:
We reserved all of the sausages to cook today. At the end of yesterday's class, we also cured bacon that will be ready by Friday.

After class I met up with my sister and spent the night out in Times Square. I may have had a little too much fun and was definitely paying for it today!

Today we worked on making terrines and pates. I started out by making a brioche dough for the Turkey Pate en Croute. Then, I helped with various steps of our Country-Style Terrine and made a Salt Cure Mix for our Fois Gras that we'll be curing tomorrow.

We will be finishing the terrines tomorrow, so there will be more pictures to come. It was a lot like making sausage: grinding and processing meat and adding various seasonings and aromatics.

We also cooked the sausages today! They were delicious! We grilled the basic grind sausages and boiled & smoked the emulsion sausages. I especially loved our Szechwan sausage!