Stopped by my butcher and had them grind me some pork and beef with the coarse die - 5 lbs of each.
Got some casings at Wally World (in the jerky section) - natural hog casings. They're packed in salt and they smelled like feet when I took them out of the package to put them in some water to soak! Ick.
Kind of came up with my own thing, using recipes from Bradley Robinson, mostly. Chud's BBQ.
My scale don't do grams - I need to order one. It's not quite right doing it with tenths of an oz, but I did the best I could.
Mixed up.
Small piece to try out the flavors.
Pretty good. Thought it seemed a little salty, but I can live with it.
Commenced to stuffin' - no way to take pitchures in the process.
Came out pretty good - one ruptured badly and I sacrificed it for another patty at the end. Another one I noticed also did, but it's not turrible, so I left it alone. You can just see it in the top left.
The final leftovers patty:
Anyways, they're in the fridge drying out tonight, I'll throw 'em on and cold smoke 'em a couple hours tomorrow, then heat 'em to 150F, ice 'em down and stop the cooking, then prolly vac and freeze a few, and smoke a couple-three up to temp and try 'em out with some mustard.
Got plans for a couple more batches. Prolly an uncured bratwurst, and I'm thinking I might try some jalapeno popper sausage I saw on Smokin' Joe's BBQ, too. We'll see!
It's interesting. I like it. Gotta get the hang of stuffin' em, but I think for my very first ever try, they came out pretty good!
Flavor -
I thought with the small initial patty it was a bit salty - but when I fried the larger one, I realized it is more just very garlic-heavy. This is ok, this is what I wanted, but... I think I need more black pepper, maybe a bit more cayenne. The cayenne I had was so old, I can barely smell it in the jar, but I was afraid of going too heavy with it, so I went easy on it. Definitely could use more of the black pepper, though. And my garlic powder is pretty new, so it was pretty strong. So between the old cayenne, the old black pepper and the super strong garlic, that's by far the predominant flavor. Prolly more paprika, too, for color, though we'll see how red they turn out after overnight cure and a cold smoke tomorrow. I'll have to try out the various levels of different things, but I'm looking forward to it!
I'm really REALLY wanting to dial in a good bratwurst - I just CANNOT find one I really like around here. Most are way too bland. So I did some research and I'm interested to see how the various flavors come out - seems like profile I found is salt, a little sugar, nutmeg, a little coriander, celery seed, pepper, a tiny bit of marjoram and ginger. I guess we'll see how it goes!
Got some casings at Wally World (in the jerky section) - natural hog casings. They're packed in salt and they smelled like feet when I took them out of the package to put them in some water to soak! Ick.
Kind of came up with my own thing, using recipes from Bradley Robinson, mostly. Chud's BBQ.
My scale don't do grams - I need to order one. It's not quite right doing it with tenths of an oz, but I did the best I could.
Mixed up.
Small piece to try out the flavors.
Pretty good. Thought it seemed a little salty, but I can live with it.
Commenced to stuffin' - no way to take pitchures in the process.
Came out pretty good - one ruptured badly and I sacrificed it for another patty at the end. Another one I noticed also did, but it's not turrible, so I left it alone. You can just see it in the top left.
The final leftovers patty:
Anyways, they're in the fridge drying out tonight, I'll throw 'em on and cold smoke 'em a couple hours tomorrow, then heat 'em to 150F, ice 'em down and stop the cooking, then prolly vac and freeze a few, and smoke a couple-three up to temp and try 'em out with some mustard.
Got plans for a couple more batches. Prolly an uncured bratwurst, and I'm thinking I might try some jalapeno popper sausage I saw on Smokin' Joe's BBQ, too. We'll see!
It's interesting. I like it. Gotta get the hang of stuffin' em, but I think for my very first ever try, they came out pretty good!
Flavor -
I thought with the small initial patty it was a bit salty - but when I fried the larger one, I realized it is more just very garlic-heavy. This is ok, this is what I wanted, but... I think I need more black pepper, maybe a bit more cayenne. The cayenne I had was so old, I can barely smell it in the jar, but I was afraid of going too heavy with it, so I went easy on it. Definitely could use more of the black pepper, though. And my garlic powder is pretty new, so it was pretty strong. So between the old cayenne, the old black pepper and the super strong garlic, that's by far the predominant flavor. Prolly more paprika, too, for color, though we'll see how red they turn out after overnight cure and a cold smoke tomorrow. I'll have to try out the various levels of different things, but I'm looking forward to it!
I'm really REALLY wanting to dial in a good bratwurst - I just CANNOT find one I really like around here. Most are way too bland. So I did some research and I'm interested to see how the various flavors come out - seems like profile I found is salt, a little sugar, nutmeg, a little coriander, celery seed, pepper, a tiny bit of marjoram and ginger. I guess we'll see how it goes!
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