Charcutepalooza: Grinding

For this month’s Charcutepalooza challenge we inch our way closer to making sausage by exploring the world of grinding. And yes, I feel slightly dirty typing the word “grinding” repeatedly (I’m secretly a 13 year-old boy).

Now grinding isn’t new to me. I broke out my grinder a few weeks ago to make some pretty darned kick ass burgers. BUT the idea of grinding to make sausage meat was new and totally interesting.

This month the apprentice challenge was to make breakfast sausage while the charcuterie challenge was to make either chorizo or merguez sausage meet. The first thing I made was breakfast sausage. I’m all about my breakfast meats so breakfast sausage was right up my alley. Truth be told I was kind of disappointed that we weren’t stuffing sausage casings this month because I always think sausage patties are a bit of a cop out but I forged ahead anyhow.

One of the first things that I had to do was acquire some fatback. I decided to head over to St. Lawrence Market to pick some up as they have like 5+ butchers. Oddly enough NONE of them had any fatback and almost everyone looked at me like I was crazy. One guy even tried to sell me pork belly! I was totally surprised. I ended up at my regular butcher and of course they had it and basically gave me about 3 lbs of the stuff for free (or a couple cents). After doing some research I realized that it probably wasn’t the best quality, I had to do quite a bit of trimming but it did the trick and was worth the price.

Just like last time I used the grinder attachment for my KitchenAid Stand Mixer. Truth be told, I don’t follow all of the rules when it comes to meat grinding. Sure, I freeze the parts and make sure my meat is just a little less than frozen but I’m not too careful about keeping things cold throughout the process. Most instructions say to grind the meat into a bowl set into a bowl of ice/ice water. I don’t bother with that. Mainly because I never have ice on hand and am pretty sure that I don’t have ice cube trays (although I could check…). I rationalize my decision by reminding myself that I’m usually grinding very small quantities so it’s over pretty quickly.

The sausage patties turned out VERY nicely. The meat was flavoured with sage, herbes de provence and parsley among other herbs. The texture was about right and wasn’t crumbly at all. I made some scrambled eggs and biscuits and it was a great Sunday breakfast.

Next up was chorizo making! I had to choose between merguez and chorizo and my heart immediately said chorizo. Sure, I’ve enjoyed merguez in the past but I could immediately think of tons of uses for chorizo. I knew right away that I was going to make some chorizo tacos! Making chorizo was a lot more involved than making breakfast sausages. There were peppers to toast and deseed, Onion to chop, annatto seeds to crush and a slurry to make.

I had a feeling these would be good judging by all of the different flavours going in. I used 3 types of dried peppers (chipotle, guajillo, and anchos), Mexican oregano, annatto seeds, cinnamon, and a bunch of other goodness. The chorizo (sadly) didn’t require any fatback, it was all just porky goodness! The resulting sausage was pretty darned tasty. I’m no chorizo expert so I can’t compare it to others, but on it’s own it was pretty good. Oddly enough I thought that maybe it could’ve used a bit of extra pepper or something but I’m not complaining.

I made chorizo tacos with potatoes and mushrooms and even made a tomatillo salsa. They were a great, hearty meal. I’m looking forward to making some tortas with the rest of my chorizo and maybe some huevos rancheros too. I’ve got 3-6oz packets of chorizo in my fridge and I’m not afraid to use them!

For the recipes for the breakfast sausage and chorizo click here.  I’ll post about the tacos another day.

I’m hoping that next month’s Charcutepalooza involves some sausage casings…