welcome friends welcome back to the
kitchen uh in continuing with our
fermented
dry cured sausage uh series
today i'm gonna make something that is a
fennel sausage
so in this bin i have uh i have pork and
i have 80
lean and 20 fat let's get right into
grinding it and we'll talk about the
spicing later
okay so the meat has been ground there's
a tiny little bit of meat
in the hopper here that hasn't gone
through the plate yet
everyone tells me about the bread trick
i take some of the already ground meat
and just put it through a second time
it's not going to be ground any finer
going through that same plate but it
will push
the unground stuff through and it'll
leave
a little bit of ground meat in here that
i can pull out
as i clean out the machine so we're
fully ground at this point
turn the machine off i'm going to put
the ground meat back in the fridge and
keep it cold while i assemble
all of the spices and the mixer see you
in a moment so i've got all the spices
together now we need to mix this
up and it's part of it is mixing the
spices into the meat but it's also
mixing the meat together and making it
really nice and sticky
sort of an emulsification process that's
helped along by the mixing and by
the liquids that we're going to add so
i'm going to use a stand mixer with a
paddle attachment
because that works really well and i
have a stand mixer
if you wanted to have a go with this
with your hands go right ahead
it takes a little bit of time just stick
with it it's really not that hard
uh just use what you've got
and it'll be okay so on with the paddle
mixer
and we'll turn this on just on low
don't send the meat everywhere
and we'll mix that up quite a bit before
we add in the spices
okay so it's been a couple of minutes
and the meat is starting to get sticky
so now we're gonna add
everything in i have some fennel seed
and i've just ground that up a little
bit in a mortar and pestle
um not to a really fine powder there's
still chunks of
seed in there next in black pepper
this is some crushed garlic
get that in there next in is some salt
now the salt is there for flavor but
it's also part of the curing process
the salt will help us deter bad bacteria
from growing
and that's where this next one comes in
as well this is prague powder number two
or
cure number two that will again
help deter the growth of bad bacteria
now a lot of people won't use it a lot
of people say that it's bad for you
i'm looking to err on the side of
caution because i don't have a long
history of making this type of sausage
and so if that stops bad bacteria from
growing
i'm all in next is dextrose
and dextrose is a simple sugar
monosaccharide it's not going to make
the sausage sweet
it's just going to help the really good
bacteria get a foothold
that's what they eat so they can get on
the ground running next thing is some
milk powder
um and then some red wine
and be careful with the red wine don't
let it slosh and splash everywhere as
you pour it in
and finally the starter culture
okay this is looking really sticky and
it doesn't take long
three four minutes you don't want to
beat it too long because you don't want
it to warm up
at the same time you want to beat it
long enough that it gets sticky and
there are a lot of people who will show
you how you put this on your hand and
then hold it upside down and if it
doesn't fall off
it's ready you'll also just sort of get
to a point where you
realize it's ready you're going to look
at it and go yeah that's good
so i'm going to put this back into this
tray and i'm going to stick it into the
fridge
while i get ready for the stuffing
okay the smaller dry ager is set up down
here in
our brewery it's just getting so crowded
out in the in the cooking studio i moved
it to the brewery
i'm gonna hang these sausages in here
with the others now the idea is they're
gonna hang in here for
three maybe four weeks um
the amount of time that they hang isn't
the important factor the important
factor is
you need them to lose around 30
of their weight before they're ready and
that sort of determines their doneness
that 30 loss in water weight
is what makes them safe without needing
to cook them
now times temperatures and humidities
will all be in the description box below
the video with the recipe
we'll check in on these in a couple of
weeks and look at the mold growth
and i will see you for tasting when
they're done
these are looking really good let's uh
get them out to the studio
and give them a taste
pretty good hey glenn hi friends
how did this week's turn out i think
this one's pretty good um it smells good
we lost the appropriate amount of weight
um actually we lost more weight than we
needed to because
life gets in the way and i didn't get it
out of the dry age or in time
but i don't think that's a problem that
it lost extra weight
so a couple of slices
now this one
hmm fennel right off the top
that's nice that's very reminiscent of
the um
fresh sausage that we made that recipe
we got from your uncle carmen
yeah it's got a strong fennel flavor so
that but that's really
the dominant flavor that is the domino
flavor yeah i mean i didn't make it
either are there other flavors in there
well i mean even the name of the sausage
is just is fennel
so so as a traditional sausage it's
it's called fennel like i kind of like
it i like the texture on that too
okay so that one's that one's a winner
sorry glenn glenn's busy chewing so
sorry i forget what i'm supposed to say
so this is this is a winner i like this
one a little bit of refinement of course
with everything the first time you make
it it's not going to be
perfect it could use a little bit of
refining
but really easy to make and i think i'd
do it again and just maybe
tighten my technique a little bit and
refine the spicing thanks for stopping
by
see you again soon
you