- We are here at Michelin-starred Gramercy Tavern.
We are visiting our old friend Paul Wetzel.
Dude is super talented, and is responsible
for the butchering program, whole-animal usage,
and charcuterie.
- The cool thing about Paul is
like being in meat for over a decade, like we have been,
everybody has like their guy.
Like this guy's doing this thing.
This guy's doing this thing,
but whenever Paul's name comes up, everyone is just like,
"Oh yeah, no, no, Paul's like the master."
- He's good.
- He's really, really good, and so let's go check it out.
(cheerful music)
- What are we doin' today?
- So today, we're going to produce the Gramercy Tavern
beef and pork kielbasa.
- [Brent] Cool. - With cheese
It is probably the first value-added product
that we started making here, when we decided we wanted
to have a charcuterie program, and it was sort of
instrumental in allowing us to get in whole sides of beef.
- So you mentioned a value-added product,
what does that mean?
- So a value-added product is basically
when you take something, and you process it
in a way that makes it more valuable
to your restaurant or to whatever business.
So, taking milk and turning it into cheese,
or you know, taking ground beef, adding some spices to it,
casing it, smoking it, and making it something
probably a little bit more delicious than it was before,
and also something that people will, you know,
love and pay a little bit more for it too.
- Y'know, you are a fine dining restaurant that said that
you really had to grow into a whole-animal program.
Like whole-animal program is not easy to execute.
That process is something that all of the chefs
are talking, and it's not like, "I'm the butcher,
"I want this pig."
Like you have to figure that out with everyone.
- I do most of the scheduling of the whole-animals,
but in a lot of circumstances, we have to do that
as much as a year in advance, so that the farms
can actually get those slots at the processing facilities.
- [Brent] Wow. - So, y'know,
once you've committed to 17 sides of beef, you then have
to like then put your math in place,
with how you're going to get all of that done.
And it happens on a lot of different levels.
- [Brent] Wow. - It takes a lot of work.
- Let's make some sausage.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- [Sean] So, we're going to begin the grinding process
for our cheese kielbasa.
We have all of our lean wagyu here,
as well as our hard pork fat,
already geared up, already par-frozen
to about 33 or below, degrees.
And we're going to begin to grind it.
So we're looking to do about a 70/30 ratio
of our wagyu to pork fat.
- 70/30 is pretty much the universal, like lean to fat
that you want
with a sausage maker. - [Sean] Exactly.
As we pass our first tray through, we are going
to start to sprinkle some
of our spices and milk powder over it.
We try not to season ahead of time
along with the curing process
'cause you really don't want to dilute
that protein extraction.
Things like the oils and mustard powder
might kind of thin or break that consistency
of that protein that you're looking to get.
And we'll be adding the ice in as well,
to kind of help add a vehicle for
that protein that is extracted,
as well as kind of thin out the strong bind
and texture that all of that protein will give it.
If we did it without ice, it would emulsify fine,
but it would be like the tightest
sausage ever. - [Brent] Yeah.
- I mean, I guess while were doing this,
like what's your sign?
- [Sean] I'm a Scorpio, my good man.
- Yeah. - [Sean] Yeah.
How about yourself?
- Aquarius.
- [Sean] I have no idea if that's a match.
- I don't know what any of it means.
For Scorpio, can we review your horoscope for today?
- [Sean] Let's do it.
- "Feel free to enlist your own creativity today."
- Aww.
- "To solve any problem that may come your way, Scorpio,
"exercise more of your sensitive nature."
- We're here for you, man. - I think that's
something that we can all be doing a little bit.
- [Sean] so now you can see the particles here
are obviously large and defined,
and the particles here are much smaller,
we've already started to create what almost looks like
Pâté, or almost, puree if you will.
- [Ben] I mean it already almost like, completely bound.
It looks like just a very minimal amount of handling
and you already have a usable product.
- [Sean] So we all just y'know, it's following the steps
y'know like making sure you use selected, nice, dark muscle,
making sure you cured it for the appropriate amount of time,
making sure it's cold, making sure your
grinder's set up properly.
- I think this is true of how we learned and,
I imagine you as well, it's like,
making sausage, learning to make sausage, pretty easy.
Getting to the point where like you guys are at,
is years of like intense like just practice
and reading, and watching tons of videos
and just experience.
- [Sean] Our farce just came through.
We're about to start finishing the
emulsification process and adding our cheese.
- So this is Reading raclette.
This is from a farm in Vermont.
We've actually tested through a couple
different types of cheese.
We definitely wanted something relatively local.
We kinda par-froze it a little bit
so it'll hold its shape.
Not that you're gonna see a perfect dice
in the finished product but, part of this
is keeping it nice and cold so it's safe,
also part of it is keeping it nice and cold
so it's kind of structurally sound until you've
gotten it to the point where you
don't have to handle it anymore.
- Right so, you're finishing the emulsification process,
but how much do you really need to mix it
once you've grounded twice?
- A good bit, especially, it's gonna be in the smoker,
almost all day, so you really wanna be confident
about the structure and how tight it'll be.
You don't want any kind of pockets that might be different
than the rest of the sausage, you know.
You want everything consistent, tightly bound.
- And you can see, it looks a lot like dough, right?
It's like your kneading dough to make like pasta,
or bread or something else, like you can tell
that it's got a lot of protein to it because it
can basically stand up on its own if you like
make a mark in it it's gonna hold.
The way I was first taught to do it is
if you put some against the palm of your hand
and it sticks to your hand then
it's probably in a pretty good spot.
So the casing that we've chosen for this is a
170 millimeter collagen casing.
They take cow hide and boil it down,
until you, y'know, end up with a lot of gelatin,
and then it's extruded out so you get a nice
very durable, and very symmetrical casing.
- I'll hold this thing done for you?
- Yeah.
- Alright.
- There we go. Team effort. - Got'ya boss.
- Thank you, sir.
- So, Paul.
(laughter)
- [Paul] Looks like we did our job, and we made a really
tightly bound-- - {Ben] I think it's bound.
- [Paul] Sausage.
- [Brent] This is big.
- Yeah, this is, this is the largest,
I think, format that casing we can get.
- So, right now you're making holes
for the air pockets, right?
- [Sean] Yeah, just any large air pockets that we think
might be a problem.
You also don't wanna poke too many holes in this
because then you'll lose all your cheese.
- [Ben] Yeah, that's really beautiful looking.
- So, with a sausage about this size,
it's gonna smoke for about eight to nine hours, total.
Typically when we're doing sausage,
we try to smoke them by themselves
because obviously if you have a lot of
moisture in there, they're not gonna
grab the right amount of smoke.
With something like this it almost doesn't matter,
it's kind of like smoking a pork shoulder.
It'll get smoky.
- [Ben] So what you wanna end up with is a football color.
- [Paul] Yes. - [Ben] Yeah.
- So this guy probably needs to rest a little bit
before we slice into it, we don't want the cheese just
running out of it, we kinda wanna get that--
- [Brent] As much as I wanna see that.
- Yeah, we want it to run out,
but we don't want it to totally vanish.
- Hopefully if we constructed this guy the right way,
as we slice into it you're gonna see some nice melty cheese,
hopefully not a bunch of rendered fat
from a broken emulsion.
- [All] Oooooh.
- [Paul] Bingo bango.
- [Brent] Yes. - [Ben] Oh my god.
- [Paul] And that is the large format wagyu kielbasa.
There you go guys.
- I mean you're gonna eat this too, right?
- Absolutely - Okay.
- Oh my god. - [Paul] Pretty good.
- Yeah.
Pretty good breakfast.
- Oh my god.
That's absolutely incredible.
Really really well bound.
- Holy (bleep) is that good.
- Yeah I just wanna.
- You want a hug?
- I feel like it's definitely the much classier version
of pretty much what we make.
Whenever we put cheese in it, we're also like,
we're probably gonna drink six beers while we eat this,
so like how do we wanna like,
just like throw the kitchen sink out of it,
this is just like (bleep)ing nice.
Like everything there, you can taste.
- Not only is it super impressive
as a large format sausage, all of the spices are balanced,
the smoke is, like, there, but not overwhelming.
- So this is where 10 years of charcuterie master gets you?
- Yeah, large format cheese kielbasa.
- [Ben] Yeah. - This is the end of the road.
- This is how you make the big bucks.
(laughter)
So when we started and we came here, we talked about
your whole-animal program, the need
for like value-added products,
and this is the amazing product you're making
with what would otherwise be, like scrap.
You're now turning it into this like
absolutely incredible dish.
That really speaks a lot to like
what the mission of this place really is.
- Yup. - I'd say so.
- Definitely. - It's really amazing.
- Feel like I just put all of the words in your mouth
rather than letting you
say it for yourself - Thank you.
That was awesome.
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(muffled) Why is there so much on your hand?
- It's the cheese man.
What do you want from me?