One thing we can agree on, we like bologna.
It's literally the only thing we can agree on.
That's it.
Yeah.
I don't know why we have a business together.
10 years.
(chuckles)
We're also not able to sell every bit of this meat.
So we need to figure out something to do with it.
We have dry-aged strip loin here.
- [Ben] Ooh.
A pork loin here.
Ahhh.
Because we always have an excess of trim,
we don't always want to just make dry-aged burgers.
So we figured today, what the hell,
let's make a dry-aged beef bologna.
Okay!
(upbeat music)
Each loin, after it's dry-aged, has a dark side to it.
Ooh. Ooh.
We can't put that in the case.
We are going to trim this out
and this would be the makings of our dry-aged burger,
but, today, we're making dry-aged bologna.
So, again, just taking the face off
Whoa, god, man.
He made the movie reference in this one!
So this is about 30 days dry-aged right now,
so this is gonna be really, really good.
It's also gonna be exceedingly good at binding water
for our emulsified bologna.
Totally.
Now the cool part about the fat that we need
for our emulsification is we want this hard fat pack.
This is a pretty hefty amount of fat on a pork chop.
Most people aren't gonna want that,
which is great for us making bologna
because then we can just take that fat cap off.
That doesn't work as well.
It is the best fat for binding.
This will actually hold structurally together
a little bit better.
All right, so, pork chops go in the case.
We take the trim to make some bologna.
Gonna go downstairs.
So we have our dry-aged, we have our pork fat, we have ice.
So we're gonna grind these things together
and what we're trying to create with the myosin,
which is the protein in here.
We're trying activate that myosin to create
a really good bind with the salt.
All we need to do now to really get our bind going is
we're going to grind this five times
so that it is really just a paste.
The same process goes into making bologna
as does mortadella or any other emulsified sausage.
So we have our meat and our fat in here.
We like to add ice, especially for something like this
we're gonna grind five times.
There's gonna be a lot of kinetic energy in there,
like, just building up heat, kind of like
Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams in The Notebook.
Smoking hot.
So we want to keep it cool.
We don't our meat mixture to get too warm
because that also affects our binding.
Bingo, bango.
(ice clanking)
- [Brent] Let's grind.
(upbeat music)
- [Ben] More pasty.
- [Brent] Yup.
But not pasty enough.
(grinder whirring)
So there are two principle protein strands
that we're trying to work with here, actin and myosin.
Myosin is the more prevalent but those two proteins
together are what give you contractions in muscles.
That's how I'm able to move my arm like this,
is because of those two proteins.
How else can you move your arm?
(upbeat music)
So this is four?
- [Ben] Four.
Great.
So we can see, now we have an almost
completely homogenous texture.
You can also tell from, like, the second grind
when it was still really watery and mushy
and wasn't really holding together.
Now, it's very, very distinct.
So, all that fat and the water and the proteins
have all bound together.
So all we have to do is add salt.
We're just gonna take our mixture,
dump it in this comically big bowl,
attach this comically big paddle.
We mostly just got this because when Brent makes
mashed potatoes he really likes
to make a lot of mashed potatoes.
Just adding our few spices,
and then we just sit back and chill.
Wait a second.
How we looking?
I think we're good.
What are you looking for?
Just making sure it's bound.
You're well aware of this.
Do an upside down hand test,
and if it holds for three seconds or more,
generally feel pretty good about our bind.
This is not going anywhere.
This guy is really good.
And it's staying as one piece.
It doesn't want to come apart.
It's not falling apart.
Speaking of...
Science?
How we look, where'd the mustache go?
I just decided I wanted to try something new.
Our viewers have a lot of comments about it.
And I--
Oh, I'm sure they do.
Jai Garcia, "Ben without the 'stache looks like he got
older and younger at the same time."
I think that's, that is true!
"Ben has lost his source of power.
It truly is the end times.
Without that beacon of hope, our dimension faces
dark forces, the likes of which have never been foretold.
You were a protector of our..." wow it just keeps going.
That is highly accurate.
Matt Andrews, "Never seen Ben's teeth before."
(laughing)
Shoohowz says, "Ben's mustache is finally gone.
Turn out to be some hot daddy vibe."
(upbeat music)
We got the horn on the stuffer.
We got the casing in the water.
We put the casing in the water just to
open it up a little bit.
Get it a little bit loosey goosey.
But this is an artificial casing,
so it's not the intestines.
You're still gonna want to treat it the same.
(machine whirring)
And we're done.
There she goes!
That's it!
Pack her up!
I know that was really anticlimactic,
but it really does just go that fast.
We're just gonna put this in a water bath
at 160 degrees for probably two hours, two and a half hours
based on the thickness, and then put it in an ice bath,
and we're done.
This is, you know, proper four inch bologna casing.
Mortadella, sometimes bigger, can be as big as eight inches.
Hot dogs, they're little guys.
Different casing size, but also cooking temperatures.
You need to keep that consistent.
If you go too hot, again, you can break your sausage,
and it will be either greasy or crumbly.
(upbeat music)
- [Ben] Brent, you got a water bath?
Got it!
I got a big log of beefy dry-aged bolgona.
Drop her in the bath.
This is gonna take few hours, so...
I don't know, wanna go see a movie?
- [Brent] All right.
- [Ben] All right, cool.
Okay, we're done!
Let's take this out of the water bath.
It's time to eat it.
Maybe we should make a charcuterie board?
Hmm.
Hey, did someone say charcuterie board?
What?
Sunny Sanchez!
(upbeat music)
Meat Hook butcher and charcuterie cheese master!
- [Ben] Wow.
Go on.
- [Ben] Wow.
We made you bologna.
I hope it's dry-aged.
I only eat dry-aged bologna.
Very demanding, but yes, it is exactly that.
Fortunately.
Thank God.
Charcuterie doesn't need to be fancy.
That's true.
It's basically an adult Lunchable.
Can you show us how to make a lo-fi
picnic charcuterie board?
(triumphant music)
Time to slice it up, but you guys, it's not all that.
You can get up.
(upbeat music)
So we made what is essentially a fancy bologna,
and then you took it and made
an even fancier charcuterie board.
Can we eat some bologna now?
Hell yeah.
Let's do it. Let's do this.
Yeah.
Got a good bind.
That is great bologna.
That's delicious.
Lot of flavor, lot of salt.
Get the dry-aged flavor.
Mm-hmm.
And the texture is perfect.
If the texture is off, it can be very, very gross.
It turns out, we have another way
to get rid of all that dry-aged trim
other than just doing burgers.
We can start introducing this more into, like,
some of our charcuterie projects.
Start making, you know, all of our ordinary, household
charcuterie meats a little bit nicer.
Give them a little bit more flavor.
A little bit more oomph.
(upbeat music)