hello this is chef john from food wishes comm with seafood sausage that's right
out of all the sausages in the world seafood sausage is by far the least
popular and i think the reason for that is it when it comes to the land animals
you can make a really good sausage from old and unusable parts whereas when it
comes to seafood sausage that's not necessarily the case all right we
actually have to use some nice seafood to make this but with this stuff lacks
in popularity it more than makes up for by not containing lips and ears so with
that lovely thought let's go ahead and get started
and first up I'm gonna saute a little bit of shallot in some butter over
medium heat until it just starts to turn golden and by the way feel free to
substitute some finely minced onion and or garlic if you want and while many
people do add this route to the mix I think a few minutes saute does this
wonders so that's what I did and once those shallots did soften and Sweeden up
and turn sort of golden like this we'll go ahead and turn off the heat and will
simply let that cool down to room temp before we add it to our seafood which
will be the next thing we cover for today's selection will be going with
Sepideh and devayne shrimp some skinless boneless salmon and yes that piece of
salmon was previously frozen since I will take frozen wild salmon over fresh
farm salmon any day and then we're also going to need some kind of whitefish and
in my case I'm using sole and what we'll do once our seafood is set is go ahead
and transfer it into a food processor and as we do let me give you two huge
tips first of all we're going to want to cut our seafood up into smaller pieces
and that's simply to help ensure even blending and the second tip is make sure
this product is very very very cold all right doesn't matter what animals we're
talking about cold meat makes better sausage and then to our smaller very
cold pieces of seafood we'll go ahead and add a couple tablespoons of
breadcrumbs as well as our main binder which is going to be egg white but in
addition to that we'll also add one whole egg since I think with all this
lean seafood we can use a little more fat and then once that's in we'll go
ahead and season this up with some kosher salt and a generous amount of it
as well as the obligatory shake of cayenne
make that multiple shakes and then assuming it's cooled down to room temp
we can go ahead and add our shallots as well as last but not least some freshly
chopped parsley and that's it this is now officially ready to process and as
usual we'll start this by pulsing on and off starting off with nice slow pulses
at first and then transitioning into longer pulses and what we're looking for
as soon as the mixture sort of blends together is basically for it to start
clumping up on the blade which is what we have right about here all right you
see that how it all kind of comes together if for a better look let me go
ahead and take off the top and grab a spatula so you a little better idea and
by the way I'm doing a smooth style of seafood sausage sort of inspired by a
boudin Blanc but if you want you can do coarser textures of this sausage it will
discuss that on the blog but anyway what we'll do at this point is transfer that
into a bowl because I highly recommend chilling this before you work with it
right you don't have to you could probably start now but I do find this
stuff easier to work with if you pop in the fridge for an hour too which is what
I did but whether you Chili's or not here's
how we're gonna form our sausage right we're gonna transfer exactly one-fourth
of our mixture onto this piece of plastic and then using some dampen
fingertips we will sort of shape this into a log and I find this initial
shaping and smoothing before we roll in the plastic very helpful and I think
you'll end up with a smoother better looking sausage and then once we form
that basic shape we'll go ahead and roll this up in the plastic and once rolled
up was sort of twist the ends apply a little bit of pressure in an attempt to
make this as even as possible and then what would do once we have that initial
shape done with plastic we'll transfer this onto a piece of foil and basically
do the exact same thing okay we will roll that up and then we'll go ahead and
take those ends and twist them in opposite directions which is going to
sort of press and tighten everything up but don't do it too hard this will
explode and I'm not kidding and that's it once those ends are twisted up and
folded back we should have a perfectly formed and more importantly water proof
seafood sausage ready to poach which I'm happy to report is the next step so
let's head to the stove where we've brought some water up to a simmer in the
saucepan and we will go ahead and transfer our encase seafood sausage in
and then just to make sure those I'll stay submerged I'm going to top it with
a small plate but be careful don't crush them otherwise you're going to end up
with some non sausage shapes and then what we'll do is cover this and cook it
on low for 20 minutes all right no stirring no peeking just leave it
covered like that for 20 minutes at which point we will uncover it and we'll
transfer those into a bowl of cold water to stop the cooking process if by the
way you want to stop the cooking process all right theoretically you could remove
these from the plastic and foil and eat them right away but I much prefer mine
Brown and butter first so what I like to do is let these cool
down in the cold water for about 15 or 20 minutes at which point once cooled
I'll go ahead and pop those in the fridge until I'm ready to cook them up
so basically I like to do this part ahead and then simply Brown these up and
hitam through when I'm ready to serve and again if you want to eat right away
you just start browning them as soon as they come out of the water but like I
said I prepped mine ahead so I pop those in the fridge until later that day at
which point we'll go ahead and pull those out and we'll remove that foil and
plastic and as you'll notice I'm doing this on a paper towel because there's
gonna be a good amount of moisture and we kind of want to dry this off before
we brown it in the butter so we'll go ahead and take off the foil and the
plastic which I'll do by snipping off this end and then sort of pushing it out
and that's it check it out one perfectly formed poached seafood sausage ready to
brown I mean besides drying it off if you want you can take a knife and trim
off any unsightly parts like this for example little bit unsightly
and that's it once our sausage you're unwrapped and patted dry and possibly
trimmed we'll go ahead and brown these up in some melted butter over medium
heat and what we'll attempt to do is somehow someway Brown as much of the
surface as we can which can be a little tricky since these are round but we will
do our best and basically we will just keep turning it browning spots that are
not browned until most of the spots are browned and by the way a little tip here
sometimes it helps to move the sausage to the edge of the pan to get it to sit
exactly how you want to sit but anyway what we'll do is spend about
five or six minutes browning the outside at which point I'd like to reduce my
heat to medium low and then cover these okay because we want to make sure these
are heated all the way through which of course you can always test with a
thermometer but anyway that's my general strategy five or six minutes of browning
uncovered on medium and it could get covered for another five or six minutes
until completely heated through then once that's been accomplished we'll go
ahead and remove those sausage from the pan and we'll go ahead and keep those
warm on a plate for a few minutes while we make a very very simple butter sauce
so into the exact same pan we'll go ahead and add a couple tablespoons of
water as well as the juice of one lemon and we'll set our heat to medium-high
and bring this up to a boil and all we're going to do is let this bubble for
about a minute until it reduces by about half which is about what I have right
here and once that's happened we'll reduce our heat to the lowest setting
and we'll go ahead and toss in some chunks of cold butter as well as some
freshly chopped parsley and what we'll do is swirl that pan and keep that pan
moving until the butter disappears okay feel free to use a whisk or spoon if you
want but just swirl in a pan like this works beautifully and maybe season this
up with a little bit of salt and that's it in just a couple minutes you've made
a beautiful lemon parsley butter sauce and as soon as that is saturated plate
up which I'm gonna do on some potatoes but pasta rice would also be great
choices so you decide I mean you guys are after all the Bob Ross's of your
seafood sausage but I really do enjoy mine on a happy little cloud of mashed
potato and of course we'll finish this up by spooning over our butter sauce and
that's it our seafood sausage is done and ready to enjoy and man did I enjoy
this I mean I don't even know what to brag about first the incredible texture
or the amazing taste well let me go ahead and do texture first since you can
get a great look at that here and I mentioned earlier I was kind of
patterning the texture after a boudin Blanc and that is pretty much exactly
what we achieved right we have a smooth fine tender texture that's not too
rubbery which can be a big problem with some seafood sausage recipes so for me
this is just absolutely perfect and as far as the taste goes that's just as
impressive Oh Cara shrimp sole and salmon have combined to produce a very
mild very pleasant seafood flavor which I find difficult to precisely describe
so I'll just summarize by saying it's very delicious and very tasty and I
thoroughly enjoyed it in fact the only thing I don't like is the name I think
seafood sausage is kind of generic and unremarkable so we should probably come
up with something more interesting like I don't know the Weiner of Neptune or
not probably sounds better in Italian anyway I'll work on that but in the
meantime I really do hope you give this amazing seafood sausage a try soon
so head over to food versus dot-com for all the ingredient amounts of more info
as usual and as always enjoy
you