When I look at Facebook barbecue groups I’m amazed at the number of people that buy ready-made BBQ rubs.
Why not? I hear you ask.
Well, if that’s the way you want to do it, far be it from me to stop you but with prices often topping £40/kg for what is primarily salt and sugar it seems to me to make sense to make your own!
My recipe for soft bread rolls became a bit of a cause-célèbre back in the days when the sausagemaking.org forum was more active. I’m quite proud of it. But, I never thought it was that good for burgers – it fell apart too easily. I toyed with the idea of using a pretzel roll or even a pseudo-brioche, one that’s a lot less sweet – using butter instead of oil in my soft bread roll for example. However, I’ve settled on a roll made with potatoes, and not only potatoes but instant potato flakes. The idea for these buns comes from a post on the sausage forum that referred to a recipe on the cookistry website. My recipe is a slight adaption of that one using information learned from their site.
It’s great for burgers, pulled pork and things of that nature. My original soft roll is still best for a cheese and onion roll though!
To overseas readers, I apologise that the links to suppliers are all UK based, however, the information is relevant regardless of that.
Many governments have rules about the production of commercial salami products even if it’s only the level of curing salts that are allowed in them. The USA and Canadian authorities also have rules governing the time drying and time allowed for fermentation – it’s to those rules I’ve looked for good practice in those areas. It makes sense for home producers to follow those rules or at least make informed decisions about choosing not to.
Continue reading The Salami Making ProcessThe US and Canadian governments have rules limiting the amount of time that a salami can be held above 15.6°C (60°f) for fermentation of cultures. They are very similar other than one uses Fahrenheit and the other centigrade. It’s the Canadian rules (centigrade) that I’ll use for this explanation.
The rules use a calculation based on what is termed degree hours. The salami must reach a pH of 5.3 within a set number of degree hours. This is the number of hours that the salami is above 15.6°C multiplied by the amount that the temperature exceeds 15.6°C:
Degree hours = hours x temperature in excess of 15.6° C (60° F)
This number of degree hours is limited depending on the temperature being used:
Continue reading Calculating Maximum Fermenting Times4th October 2021 The first stage – curing:
Forgive the long title; I was going to title this ‘Fennel Lonzino’ and had actually typed that when I thought that it’s a bit of a liberty to do so when I’ve not got a clue as to whether the Italians use fennel in their lonzino.
I’d got in mind to make a more classic product with the simple flavours of pepper and garlic, which I understand to be a traditional lonzino. However, given that this is a piece of industrially produced meat and is likely to have less flavour than the meat I would usually use, I decided to go with the stronger flavour of fennel.
When I wrote about the Kasseler style smoked loin, I said that I’d make some more but use a dry cure rather than a brine.
I started two last month; I’ll smoke one and leave one unsmoked as my wife, Pauline, is not too keen on smoked food.
We’ll use it sliced in place of ham and it may even find its way into the odd bacon butty as it’s a loin version of US bacon! I’ll not be stopping making real British bacon any time soon though – have no fears about that!
Continue reading Hot Smoked Cured Pork Loin
I’ve been looking for a good recipe for chicken sausage and back in October, I made one that was devised by a friend and was flavoured with thyme, lemon and garlic having been inspired by Chef Thomas Keller’s famous recipe for chicken brine. I was so confident that it would be great that I even posted a ‘coming soon’ photo. After all, what’s not to like? They’re a classic combination. Well, somewhat embarrassingly, the family didn’t like it.
So, it was back to the drawing board. I had a play around with a couple of mixes using herbs and finally settled on making a chicken sausage with spring onion/scallion. I’ve been busy with other things so it’s taken until now to get the recipe to a stage where I feel it’s fit to share.
Continue reading Chicken & Spring Onion SausageOn my old blog, I had a tutorial about converting a fridge into an air-drying chamber. There were pages on temperature control and humidity and a whole lot about wiring the different controllers.
Fortunately, time moves on and bespoke controllers are now available and are relatively cheap. No more sourcing relays, making control boxes and wiring it all up.
Continue reading Converting a Fridge for DryingThis calculator converts grams to US measures. To convert the other way, from US measures, you can use this converter.
Continue reading Converting from Grams to US MeasuresThis calculator converts US Measures to grams. To convert the other way, from grams to US measures, you can use this converter.
Continue reading Converting from US Measures to Grams
