Category Archives: Charcuterie

Charcuterie, Meat, Pork, Seasonal

A Fall Dinner, in August

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I had to doublecheck my calendar: it’s still August, isn’t it?

This past Saturday I stood on my deck, wearing a sweater, tending a barbecue that was puffing applewood smoke into the yard.  Within the ‘cue was a cured pork loin.  Within the house, on the kitchen counter, was a head of cabbage.  Beside it, a jug of cider, weakly alcoholic, tart, sweet, faintly effervescent.

I have high hopes that there will be a few more weeks of heat, and a few more summer storms, but the last few days at my house have felt like fall.

 

A Fall Dinner, in August

A jug of the year's first ciderPart One: Windfall Hard Cider (Lisa’s Special No. 8)

The cider was the inspiration, the centre of … Continue reading.

Charcuterie, Meat, Sausages

A Survey of Commercial Sausage Additives

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A pack of bologna, with ingredients listReading the ingredients list of an industrially-produced sausage can be daunting.  We’ve been trained to mistrust “scientific sounding” ingredients, and there are ongoing discussions about the health risks associated with many common additives.  I don’t wade into that debate too much in this post, partly because I know so little about it, but also because there are few reliable studies on the subject.  The fields of nutrition and health are so tied up with industry that it’s hard to know what to believe.  I’ll leave it for you to decide what ingredients are okay and which are not.  In this post I simply describe the role the additive plays in the sausage-making process.  Interestingly, most them are used to accelerate … Continue reading.

Austrian, Charcuterie, Meat, Pork

Alternative Pork Primals: Belly-Loin Combo

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I first learned the pork primals in culinary school, and for years I considered that information dogmatic. Then in an Austrian grocery store I saw this:

Carinthian Farmer's Bacon in a grocery store in Austria

 

It’s called Carinthian farmer bacon (Kaerntner Bauernspeck).  Carinthia is a province in southern Austria, known for its rustic food.  It took me a few moments to realize where exactly this cut would have come from on a pig.  It is in fact a pork loin, with the side or belly still attached, cured as one large piece, cold-smoked, and sold in thick slabs.

Novel cuts like this are just as easy to butcher as the classics.  Following is a quick tutorial, with photos, to prove the point.

Here is a side … Continue reading.

Charcuterie, Ham, Meat, Pork

Easter Ham 2012: Brine Injection

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Injecting brine into a hamI like roasting large joints of meat.  The largest that I typically cook is the Easter ham, which is the better part of a pig’s hind leg.  This year’s fresh leg was fourteen and a half pounds.

In years past I’ve had problems with brine penetration.  Though I made the brine with the proper concentration of curing salt, and fully submerged the leg for the recommended week, when I carved the ham I found a patch of grey pork in the centre.  The year after that I brined the ham for a few extra days, but it still wasn’t pink all the way through.

This year I bought a syringe for injecting brine from  Hendrik’s.  It holds 2 fl. oz, … Continue reading.

Bacon, Charcuterie, Meat, Pork

Bacon

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The word “bacon” usually refers to pork belly that has been cured and then smoked.  An exception is back bacon, which is cured pork loin. “Canadian bacon” is what Americans call back bacon that has been smoked.

Below are some notes on making bacon at home.

 

A Quick Tour of the Pork Belly

Before I started buying pork by the side, I ordered slabs of belly from Irvings Farm Fresh.  A 5 lb slab was typically around $25.

Below is a slab of pork belly.  You’re looking at the inside of the pig; the opposite side is covered with skin.  The right side of this slab would have connected to the front shoulder of the hog.  The left … Continue reading.

Charcuterie, Pork, Sausages

Beginner’s Sausage-Making

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A detailed introduction to sausage-making at home: ingredients, equipment, theory, and procedures.

What are sausages?

Sausages are ground meat, usually stuffed into a casing, though there are certain sausages that aren’t in casings.  For instance there are sausage “patties” and sausages en crepinette, which are patties wrapped in caul fat.  For now let’s be content to say that sausages are ground meat stuffed into casings.

Why do we grind meat?

1.  To tenderize

Meat is made of fibers that are surrounded by connective tissue, which are then bundled together in more connective tissue.  Highly exercised muscles tend to be higher in connective tissue.  Examples include:

  • on a pig: shoulder, hock, neck
  • on a cow: chuck, brisket, shortrib, shank
  • on
… Continue reading.
Charcuterie, Ham, Pork

On Ham Hocks

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A fresh hockTraditionally, in North America the hock is a section of the front arm bone of the pig.  On one end the elbow joint is severed.  On the other, where the arm of the pig meats the body, a cut is made and the arm bone is sawed through.  So on one end of the hock there is a clean joint, and on the other the circular cross-section of a bone.

In traditional British butchery it is the analogous section from the hind leg that is called the hock; that from the front was known as the hand.

Nowadays, whether taken from the forearm or the hind leg, both cuts are considered hocks.  They are almost always processed into ham, that … Continue reading.

Bacon, Charcuterie, Pork

Back Bacon

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In the States this preparation is called Canadian bacon, but we usually call it back bacon.  It’s more or less the same process as regular bacon, only done to a section of the loin instead of the belly.  There’s an old style of back bacon from eastern Ontario called peameal bacon, in which a cured section of loin is rolled in peameal (crushed split-peas) before being smoked.  Peameal bacon is still made down east, though nowadays cornmeal is used.

Back bacon is usually made from the eye of loin: the large, round muscle often made into centre-cut pork chops.  You can also use the rib- and sirloin-ends of the loin, which have more fat and flavour than the centre.  I … Continue reading.

Charcuterie, Ham, Pork

Bath Chaps, Revisited

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A while back I wrote a post on cold-cut Bath chaps: a boned-out pig’s head, cured, rolled around the tongue, tied, poached, and sliced.   While I was extremely happy with the look of those Bath chaps, they were pretty bland.  I figure that the cure leached into the poaching liquid.

I had another go at the chaps with this fall’s pig.  This time, instead of using a whole head, I used only one jowl, cured, and wrapped around the tongue.

After rolling and tying, I seared the meat over high heat.  Once chilled, I vacuum-packed the chaps and simmered them for two or three hours.  This was not proper sous-vide: though the meat was vacuum-packed, it wasn’t cooked in … Continue reading.

Austrian, Charcuterie, Dumplings, Starch

Fleischknödel – Meat Dumplings

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This is the single most useful preparation that I learned in Austria.  It’s invaluable to establishments that use a lot of cured meat, but also a good trick to have in the home kitchen.  It’s called Fleischknödel (approximately: “FL-EYE-SH KNUH-dl”).  Fleisch just means meat, while Knödel is a type of dumpling that is popular in Austria and Bavaria.  Fleischknödel is a fantastic way to use up leftover meat, whether cooked or cured.

Most cooks are familiar with how to use scraps of raw meat.  When butchering a side of pork, for instance, you reserve the miscellaneous bits of meat and fat so they can be ground and used in sausages and forcemeat.

There’s also leftover trim when cutting cooked and … Continue reading.