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Episode-2343- Making Sausage and Making Mead as Life Skills

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As we head into Christmas time I thought another sort of fun show would be in order.  First I was going to just do a show on mead today but then I realized that not everyone imbibes, so I decided to do a two fer, half on making meads and half on making sausage.  While good sausage and meads do pair well, I figured this show would also pair well with last weeks stand alone show on Making the Most of Winter Down Time.

I also do consider these two things, life skills.  In that if you can make mead, you can also make wine, cider, beer and likely a ton of other things.  When it comes to sausage making, we are talking about one of the oldest culinary skills known to man.  Every indigenous culture has forms of sausage.  I have even seen for instance Mongolians making sausage on the fly when cooking a whole sheep in a traditional style.  Tune in to hear about that today.

Both of these processes remarkably easy but have some mental barriers.  I have found when people get past that barrier a few things occur.  First the creative process opens, would x, y and z make a good sausage, well screw it, let’s find out.  Or would A and B make a good mead, well hell, let’s try a gallon and see.

This then leads to a new way of thinking for many.  Would these two meats make a good stew, hell would that sausage I made go good in a stew, well let’s find out.  It is the second half that is really critical for folks, LET’S FIND OUT!

Now look there are things that a simple “let’s find out” attitude is not a good idea with.  Such as I wonder if I can get that racoon out of my chimney with my bare hands, yea, bad idea.  Yet I have always been amazed when people propose something that MIGHT work and trying it has almost no serious consequences, but they just sit, wonder and never act on it.

Today we seek to correct that in a fun and enjoyable way.

Join Me Today as We Discuss…

  • The basic small batch mead making process
  • Choosing honey for your mead
  • How to make meads sweet or dry
  • Aging meads
  • The beauty of a “core recipe”
  • Some Meads I have going or will be making soon
    • Of Course 3FB
    • Apricot
    • Cranberry Orange
    • Coffee with Vanilla
    • Cucumber Mint
    • Goumi
    • Persimmon
  • The basic sausage making process
    • To case or not to case and casing options
    • Why you should really think before you smoke a sausage batch
    • Tips for perfect grinding every time
    • Why even if you hate liver it probably should go in your sausage
    • Source of fat beyond the typical “pork butts”
    • Thoughts on “texture” and how much emulsification to do
    • Collagen vs. natural casings
    • Some of my favorite sausages to make and try
      • Venison Cherry
      • Duck Armanac
      • Turkey Cranberry – Yea seriously
      • Jalapeno Garlic and Meat of Your Choice
      • Simple Venison Black Pepper
      • Jack’s Breakfast Sausage
    • If you say you don’t like sausage you are saying you don’t like food
      • Meats people don’t think of that make good sausage
        • Lamb
        • Mutton
        • Goose
        • Shrimp or Crawfish – no I am not kidding
        • Hearts – Yep what ever you can get
    • What can you come up with, that is the real point.

 

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Comments

Episode-2343- Making Sausage and Making Mead as Life Skills — 6 Comments

  1. I make Autumn Olive mead (three different ones to date) using this core method.  We forage autumn olive on our property to make mead and fruit leather.  It’s higher in lycopene than tomatoes.

    TSP has inspired my love for mead making.  In fact (despite my social-media-phobia)  I started an instagram account for my mead making last month.  Check out my handle, helios_mead.

    My “So many meads, so little time,” post lists most of my meads to date.  One of my favorites is my Five Mushroom mead (Shiitake, Maitake, Reishi, Chaga, & Cordyceps).  It has so much “umami,” I think it should win an award.  So good!

    I’ve done so many Melomels around this core method, I’ll likely start experimenting more with Metheglins and medicinal meads in the future.  I feel like I owe Jack one of my meads bare minimum.  Can’t thank you enough for this skill set.

     

     

  2. Every year (sometimes twice a year) my Mongolian in-laws cook a sheep (part of it anyway, they freeze much of it) and make sausage just like you described from the Bizarre Foods show. It’s cool to see that even the city-dwelling Mongolians hold on to these traditions. My in-laws don’t usually do the sheep’s head thing though; if I remember correctly, that’s a little more for show and special occasions.

    After slaughtering they boil the meat in large bone-on chunks, then when it’s finished cooking they put the meat in a big bowl where everyone gathers around and grabs a piece or just slices off pieces to eat by hand. The left-over broth is usually used to make a soup to go with it, throwing in green onions and noodles and such. There certainly is something primal about it… it’s hard to not have meaty juices covering your hands by the end of it. 🙂

    And then there is the sausage. It’s pretty much a blood sausage, and they still do make it out of the cleaned-out intestines even though other casings can be had. To be honest, the sausage is a taste I have NOT acquired, but my wife and in-laws love it. Eh, to each their own…

  3. In 2016 I traveled for work a ton more than normal. At the end of the year I had a boatload of miles and I decided to turn them in to a Carnivore 3/4 HP grinder. As you’ve said it is a beast. The thing I like best about it is the freezable cooling collars. You can really crank out a bunch of meat and never have any heat issues.

    I bought a buddy a turbo force grinder and it works well. We got some flexible gell ice packs and using some strips of velcro we strap them on. It isn’t custom like the Cabela’s but it works and for the difference in price you could buy a spare grinder and a bunch of ice packs.

    Mark

    • Good to hear, no doubt the Carnivore is the best consumer grinder I have touched. As to the keeping cool though, the Turbo Force has to grind a LOT before that would even be an issue. I put 22 lbs though it and it never blinked and was still cold at that point. I don’t now many folks that grind much more than that at a time. I guess if you do the big deer camp thing or something sure, or do your own cows, etc.?

      In general a batch for me is 5-20 lbs, that is why I could not justify the extra money. FWIW you can throw the TurboForce housing in the freezer if you want, just never saw the need to.

  4. Jack, Really enjoyed the show. Im a bit behind but had to tell you I loved it.

    Im italian and in NY we have a lot of really good italian butchers who make some really good sausage.

    Ive always wanted to make it but thought why make it when i can get great stuff for less that what I can make it for.

     

    That said, on New Years eve some italian eat Cotechino. Now this is difficult to find and the ones I found have had a thick casing on it.

    Now after listening to the show, I have a renew urge on trying to make this.

    My question is, is natural casing less tough to chew? I had the remove the casing on the sausage I purchased because I thought it was too chewy and Im not sure what the casing was made from.

     

     

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