Continuing on the theme of meat, Chef Mark instructed us on the method of making sausages. The basics of sausage are a big bowl of ground up meat and spices, all stuffed into a casing (yes, generally intestine). For our purposes, we had a beautiful chunk of marbled pork to make a chorizo.
And shown above is a lovely array of spices to dress up our meat. A main spice for chorizo is paprika, and then of course here we have salt garlic and a few other green herbs. All of these add flavor and depth to the chorizo. So the first step is to cube the meat. The purpose of this is to make it a workable size to fit through the grinder. The meat is then combined into a bowl and mixed and rub well with all the spices that have been included:
Once the meat has been thoroughly mixed and the spiced incorporated, it is ready to be ground. The meat grinder that Chef Mark used is way more sophisticated than any that I've used (I'm generally satisfied with the Kitchenaid attachment) but the idea is the same, you put meat in the top and let it run through the blades and it comes out looking like this:
It is important not to force the meat down into the grinder and to just let it push itself through. Looking more like ground meat now? The next step is a good one: taste-testing. No one wants to make a bunch of sausages that don't taste good, so naturally you have to make sure the meat has the right flavoring before you put it into the casing. So, a quick pan-sear of a few bits and some little snacks later,
we had this! Not very pretty, but it did taste great so here come the intestine. The ground meat is then thrown into a sort of press that will be used to push it into the casing. The meat literally has to be thrown, to make sure there are no air bubbled around the meat. Once it is filled to the top, you begin cranking so the meat fills evenly into the intestine, which should be wrapped over the nozzle. Here is a quick slideshow, which will be further explained.
So once the sausage is evenly filled and coiled is when the individual links are made. These are done very simply:
1. Pinch the sausage in two places with the distance in between being you desired sausage length (shown in picture three)
2. Twist each end of the sausage, creating your link (shown in picture four)
3. Do this all along the coil until all of the links have been made.
Lastly, the sausages were hung on a wooden rod to give them time to dry out and meld.
1. Pinch the sausage in two places with the distance in between being you desired sausage length (shown in picture three)
2. Twist each end of the sausage, creating your link (shown in picture four)
3. Do this all along the coil until all of the links have been made.
Lastly, the sausages were hung on a wooden rod to give them time to dry out and meld.
And viola! Chorizo.