Boudin Blanc with Asparagus and a Poached Egg

This post should be about Mortadella. The Charcutepalooza challenge for the month was emulsified sausages, and I was pretty excited to make Mortadella for the first time. Unfortunately, I waited too long to order Sodium Phosphate from Butcher Packer. Sodium Phosphate is used as a binder in Mortadella and I was going to use it in lieu of the dry milk powder in the Charcuterie recipe. I'm not a big fan of the taste that dry milk powder imparts in things Charcuterie. I'm still waiting on my Butcher Packer order, so the Mortadella experiment will have to wait.

Fortunately, upon the announcement of the emulsified sausage challenge, I whipped up some Boudin Blanc from the recipe in Charcuterie. It was a pretty strait forward process, but the light texture of the sausage made stuffing it a little tricky. The resulting sausage was good but not my favorite. The flavor was good but I prefer a firmer textured sausage.

A note on thus poached egg on top of the asparagus...Michael Ruhlman has posted previously about the Bad Ass egg spoon he sells on Open Sky. I bought a stainless steel Oxo spoon and used my drill press to perforate it. Works like a charm...

Smoked Chicken and Roasted Garlic Sausage (with bonus STX Turboforce grinder review)

Okay, this is ostensibly a post about making Smoked Chicken and Roasted Garlic Sausage for the May Charcutepalooza challenge.  But I've been stuffing and smoking meat for a while now and I don't have much more to say about it.  I used the recipe from Charcuterie, for the sausage and once again it turned out pretty darned good.  I used it in a gumbo one night, but it so reminded me of the sausages at Top Dog in Berkeley that I decided to just grill it up and eat it on a roll like they do there.  Pretty darned tasty...

The real news is my new meat grinder.  I've been using it for the past couple of months and I really like it.  I was using the sausage grinding attachment for my Kitchenaid Mixer, but I wasn't very happy with it.  I usually only grind about 5 pounds of meat at a time, but the Kitchenaid struggled to keep up with even this limited amount.  Commercial grinders were much too expensive, but then I found the STX Turboforce grinder.  This is not even close to a commercial grinder.  In some ways it seems less substantial than the Kitchenaid attachment.  But it has #10 grinding plates (see note below), a large hopper for the meat, and all the grinding parts are made of metal (aluminum for all but the grinding plates and cutting blade).

Put into use, the motor slows a bit when under the load of grinding meat.  But it never stalls, doesn't seem to heat up, and grinds the meat much faster than the Kitchenaid.  I don't hesitate if I have a recipe that calls for grinding.  I just throw all the parts in the freezer for a few minutes then grind away.

I highly recommend the STX Turboforce for anyone who wants to upgrade their grinder from a Kitchenaid but doesn't want to pay for a commercial grinder.

Note: My grinder shipped with 3 carbon steel grinding plates and 2 stainless steel cutting blades.  The holes for two the grinding plates measure 5/32", 9/32".  The third plate has pie slice shaped holes for course grinding.  The two grinding plates for my Kitchenaid measure 3/16"and 1/4".  I don't notice much difference between the course plates, but the 5/32" produces a noticeably finer grind than the Kitchenaid 1/4"plate.  This works for sausages like bangers or the Smoked Chicken and Roasted Garlic Sausage, but I would suggest ordering 1/4" and 3/8" #10 plates from SausageMaker.com or ButcherPacker.com.

The stainless steel blades for the STX were a bit dull out of the box.  I touched up the edges with a diamond stone before grinding.