Hi everyone, with hunting season vastly approaching I wanted to create a board to share about your hunting and fishing outings before your processing and cooking starts!

I’ve got several things planned for this year. Whitetail hunting at my house (1st year of owning property). Dusky grouse and rainbow/brook trout in south central Colorado. Will share the adventures soon!

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Sous vide sirloin tip roast, smoked crab poppers, smoked creamed corn, smoked bourbon apple cobbler.

Re: What did everyone cook today?
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I made 9 # of sweet chipotle venison jerky and ended up with 5 1/2# of finished product.
I used 9# of 1/4” thick sliced against the grain venison

Made some snack sticks withe the brat seasoning hatch chili add some sure jell and a Gunter teaspoon of pink salt they are in the fridge till morning then they will go in the smoker with the cook cycle that Johnathan recommends we will see how they come out used venison and pork but 50/50C702EE87-A8AF-4727-BD2D-B3B2E73B22F8.jpeg 7E25038A-9842-4827-9397-15CE6FC160FB.jpeg

The fog set in so thick I had to use a knife to cut through it to move the snow!
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Let me start by saying that this is a recipe originally posted by diggingdogfarm many years ago, so he gets proper attribution right up front.

I wanted to make the American Classic Wisconsin style bratwurst, epitomized by the Johnsonville brat we all have tried and see in every supermarket. A search here at Walton’s for brat recipes gave some fantastic info on how to make them, including a new video by Jonathon 4 days ago that is an excellent all in one tutorial.

However, 99% of all posts and threads discussed using premade spice mixes available from Walton’s. I am sure these are fantastic, but as a cook I always want to know exactly what spices are in a flavor profile, so I can tweak them to give the exact perfect result I want. This isn’t possible with a premixed spice, though those absolutely do save time and give an outstanding result on attempt #1 for thise not interested in developing their own recipes.

I started with Stanley Marianski as a source, he has a “German Bratwurst” and a Milk and Egg Brat. I can attest both these are authentic, having lived in Germany and eaten a lot of brats in Duesseldorf, Koln, Franfurt, Kaiserslautern, and Ulm/Munich (cities I was stationed in flying for USAF). However, these are not WISCONSIN style–the German one has caraway, and the milk egg one is the whitish fine grind mace/cardamom/ginger/lemon-zest one. I love both, but needed more current and local recipes.

I spent about 10 hrs reading every thread and post I could find on various for ums and YouTube. 2guysandaCooler, SmokingMeatForum, DuncanHenry, lpoli, meatsandsausages dot com (Marianski’s recipe site), wedlinydomowe dot pl the giant Polish sausage community, etc.

I copied down every recipe I found. I compiled all brat recipes into a spreadsheet, with all ingredients normalized and converted to 1kg meat block. That is, I converted all ingredient T and tsp into grams, then expressed them as a % of meat block whether 5lb, 25lb, 1kg, etc. I’ve weighed all the spices per tsp 4 times and averaged, using 3 different teaspoon measures, but of course difference spice grinds could give 20 to 40% off.

All this allows me to look at 20 recipes at once and see EXACTLY where spices vary and by how much. It really lets you see the critical flavor components and their acceptable ranges, when you have 20 recipes that all got rave reviews when tested.

In the end, 30 or so experienced sausage makers who made these recipes all seemed to agree on one profile. The exact same recipe, when converted, was seen in 10 threads or so, from multiple sources.

This isn’t my recipe. I can say that this recipe matches the one given by diggingdogfarm on various forums, as well as numerous other posters over the years after he first posted it.
All ingredients, as accurate as anyone can measure.

Just in case other folks are looking for good Wisconsin or Johnsonville clone brat recipes, like I am, every person of about 30 makers has said it is spot on perfect for Johnsonville or Wisconsin
Style. There is a touch of sweetness, nutmeg and ginger do the heavy lifting in this style. Having seen this recipe show up numerous times now as folk’s Best Recommended, I would say it is a good one to use.

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I stuffed them into 21 mm fresh collagen casings, the super delicate ones you use for breakfast links.  Mostly because I had a partial stick that was just the right length for 5 or 6 lbs.  I made 2kg meat, then added about 13% water to stuff thru 13mm tube, giving 2.25kg or about 5 lbs.

Would have used hog casings, but this was sausage #3 of the night (3 lb Taylor Pork Roll, 9lb Jimmy Dean clone breakfast sausage, and 5 lbs of this brat).  So I needed to just grab an easy casing and finish, so I didn’t keep my kids awake while cleaning 😉

I steamed these with a few T of water then let them brown. The beer is Paulaner Hefe Weizen.
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Recipe from diggingdogfarm “old family recipe”:
1000g fatty pork butt
1.7% salt, 17g
0.5% sugar, 5.3g
0.25% black pepper fresh ground, 2.5g
0.22% nutmeg, fresh, 2.2g
0.05% coriander toasted ground, 0.5g
0.035% celery seed, 0.35g
0.005% marjoram, 0.05g (I used 0.5g, 10x!)
0.14% ginger ground, 1.4g
No binder
10% water, 100 ml or 100g

The marjoram amount seemed pointless, about 1/16t, so I bumped it up to 0.5 g. Marjoram is the primary flavor of Polish sausage, with garlic.

I like giving recipes in grams per kg meat block, or expressed as % of meat block, so anyone can just multiply for their meat amount. Teaspoons and Tablespoons are woefully inaccurate, especially considering the small spice amounts we are using, but the weight in grams is always exact. However… for those who are wedded to lbs and teaspoons, here is a picture of the 5lb recipe and my conversions:
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Made 11 lbs of Braunschweiger for the first time. It turned out very good. The wife who loves her Braunschweiger says it’s the best she has tasted. The texture was creamy, moist and holds together just right.
This is definitely one time it would have been nice to have one of those commercial bowl choppers. With making 11lbs we had to fill the food processor numerous times.
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Pronounced CHE VAP CHI CHI. Come from Eastern Europe, several countries I guess. I could be wrong on origin, but these are found in Bosnia, Croatia, etc. These are just a skinless fresh sausage made with 3 parts pork, 2 parts beef, and 1 part lamb.

When I lived in Los Angeles, there was a Croatian butcher shop 100yds from my house, we used to buy these. They are simple and tasty.

I used the recipe from Marianski, from the Meatsandsausages dot com site. I looked up 6 or so other recipes on google, all were basically the same.

It is a lightly seasoned sausage, made about finger size, and grilled or pan fried. They are generally served just like a gyro, on a pita with Tzatziki sauce, and apparently they are always sold as 5 count.

12% salt only, 0.2% black pepper, cayenne, paprika, baking soda, garlic and onion.

I actually bought naan bread instead of using my pitas, just to see the difference. Naan is thicker, larger, and cooked lower heat.

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My go-to food while on trips to large cities is some form of gyro sandwich, mostly souvlaki or rotisserie broiled meat on a pita. I get them at shops and foodcarts all over, and thought I’d post a bread recipe for making pita bread.

There’s nothing particularly special about pita bread from a recipe standpoint except that the dough is fairly moist and kneaded for a long time to develop good gluten so that it can form air pockets. The primary concern with making Pita breads is to maintain moisture on the inside and cook them extremely hot so that the outer two sufaces dry out quickly and energetic steam from the inside is rapidly formed forcing a pocket, or at least a fluffy disc with several air pockets.

Contrary to what a lot of Home Cooks believe and put on their blogs, pita bread is not generally used by sticking things inside of the pocket. Instead the six to eight inch disc is folded in half wrapped around some sort of meat and sauce content. The idea of cutting it in half and spreading the surfaces apart forming a pocket which you then fill is virtually never ever seen at any professional food service level, it is only seen by home cooks who have somehow gotten the idea of using the pocket and run with it. Unfortunately it generally means torn bread, spilled fillings, and small quantities of filling that can’t be held inside while eating.

So there’s my pitch on how to properly use a pita. Folks can of course do any darn thing they want with their bread, but after eating pitas at Greek, Halal, and Schwarma places in 100 cities across the US, UK, and Germany, I have never seen any pro food cart or restaurant stick things inside the pocket of a pita.

Recipe for 8 pita, 7" diameter
240g or ml or 1cup water, 110f.
1T sugar, 13g
2.5 t active fast rise or bread yeast, 7g
1T olive oil, 15ml or g
=====whisk together, then add:
350g bread flour (hard, high gluten), you can replace 70g of it with whole wheat instead if desired for color and flavor.
1 t kosher salt Knead flour by machine 8 min or so. Should be a moist dough that just barely doesn’t stick to hands. Adjust flour or water to give that. Form ball, coat with bit of olive oil, back into mixer bowl, cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let rise 30 min to 1 hr at 80 to 100f until double in size. Divide into 8 pieces, without kneading much air out. My dough was 640g, so I made 8 balls of 80g each which is about right.
20230116_173659.jpg Roll out to 6 to 8" circles. Should be 1/8" thick, maybe 3/16"… too thick and they will not form air pockets, and will be focacia bread. Too thin and you get tortillas. It’s thinner than the final bread looks! Place each disc on wax paper, place them on cookie sheet, let rise again for 30 min or so, they will get a wee bit of poof. Use some flour on wax paper too! If you let them sit an hour, they will start to stick to wax paper, it will be a total fail.

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After 30min rise:
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COOKING
6. The entire trick of pita is getting the right thickness, and cooking it hot enough! 475f is the normal temp. You have two methods:
A. Inside a 475f oven on a baking stone or metal, or a cast iron pan inside oven.
B. Inside a cast iron skillet and lid on stove.
The cast iron sounds easier…but getting correct heat so the thing acts as an oven and not a griddle, is tricky. Best to try the oven method first until you see how pockets and puffs form vs. Temp.
7. Get oven or covered pan hot to 475f. Rapidly so heat isn’t lost, take 1 disk and flip it top side down onto hot surface. Cook 2 to 3min, it should get air bubbles or pockets. You can flip and cook top 1 min if desired, not required if you like the way top looks. Remove when air pockets, color will barely be there! If you cook until color on top or bottom, it will be too dry!
8. Stack on plate with moist towel on top, the moisture helps with pocket or bubble!
9. If you want color, toss them later on a hot oiled cast iron to quickly brown, don’t try to get it during fast bake!

Thats it! If you actually want a big poofy pocket, which you don’t need but may like, here are tips:

Discs must be moist when they hit pan. Flipping top side down lets the less dry bottom be able to stretch to form pocket. You can spritz some water on top to help. If you dont get air bubbles, it’s not hot enough.

Cast iron pan issues:
Once you get pan hot enough, turn flame down about med. If pan is smoking, it is probably a bit too hot. You want temp to cool juust below that point. It is hotter than pancakes. You’ll need to tweak your method. If bottom gets too much darkness, or burnt, before 1min 30 sec, it is too hot. You want to be able to go 1+45 to 2+00 and get a bubble forming, with just browning on bottom.

Re: What did everyone cook today?IMG_20210604_173317_01.jpg

This wasnt today but I sous vide the steaks then a brief grilling.

I made 6 lbs of beef bologna and 7-1/2 lbs of salami. A 2lb chub of bologna I poached but raised the temp to fast had a lot of beef fat that rendered out. Although it wasn’t as dry as I thought it was going to be and it did have a good taste. A 4lb chub was cool smoked then brought up slowly to temp by poaching. I had some fat loss but not near as bad as the first. It was a little more moist and had a good flavor. The salami was cool smoked for four hours then slowly brought up to temp by poaching. It was really good and I’m quite proud of my salami. The wife approved of both the bologna and salami.
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I made 20 # of Willies (with 12# venison, 6 1/2# fatty pork butt, 1# pepper jack, 1/2# cheddar high temp cheese, 4 T dried Jalapeños, 6C water, cure)
And 12# Hawaiian snack sticks ( 7 1/2# venison, 4 1/2# pork butt, 10 OZ crushed pineapple , 6 OZ Hawaiian sausage seasoning, 3C water, 2.7 OZ sure Jell, cure)
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-I cooked at 120* 1 hour no smoke
-130* 1 hour with smoke
-140* for 2 hours with smoke
-Then put in large stock pot with 170* water until 165* IT and put in ice bath until cooled. P
-put on towel then on racks under ceiling fan to dry for several hours

The Willies came out great as always!!

The Hawaiian had very little flavor. I will need to add aLot more pineapple or maybe some dried pineapple to get distinct flavor. Jonathan what are some of the spices in the Hawaiian seasoning that I can add extra of without adding more salt??? I can’t make them out.

WOW, What a very nice cutting board!! I’ll have to get some mineral oil on this!

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I put in my order this afternoon when Jon did the 15% off to 8 people and I had an email @ 5:12 saying,

“FedEx® Tracking
SCHEDULED DELIVERY DATE
Tuesday
12/20/2022 by end of day
ON TIME”

So All I can say is “WHOLEY COW Waltons”!

Busy weekend. Did snack sticks, restructured jerky, regular jerky, hatch green chili and jalapeño popper brats. Ran out of time for ring bologna, so will do it this weekend.

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Made( 10 )1/2 pint jars of fermented chipotle taco sauce. The main part of it has been fermenting for 3 months.
Fermenting ingredients:
1/4# red Serrano peppers
1 1/4# mixture of red and green Jalapeños
6 cloves garlic
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
2 tsp salt

After fermenting ingredients:
3/4 bunch of cilantro (stems and all)
1/2 C distilled white vinegar
28oz can crushed tomatoes
1/2 of a 7oz can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce

stem , semi de-seed and rough chop peppers
And put in a food processor and pulse to get the size of high temp cheese and add all of the fermenting ingredients and pulse to mix together.
-Put this mixture into a sterilized quart mason jar and cover with a piece of Saran Wrap and a rubber band (not too tight) to let it exhaust gasses. put in a dark space and let it sit a month or longer stirring occasionally ( once a week?).

After fermenting I put all of the remaining ingediends in my vitamix blender and purée until smooth and all seeds are gone. Heat mixture to a boil and simmer around 10 minutes.

then water bath can 1/2 pints or pints for 10 minutes

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I found it easier than I thought it would be. The vacuum sealer was a huge help. Made a big mistake by not having a slicer but my local deli bailed me out! Got lucky there.

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Ive been reading a lot of threads about SPAM, as it is very similar to Pork Roll except unfermented and un-acidified. It us probably the simplest “formed loaf” you can make, because you just jam it into any mold and sous vide it. The texture is light and not dense, it has high moisture held in strong gel bind from potato starch. Those two mean you don’t have to pack it into a casing under pressure. Mix, mold, cook.

Additionally, there are so many flavors of SPAM that you basically can’t go wrong with whatever you like.

Deriving the Recipe
(Skip down to the RECIPE if you’re not interested in how to derive one )
From spam cans:
Ingredients: pork, ham, mech separated chicken, water, salt, modified potato starch, sugar, sodium phosphate, potassium chloride (low sodium version, replaces salt), sodium nitrite.

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Looking at the nutrition label, with 56g serving we get the following:
Salt, normal spam 3.4%
Salt, low sodium spam 2.5%
Fat 28.5%
Sugar added, 1.8%

Because we can see salt >potato starch > Sugar, we can derive about 2% potato starch.

We know sodium nitrite usage is likely 2.5g per kg, the standard 0.25% giving 156ppm.

We know water is > 10%, because meat will easily hold 10% without phosphates, and this has phosphate added, so estimating 15% based on texture and prior loaf texture with 10 to 20% water.

Phosphates have a standard usage. I have them, but decided to use Waltons Sure Gel instead, a blend of >33% milk whey protein (probably hi temp NFDM), 33% phosphates, and <33% gelatin. I just had some open, and didn’t want to open a new bag of sodium phosphates (cold phosphate). Those all are good water binders which will help along with potato starch to lock in a lot of water for that light, gel kinda texture.
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RECIPE
1000g pork butt, 28% fat, add as needed
15% ice water, 150 ml or grams
53g meaty smoked buckboard bacon, for a bit of “ham flavor”.
2.5g cure#1
2.5% salt total, of which 2.3g from cure1 and 22.7g kosher.
1.6% sugar, 16g
10g potato starch (NOT dried potatoes!)
15g Sure gel, (OR use 5g cold phosphate, 5g more potato starch, so total binders approx 2% or 20g)
0.5g sodium erythorbate, cure accelerator and color fixing.
÷÷÷÷That’s basic SPAM above this line!÷÷÷÷÷
Spices:
0.15% white pepper, 1.5g
0.1% black pepper, 1.0g
0.1% coriander ground, 1.0g
0.1% paprika, 1.0g
0.05% garlic granulated, 0.5g
4.5% jalapeno fresh, 45g fine dice no vein/seed

Procedure

Grind meat and fat to 3mm to 6mm

Freeze flat, thaw enough to chop ice cube size.
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In food processor w sharp blade, emulsify 50% or 500g to < 1mm size, basically like hot dog or baloney.

Remaining 50% 1 to 3mm size, however you like your spam texture. I do 3mm -ish.

Blend all spices with 150ml of ice water, whisk, add to meat in mixer like Kitchenaid.

Mix hard for 3 to 5 min or so, good extraction. Will be more wet and gooey than normal sausage.
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Stuff into a form that will hold 1.2kg. I use a polyethylene bag for bread, or a Reynolds cooking bag, inside a 4" diam stainless “bain marie” cylinder. I grease cylinder so bag will slide in, get all air out, seal up bag good.
7a. You could pack into tupperware and vac seal that, then sous vide it. Whatever shape you like.

Sous vide cylinder in 150 to 155f water until center IT is 145 for 5 min, or more. Intent is to cook to FSIS lethality treatment per tables but NOT get fat out or melting, so low heat. Smaller diam equals shorter time. I greased up my 5" cylinder, had to switch to 4" that holds 1.1kg.
After 2 hrs in 4" stainless form at 150 1hr then 155 1 hr, IT is 129 still… still cooking.
Update: 4.5 hrs, IT was 151. Put in ice bath and into fridge. Saw zero fat out in bag. Could probably do 160f for reduced time without fat melting.

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FLAVOR RESULTS
This is from a patty I pan fried on low, cylinder is still cooking main batch…

Less salt than spam, same as pork roll, more than fresh sausage. Good level. Good strong cure and color using S.E. and cure1, cooking 15 min after mixing. Recognizably SPAMish, but this was better than normal spam, or at least the can I used for comparison. Correct sugar level. Great texture and water level. My son said spam is more emulsified, but I like a bit of texture remaining. You could process more if desired. Good pepper and jalapeno heat levels, not too strong bit definitely there, I won’t change, got lucky with this guess. Other spices all happy with, but you could change coriander and garlic, paprika and peppers as desired. My plan is to use as is, and just replace the jalapeno with other stuff as desired.