Pork Green Curry (Thai style) fresh brats

[Dave in AZ]

I love green curry with pork, decided it would be a good brat.
Main flavors are green curry paste, fish sauce, coconut milk, brown or palm sugar, cilantro, thai basil.
Calculating salt and sugar in the ingredients, and correct amount of curry, are the key. I used 1kg of meat to ease calculations…then added 200g frozen preground fat as my frozen butt strips looked a bit lean.
Total block: 1200g
Pork butt 1kg, 200g pork fat 3mm

Liquid. 180g, 15%. Normally 10% is used. However, I wanted plenty of coconut milk and fish sauce to convey proper flavor, and bursting juiciness to give that liquid curry feel. So I decided to use 15% liquid, 180ml. 60 of this was fish sauce, see below, so 120ml I used coconut cream (richer than milk with 70% coconut vs 40% or so, more flavor and thicker).

Binders: To allow 15% liquid and max juiciness retention, I used cold phosphate at 0.3% (low end per Marianski). This was 3g. I also decided to use a binder, but instead of NFDM or SureGel, I went with Rice Flour–more in keeping with Green Curry, and possibly some flavor. I make Thai rice noodles from a rice flour slurry, and know it forms a wonderful silky noodle at simmer temps, so figured it would give a nice moist sliceability.

Sugar: 3% total of 1200g block, 36g. Green Curry is fairly sweet, to replicate normal flavors I went with 3%. 3g came from curry paste, 4g from coconut cream, leaving 29 of brown sugar, about 2T.

A 4oz can of Maesri green curry is normally used with 500g meat, 700g coconut milk, and 500g veggies, 1.7kg. But that is pretty dang hot. So I decided to use 1/2 can with 1kg of meat. Thats 2oz or 57g. Using the nutrition label, 460 mg of sodium per 16g serving, we can multiply that by 2.5 to get mg of salt per 16g (tablespoon), and get 4g of salt. It also has 3g of sugar.

Fish sauce, 3crabs brand, has 3.8g salt per 15ml or 15g. Having made green curry a lot, I decided 4T or 60ml of fish sauce was good. This gave 15.2g salt.

Salt, I like 1.7 to 1.8% in fresh sausage brats. Thai curry is slightly salty so went 1.8%, 21.6g total 19.2 g salt came from paste and fish sauce, added 2.4g more salt for 1.8% total.

Fresh herbs: all needed spices were in the curry paste. For color and more flavor, I added
2T chopped cilantro , 10g
2T chopped scallion greens, 9g
Thai basil, didn’t have but will use when able.

In the dish, the pork is not browned, simmered in coconut milk. So sausages should be simmered or poached at 175f or so.

I did a 6mm grind. Mixed it all in Kitchenaid 6qt mixer, strong extraction for good liquid bind. Added rice flour binder at end.

Stuffed in 26mm clear collagen cases. I hated them, probably will not ever use again for linked sausage. Links spun back out no matter what I did, terrible to work with. Ended up tying twine knot between every link! Casing would come off in pan if it wasn’t kept below a simmer, first few links of a different sausage I fried directly on pan just burst… Nowhere near as forgiving to cook as hog casings.

Taste: fantastic, spot on for green pork curry. Super juicy and light, nice sliceable soft texture. Took some out of casings, looked like a white hotdog, great shape. You could go as light as 1oz curry paste, a quarter can, or use whole can 4oz, and be fine, depending on how much heat and green curry flavor you want. I was pretty happy with half can, 2oz.

Final Judgement: worth making, will make again, moisture goal with high liquid, phosphate, and rice binder worked great.

[Denny O]

Dave in AZ
“Well There You Go Again!” (President Ronald Reagan)
Now I got to make another flavor of brat! I just tonight got 4 butts cut up to grind. I won’t have enough left with what I’ve got planned.

[Dave in AZ]

Denny O I almost went and bought butts today, but decided to use precut bags I had in freezer, it went against my meat hoarding habits lol.

[cdavis]

Dave in AZ they look really good and sounds like they turned out great congrats to you sir

[glen]

Dave in AZ Thanks for the recipe

[Ted Frodyma]

Dave in AZ Looks great!

[Denny O]

Dave in AZ Every once in a while Dave, “Ya just gotta” make room for those sales that you just can’t pass up!!

[lkrfletcher]

Dave in AZ interesting

[Dave in AZ]

Different tastes are funny things. I heated up some of these for lunch today, just tossed frozen bag in microwave and nuked until eating temp.

I was chewing mine, thinking how soft these were, and just thinking I’d come back here and say that I DIDN’T recommend the 20% or so liquid that I worked hard on this recipe to create. And just then, both my kids told me they LOVED this texture, and the moistness. Both said they liked it better than prior brats, because it was softer and moister, like a hot dog.

So there you go, a few texture datapoints from hotdog eating kids vs. brat-eating Dad.

[chippewa]

Those look and sound great! Thanks for sharing.