And it’s magnificent!

I know there are others out there. Show 'em off!

Brianzipperdog123 asked about these in the Roll Call thread. I posted the recipe there, but that’s a great place for it to get buried. Plus, I’ve done a couple of batches since and made a couple of changes. I dropped the egg wash and am much happier with the crust on the top of the roll. I also made them larger (8 to a batch instead of 10) to better accommodate fillings and baked a little longer to make up for that. A batch of 10 was closer to a large dinner roll. In fact, I bet dividing the batch into 12 rolls would be about a perfect dinner roll size (and baking more like 12-13 minutes, total).

HARD ROLLS FOR WURST
YIELD: 10 buns or rolls

INGREDIENTS

 500 g flour (unbleached all purpose 4 cups) (or sub 100g whole wheat)
 313 g water (11 ounces)
 10g salt (1 2/3 teaspoons table salt)
 3g instant yeast (1 teaspoon)
 5g sugar (1 teaspoon)
 10g butter (2 teaspoons)
 (optional, but not recommended) 1 egg (beaten with 1 teaspoon water for wash

DIRECTIONS

 Mix all dry ingredients except salt well and add water until all of the flour is wetted and there are no
lumps.
 Let the dough sit covered for 20 minutes, then knead with bread hook for 3 minutes.
 Rest for 15 minutes, sprinkle the salt over the dough, and knead for additional 3 minutes until the
dough is uniform and somewhat smooth. Cover and let rest 10 minutes.
 Stretch and fold the dough letter-style (top to bottom and side to side) and let sit for 30 more min,
covered.
 Stretch and fold and place dough in fridge overnight, covered.
 Next morning, If the dough didn’t double in volume, let it sit out until it does.
 Divide into 8 pieces weighing 85 to 88 g each and shape as desired.
 Preheat oven to 450 F with a pan for steaming at the bottom of the oven.
 Cover dough with oiled plastic and let proof until it’s 1.5 to twice it’s volume (about 90 minutes)
 Just before baking, slash each roll lengthwise across the center. If desired (but not recommended), brush with the egg wash (BEFORE slashing).
 Add 1 cup of hot water to the steam pan and bake for 8 minutes. Turn the
pan and bake for 8 more minutes or until 205-210F internally. Remove baked rolls to a cooling rack for at least an hour to properly cool (although dinner rolls can be served warm from the oven).

Y’all got me up out of my chair and in the kitchen to make some kimchi. I had a jar of paste already put away in the fridge, so easy enough. I was absolutely wrong about making only a 5-pound batch, though. I bought two heads of cabbage that totaled out to about 6 pounds and, as you will see below, I had plenty of room to make a 10-pound batch. I need to remember that!

Cabbage chopped, salted, and ready to sit for 90 minutes (mixing up every 30 minutes):

Cabbage after salting, rinsing, and draining. Plus, the other goodies–the paste, a couple of grated carrots, chopped green onion, and extra freshly grated ginger:

All mixed up:

And set aside to ferment for what turned out to be about 24 hours:

I didn’t like all thar room in the jar, so I went and picked a bunch of kale that I chopped, salted, rinsed, and added to that mix. It still didn’t fill up the jar, but it got closer (and it came out pretty tasty!) I forgot the photo, though.

Tuxedo, Lord of the Backyard

I have all this sausage around, but no proper rolls.

Fixed that!

I’ve been fortunate enough to be a member of a number of online communities, and this one rapidly has become an important one. It really does make a difference when a business is interested in getting to know its customers. Y’all want interaction beyond just orders, and you like to see your customers interact with each other. Not only do you want to teach your customers, you also want to learn from them, and you want them to learn from each other. It’s a wonderful thing, and it takes a genuine effort.

I echo Chef’s words that y’all are doing something right. This community is another example of how Walton’s wants to provide for its customers, how y’all want us to have the best experience we can, and how y’all know that works to everyone’s benefit on every level. Bravo!

All I wanted to do was make sausage!

Howdy, y’all!

I’m in Bellaire, Texas, a small municipality pretty surrounded by Houston. We like to say that Houston is our suburb.

Both my parents are avid and excellent cooks, so I’ve been cooking for as long as I could pull up a chair to the stove or grill. I’ve been into cooking and food science for a very long time, and I’m always looking to learn something new. More specific to here, I’ve been into low-and-slow smoking for about 20 years. Other than what happens with barbecue-style smoking, I’ve done only a bit of curing here and there (mostly corned beef or pastrami or something like that), and I only started making sausage about a month ago.

My current cookers are a Weber kettle, a Klose 20x36 offset, and a Camp Chef Lux pellet cooker. I’m strongly considering a PK 100 and probably will pull the trigger on that sooner than later.

My favorite meat snack probably is dried sausage of just about any sort, followed up very closely by jerky and cracklins.

I’m very happy to have come across Walton’s when looking for sausage-making gear, as well as Meatgistics for what I’ve already learned. I’m looking forward to more.

Cheers, y’all!

“Low and slow” does not mean “as low and as slow as possible.” The idea of “low and slow” is to “cook” the collagen (the primary protein in connective tissue and what makes meat tough) to get gelatin. That both tenderizes the meat and retains moisture. Gelatin is what makes something “lip smackin’”! That reaction requires moisture, and one of the best cooking methods to make it happen is braising.

The idea behind wrapping is to achieve something of a braise. It also slows down evaporation. That keeps the meat from drying out on the pit, and it gets you through the plateau. In “Modernist Cuisine,” the authors finally showed us that the plateau is pretty much due to evaporative cooling. In other words, you aren’t so doing much cooking during the plateau. Instead, you are spending a bunch of time and fuel to dry out your final product. Or, you can wrap the brisket and get through that point (and get a better product).

Just like ribs, brisket’s high ratio of surface area to volume makes it particularly vulnerable to evaporative cooling. That’s why we wrap 'em both.

As for pink butcher paper v. foil? I’ve used them both and do agree that butcher paper sets the bark better than foil. It seems to allow enough evaporation to set the bark but not so much to stall the cooking. However, I get the same result just by opening up the foil when my brisket gets close to finishing (not on the bottom, mind you, but that’s the point, and I’m not as concerned about the bark on it). Since I’m only cooking 1 or 2 briskets at a time (instead of the 100 or so that Franklin’s cooks in a day), I don’t mind the extra trouble. Of course, it’s not like wrapping with butcher paper is much trouble.

So, I’m quite happy using either. Whatever is in front of me will do. If Aaron Franklin says that pink butcher paper is better, then I believe him. The man cooks more briskets in a few days than I’m likely to cook in my lifetime, so I’m going to listen to him. However, in my situation, it doesn’t really make much difference.

I here you, man. I always bake bread, but it’s much more on an occasional basis than it is right now. In the last month, I’ve done rye bread, ciabatta, semolina bread, biscotti, farinata, pita, and I don’t know what all else.

No one is going to care about the bark. If you cooked it right on the first place and didn’t just cake a bunch of rub on it, holding it won’t do much to the bark.

If someone feels the need to give you grief about the bark (or tenderness or whatever), politely let them know that they are welcome to cook the next one so that you can learn.

calldoctoday Well, hunt up some seeds and plant away. I’ve never grown anything that was this easy. You can find it under “lacinato kale,” “Tuscan kale,” or “dino kale.”

I swear by Victorinox (formerly Forschner) Fibrox in the kitchen. They are light enough for a long day, but not so light that you feel no control, and they are well balanced. They pretty much feel like a knife ought to feel–like an extension of your own arm. That’s good both for use and for steeling. They keep an edge pretty well and are easy to sharpen when it’s time. They are inexpensive enough that I won’t have to reach too deeply into my pocket to do so, but my 8" chef’s knife is still good as new after over 12 years of heavy use. The rest of the set doesn’t get as much use, but I value them just as much.

As good as they are in every way, their best feature is the grip. That Fibrox grip is magnificent. It is as sure a grip as I’ve ever felt on a knife, wet or dry.

I picked up that chef’s knife after a visit to Smitty’s in Lockhart. We asked what they used for knives, and the answer was a very simple and emphatic “Forschner.” I’ve more than gotten my money’s worth out of those knives, and I could still say that if I paid twice as much for them.

I love me some dark mode, even during the day. Thanks!

mrobisr I agree. I also enjoy putting together my own blends for the same reason, but there’s something to be said for grabbing something off the shelf for a quick batch, especially if it’s tasty!

processhead My thoughts, exactly. I would never ask for details on a recipe, but sodium content is important information that hardly gives much away.

I’d also be fine with a “no salt” product, but that’s another discussion for another thread.

Dave in AZ You touch a little on why I pretty much exclusively make my own spice blends instead of buying the Excalibur ones. The won’t provide sodium content, and that’s something I want to know.

Dave in AZ Thanks for the info. Another reason to always keep your vents properly opened while you have a bowl of sawdust on the burner.

sheleyp1 Just judging from the kale I put into this batch, it would taste pretty good. However, it also would be MIGHTY chewy.

I don’t mind at all having some chewy bits here and there in this kimchi. In fact, I quite like it. However, I think a straight batch would not be good to eat on it’s own unless you chopped the kale into much smaller bits than you traditionally would the napa cabbage.

calldoctoday I don’t recall because it’s been a while! LOL! It had to be either Burpee’s or Hudson Valley Seed Co.

kyle I’ll just say that I also use that Escali scale, and I love it. If you want to get extremely precise, you can pick up a jeweler’s scale for under $20, but I doubt you need that kind of precision when the Escali scale will do 99.99% of what you want to do.

If you ever want to quickly convert ounces to grams, head over HERE