|
Like many people, when I think of summertime foods, I think of grilling. But for me, it's not hamburgers, not hot dogs, not even barbecue that I think of first. For me, it's bratwurst. My dad grew up in Sheboygan, Wisconsin and his hometown was a frequent summer destination when I was growing up. Sheboygan is famous for its bratwurst--it's the home of Johnsonville, after all--traditionally served on locally-baked hard rolls with mustard and onions. The road trips from Michigan to Wisconsin in my parents' '82 Suburban, and coming back home with a cooler full of bratwurst at the end of it (Johnsonville was a lot smaller and didn't distribute nationally at the time; while they did sell outside of the state, it was a lot cheaper to stock up in Sheboygan) were such a formative part of my childhood that I decided to make it the theme of my entry. The whole menu: Main entree: Grilled bratwurst on hard rolls with onions, sauerkraut and mustard Starch side: German potato salad Vegetable side: Corn on the cob Beverage: Beer Dessert: Raspberry Tart I started a few weeks ago, beginning with making the sauerkraut and beer. Sauerkraut is easy. It's not a "traditional" topping on the bratwurst, but I acquired a taste for it and like it on mine. Just shred a cabbage:  Add salt, about 2% of the weight of the cabbage:  Mix it well and mash it down a bit:  Let it sit for a while to release its liquid, knead and mash it some more:  Repeat until there's enough brine to cover:  Then pack it in jars and let it ferment for two weeks:  Ideally, you're supposed to put weights on the cabbage to keep it submerged, but I don't have anything that will fit, so I'll just be sure to add more 2% brine to keep it covered later. Beer is a bit more complex. I received a beer-making kit as a gift some years back, and it came with ingredients to make a batch of a basic wheat beer. I did make that batch and it was okay, I guess. It was a big production for me and I never bothered to try my hand at it again. Until now. Christ, the things I do for ICSA. Since I'm still inexperienced at making my own beer, I'm again relying on an ingredient kit. This one is for a Belgian Saison, which I thought would be an appropriately light-tasting, summery beer:  First things first, I've got to wash and sanitize all my equipment:  We start off by steeping this grain in some water for a bit. Temperature is important; we want to keep it between 150 and 165 degrees F. Our wort looks like tea:    We then bring the wort to a boil and add our malt extract. There's two types, both dry, and we're adding them both in all at once, then stirring to dissolve:    We've got two packets of hop pellets here; we're going to add one now and then let the wort boil for a little under an hour.  Now there's some spices (mostly dried orange peel) and sugar to add in:  And finally the second packet of hops:  Let that go for a few minutes more, then we take our wort off the boil and cool it down in an ice bath. I forgot that buoyancy principles apply here and ended up spending a bunch of time holding the pot down in the sink:  We want the wort down around room temperature, about 70 F. At this point, we're supposed to siphon our wort into a carboy or sanitized bucket to ferment. For me, this was a bit difficult and got a bit messy, hence the lack of pictures; the racking cane clogged with orange peel and I lost my siphon after a few false starts, at which point I gave up and poured the wort *very carefully* through a funnel into the carboy. At this point, we pitch in about a teaspoon of yeast and, lacking a spoon that will fit through the opening, give the carboy a vigorous swirl to mix in the yeast. Then we fill our airlock partway with water, pop it in the top of our carboy, and let it sit a few weeks before we bottle:  That's not the end of the beer-making process yet; more on that later. Anyways, now its' time to make the bratwurst. I could, of course, do the easy thing and buy some. They're made by a number of manufacturers and every butcher shop around here makes their own bratwurst as well, so availability is no problem. But this is ICSA. I'm making my own. I've never done this before, so I'm using the recipe in Michael Ruhlman's Charcuterie:  3 lbs. pork shoulder butt 1 lb. pork fatback 1 lb. veal shoulder 1 1/2 oz. kosher salt 2 tsp. white pepper 1 1/2 tsp. ground ginger 1 1/2 tsp. fresh-grated nutmeg 2 eggs 1 c. heavy cream Most of the ingredients were not hard to find; in fact I had everything on hand except the meat. Pork shoulder butt is ubiquitous; the fatback less so and I had to go to a specialty butcher for it. Getting hold of the veal was difficult, though. It was available at most specialty butchers, sure, but at virtually all the shops, it only came pre-ground. I'm sure I could have made do, but  Finally, I did manage to find some veal cutlets at one shop, and it was just enough for the recipe.First thing is to weigh out and dice up the meat. First was the veal, which I found out actually weighed slightly less than what I needed--about 55 grams short:   Second was the pork fatback. The whole roll was a bit under 2 1/2 pounds and I was quite proud of myself for how precise my estimate was--I only had to cut once!   Finally, I cut a bit over three pounds off a 16-lb. boneless shoulder. The extra was to make up for the veal shortfall:   Once the meat is all diced, I add in the spices and mix:  I let it chill in the refrigerator for a bit before grinding. Kitchenaid makes a meat grinder attachment for its stand mixers, and it does quite a good job, as it turns out:  Ruhlman advises keeping both the meat and the liquid ingredients as cold as possible during the process for proper emulsion, so I do that:  After the meat is ground, we mix it a little bit, add in the liquids, and then mix some more until it's all incorporated:  We then chill covered in the refrigerator again until it's time to stuff. Oh No. TIME TO STUFF Oh God. If you read my last ICSA entry, you may remember this comment I made after juicing five or six whole-rear end pomegranates through a tiny mesh bag: Meaty Ore posted:I never want to loving do this ever again. Welp, I did it again. Something akin to it, anyways. Normally stuffing sausage casings is done with a sausage stuffing machine such as this one. Basically you exert mechanical force on the mass of sausage, extruding it at a steady rate into the casing slipped over the end of a tube. I don't have such a device. I couldn't wait on delivery of one. The local restaurant supply shop doesn't sell them. The sausage stuffer attachment for the Kitchenaid food grinder doesn't work for poo poo AND I still can't wait on delivery for one. So what do I do? What have I got on hand that I can use to force meat through a tube into a casing?  Welcome to my personal hell. Sausage casings generally are sold packed in salt such as they are in this package; you put them in a bowl, soak them for a while and rinse them inside and out prior to stuffing:   The funnel tubes for sausage stuffers are fairly long; I was surprised that the casings actually fit over the short, stubby tube of the funnel I've got. Anyways, I slip it over and when it's about all the way down, I pull up a short length of the end and tie it off.  Then I put a wad of meat in the bell end of the funnel and just kind of try to mash it through as best I can with the honing steel.   It doesn't work too well, but it does work. Eventually.  I've got five pounds of meat to go through.  Anyways, I take a break every so often to give myself a rest and let the sausage chill again. The whole process took me about four hours. After each casing is filled, I twist them into individual links every six inches and tie off the other end:  Eventually, they're all finished! Five pounds yielded me seventeen links; I think it should have been eighteen to twenty, but the last casing seemed to be extra wide for some reason.  Next time I do this, I'm getting a sausage stuffer first. Anyway--Hard Rolls! On the morning of the day I serve the brats, I begin making the hard rolls. Now if you've ever been to Sheboygan, you know what these are like. They've got a thin, rough, flaky crust and a light, airy crumb which is still tough enough that you need to tear it apart with your teeth. They're also a commercially made product unique to Sheboygan, available from one of several local bakeries. I briefly considered driving up to pick up a bag of them on a weekend, but I had no other business up there and with gas prices the way they are, I'm not driving twelve hours to buy bread. Nothing for it but to try and replicate a geographically specific commercial breadstuff in my home kitchen! While looking up the above video, I did happen to come across the following recipe purporting to be for "Sheboygan Hard Rolls". We shall see.  The recipe calls for: 4 1/2 c. bread flour 1 package instant yeast 1 Tbsp. sugar 1 tsp. salt 1 1/2 c. warm water 1 tsp. malt extract 1 egg 1 egg white 1 Tbsp. shortening I use active dry yeast as that's what I have on hand; the standard conversion is 1 packet= 2 1/4 tsp. if I recall correctly. I raise it to a little under three teaspoons just in case. Also, after viewing the above video I decide to use lard instead of shortening--it's more authentic. Anyways, I start by proofing my yeast. If I was using instant, I wouldn't do this part. And given that I'm trying to replicate a relatively slack commercial dough, the extra hydration from the proofing process likely isn't going to hurt (nor will the extra yeast, I wager). While it's proofing I measure out my flour, salt and sugar, whisking them together and then again after adding the proofed yeast:  I start the mixer going with the dough hook attachment and add in the water and the malt extract:  I had to laugh a bit when buying this big-rear end can of liquid malt extract (which was the only size I could find): I only need a teaspoon!  After mixing for a bit I add the eggs and the lard, then let the dough hook do its kneading work for a bit:  When I arbitrarily determine it's kneaded enough, I pull the dough out of the mixer and plop it down onto my floured island to knead it a little more by hand. It doesn't need much more. It's still very loose-feeling and slack, but is still smooth and springy like a good dough should be. I grease a mixing bowl with a thin coat of lard and toss the dough in to rise in a slightly warm over for a while.   This is what it looks like after rising for only 45 minutes:  I punch it down and let it rise again:  After the second rise, I roll the dough into a rough cylinder, then cut it into twelve pieces, shaping them into rounds and dusting them with corn meal on top of a baking sheet:  I let them rise a bit more, then use the narrow side of a wooden spatula stick to impress the rolls with their signature crease down the middle:  Then I bake them in a 450 F oven for about 20 minutes, with a pan of water on the bottom rack. The finished product:   Looks pretty close to the real thing. The crust is a bit harder, certainly, but the interior seems to have the correct feel as far as I can tell. The bottoms of a few of the rolls are a little scorched, so I probably should have only put them in for 15 minutes. Oh well, next time. Waiting for the dough to rise gives plenty of time to make the components for the raspberry tart. First is the pastry cream:  2/3 c. sugar 2 Tbsp. flour 2 Tbsp. corn starch pinch of salt 2 eggs plus 1 egg yolk 1 c. milk 1 c. heavy cream 2 Tbsp. butter 2 tsp. vanilla extract First whisk together the dry ingredients in a saucepan:  Next, add in the eggs and liquid ingredients, and whisk and stir over medium heat until the mixture thickens:  Once it's thickened, stir in the butter and vanilla extract:  Transfer the pastry cream into a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate:  Next, there's the shell for the tart. It's pretty similar to a standard pie crust, but a bit richer and sweeter. Ingredients:  1 1/2 c. flour 1/2 tsp. salt 10 Tbsp. lard 2 egg yolks 3 Tbsp. ice-cold water 1 Tbsp vodka Note that the recipe I used normally calls for butter; I've heard that lard actually makes for better pie crusts, so I'm going to try using that instead for once since I've got it on hand. One thing I noticed is that lard is considerably softer than butter at the same temperature; one wants hard, cold fat when making pie crusts. I solve this by measuring out the lard and freezing it for a bit:  The dry ingredients go into the food processor:  Then we add the cold lard and pulse it until the mix has a nice crumbly texture:  Oops! forgot to add the egg yolks. Back into the food processor with it:  Much better. At this point we want to add in our liquids; just sprinkle it over the mix and gather it up into a ball. Normally when I make pie crusts my experience has been that there seems to be hardly enough liquid to hold the dough together; this time there was too much--the dough got really sticky and didn't absorb it all. I forgot to take pictures of this, unfortunately. At any rate, once the dough is together, it gets flattened out, wrapped in plastic, and goes in the freezer for about half an hour. After the dough comes out of the freezer, I begin to roll it out on a floured work surface:  Or try to, at any rate. It seems the dough is still really soft and sticky. Dough gets everywhere--it sticks to the rolling pin, it sticks to the island, etc. The solution? More flour:  Much better. A little too good, in fact. The dough falls to pieces as I try transferring it to the tart pan and I end up having to make it by pressing various scraps of dough together and into the edges of the pan:  It's ugly, but it'll do. While we wait for the oven to preheat, we poke holes in the dough and weigh it down with pie weights (dried beans, in my case)placed over foil:  It goes in the oven at 425 F for twelve minutes, at which point I remove the crust from the oven, take off the weight and reduce the heat to 350 F:  The finished shell after another 15 minutes baking:  After the crust has cooled, assembling the tart is a simple affair. First slather on a layer of pastry cream:  Then place raspberries on top of the pastry cream. Seriously, cram as many of the things on there as you can:  Time to make the potato salad. Now this German potato salad isn't like the bog-standard picnic fare overloaded with sugar and mayonnaise. It's lighter-tasting, and a bit sharp and tangy. Ingredients:  3 lbs. red potatoes 1/2 lb. bacon 1 onion 1/2 c. vinegar 1/2 c. sugar 1/4 c. finely chopped parsley salt to taste Potatoes go into a pot to get boiled:  While that's going, fry the bacon, drain on paper towels (reserve the bacon fat) and crumble it into bits after it's cooled:    While waiting for the bacon to cook and then cool down (and the potatoes are still going at this point, too), dice the onion and chop the parsley:  Cook the onion in the reserved bacon fat until it softens:  While the onion cooks, mix together the sugar, vinegar and flour:  (I actually did this before cooking the onion as you can see, not that it matters much) Once the onion is done, pour the liquid mixture over the onion and cook until the liquid thickens:  Special cameo appearance by the bacon-frying pan. Potatoes are done when a fork will go into them, but not too easily. They should still be a bit firm in the center. Cool the potatoes down before peeling and slicing them (I used cold water to shock them, it sped things up and I think made the potatoes easier to peel), then mixing with salt:  After that, simply pour in the onion mixture and chopped parsley and toss, then sprinkle the bacon bits over the top of it all:  Time to grill! Bratwurst (and sausages in general), especially homemade ones, are prone to bursting their casings and losing their juices if you cook them over direct heat. But we still want to get a nice char on them. So my plan is to bank all the coals to one side and start the bratwurst close to them but not directly over:  Note that I did cut the links before placing them on the grill; I was a little worried it might cause problems given that most of the ends are merely twisted, but it was just fine. While the brats cook over indirect heat, I shuck the corn:  After the brats have cooked long enough and are nicely browned on all sides, I move them directly over the coals to finish while the corn goes on indirectly:  In the meantime, I cut the hard rolls in half and butter them:  Brats are done:  Looks like the casings did rupture a bit here and there, but I think the sausages were done enough that they didn't lose much of anything. They go into a warm oven, as does the potato salad. I move the corn over direct heat until it, too, is done:  It joins the other stuff keeping warm in the oven. Then I bring the cat back inside (he slipped out while I was taking the photo). Finally, the rolls go on the grill. There's enough that they can't all go directly over the coals at the same time, so I have to move them around a bit:  And they're done. Beautiful:  Remember way back at the beginning of the post where I was making the sauerkraut and beer? Well, some of you who've made these things before probably could anticipate this coming: they're not ready yet. I started them only a week and a half before making this meal, and I couldn't wait or I would have missed the deadline. The beer still has another week to ferment before bottling as I type this update! So I had to cheat a little bit: I already had some store-bought sauerkraut on hand and used that for this meal, and I went out and bought beer as well: 3 Floyd's Speed Castle pilsner. I chose that particular beer because, well, this is supposed to be somewhat of a nostalgic meal, reminding me of family trips when I was growing up in the 80s, and mass-market "pilsner"-style lagers were generally all that was available at the time. Nowadays, I have the option of buying decent beer and can get it in a style more to my liking, but I still went with a pilsner for that "throwback" summertime flavor. At least it's a good one. Anyways, here's what I'm serving on top of the brats: diced onion, two types of mustard (dijon and some mixed Colman's), and sauerkraut, shown here alongside the beer:  And finally, here's the whole meal:  Bratwurst on a hard roll, topped with sauerkraut, diced onion, and mustard German potato salad Grilled corn Beer Raspberry tart That's the taste of summer to me. The sausages came out terrific: pink ring around the edge and firm but still juicy in the middle. The hard rolls were, of course, not quite the same as the real thing, but I think they were about as close as I can get at home. The crust was a lot harder and crisper than the real ones, but the interior was almost perfect. The potato salad isn't quite as sharp-tasting as my grandmother made it, but still good; I think I may need to use more vinegar/sugar next time I make it. The corn was corn. Fresh and sweet, very much a late summer vegetable, and I think grilling is definitely the best way to bring out its flavor. The raspberry tart was another ode to my grandmother, who always grew raspberries in her garden and had us grandkids go out and pick them when we visited. Usually we simply washed and ate them out of hand as snacks, but I thought making a dessert featuring raspberries would do her justice as well as being more thread-appropriate than just tossing some berries on a plate. The berries are nice and tart, and the crust is wonderful made with lard--much more tender and more flaky than when I've made the recipe with butter in the past. I'm disappointed the sauerkraut and beer I'm making wasn't ready in time for the post, but it was a compromise I had to make. I'll probably make a follow-up post here in a few weeks when the beer is ready to drink. I was trying to think of something a little more colorful to put on the plate along side everything, but it was already a lot of work to do what I did. If you want greens, there's parsley in the potato salad, I guess. At any rate, I think this meal was pretty successful, on the whole. Both the sausage and the rolls came out very good, and much better than I expected given it's my first time trying to make either from scratch; the dessert was better than usual, the corn was as good as I expected it to be, and while the potato salad was a little on the bland side, it's still quite decent--the texture of the potatoes, at any rate, was just right. While stuffing the sausages was definitely a pain in the rear end, It's certainly something I hope to try my hand at again in the future, but next time with proper equipment. The results are definitely worth it! Meaty Ore fucked around with this message at 19:37 on Aug 17, 2022 |
#
?
Aug 14, 2022 03:27
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 7, 2024 11:58 |
|
|
Sausage-stuffing hell gave me a grin, but it looks like the hard work was worth it. Yum!
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2022 15:36
|
|
|
I'm really impressed with the amount of new things you did! The sausage and the beer are no joke for sure. You did a marvelous job sausage stuffing  and I'm sure you'll enjoy the beer!
|
|
#
?
Aug 16, 2022 05:59
|
|
|
Just noticed that I didn't put up the correct picture of the finished tart. Fixed!
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2022 19:42
|
|
|
Reminds me a lot of my dad's grill ventures. Meat, potatoes, something sour, very German. Which tracks of course with Sheboygan. I can't say though that I've ever had sausage that fresh!
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2022 20:55
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 7, 2024 11:58 |
|
|
Holy poo poo, this is absolutely amazing. Really going the extra mile to do everything from scratch, incredibly instructive. For the next ICSA, I think you might have to grind your own flour and raise your own pigs.
|
|
#
?
Aug 22, 2022 14:21
|
|
