Day 76-77: Sausagefest

I was both proud and disappointed in myself after two days of making, stuffing, and cooking sausage. Proud because I was on team bratwurst and it was crazy delicious. Disappointed because in two days I didn't make a single sausagefest joke. Not one.

Maybe it was because our chef-instructor chided the room when he was demonstrating how to encase sausage meat and a few of my fellow classmates let loose with some laughter. Juvenile? Sure. But I was still hopeful I'd get in one inventive nugget about, oh I don't know, twisting my meat, or hanging it loose, or what have you.

Anyway, sausage. The basic recipe for any sausage is meat (or, I suppose, a meat-like vegetable doppelganger), fat, curing mix, spices, herbs, and aromatics. And they aren't kidding about the fat. Most sausages are emulsifications of meat and fat. Kind of like a vinaigrette, except you can stuff it into something and cook it and be thoroughly satisfied eating it with a beer.

The bratwurst I got to make is classified as a 5-4-3 sausage. Five parts meat and four parts fat emulsified with three parts ice, to add moisture and also to keep the sausage from cooking while it's run through a buffalo chopper. In our case, the meat was veal. And the fat? Bacon.

Bratwurst on the left, frankfurters on the right. Sweet and spicy italian sausages in the back.

Sausage party!