Pure Charcuterie: The Craft & Poetry of Curing Meat at Home

by Meredith Leigh

  2. Poach to cook and pan sear to finish. When I tested this recipe, we ate the sausage mixed with rice noodles, scant cilantro and loads of butter-seared king oyster mushrooms.

  RABBIT ANDOUILLE

  INGREDIENTS

  2.5 lb. rabbit meat

  1 lb. pork back fat

  1 oz. salt

  0.5 oz. black pepper

  0.4 oz. dried thyme

  0.4 oz. cayenne pepper

  2 bay leaves, ground

  ¾ cup red wine

  5 feet natural hog casings, rinsed

  Rabbit is on the rise as a nutritious source of lean meat, and it is perfect for the homestead. Rabbit meat has twice the protein of poultry, and a deep flavor that lends well to this Cajun andouille. Dial down the cayenne, and even some of the black pepper, if you don’t want too much spice.

  Method

  1. Mix all ingredients together and open-freeze on a sheet pan. Grind through the coarse plate of your meat grinder, and then re-grind half of the mix. Combine the mix thoroughly and test. Adjust seasonings if necessary before stuffing into the prepared hog casings.

  2. Dry overnight, then smoke using pecan wood until the internal temperature of the sausage is 145°F. Serve with peppery rice and some tart tomatoes at the very least.

  BUTTERMILK BOUDIN BLANC

  INGREDIENTS

  1 lb. pork loin meat, lean, trimmed for grinding

  0.89 lb. roasted chicken, or uncooked chicken white meat

  1.61 lb. pork back fat trim

  1 oz. salt

  12 oz. chopped onion

  1 cup cultured buttermilk

  0.2 oz. white pepper

  0.2 oz. dried thyme

  0.1 oz. ground allspice

  0.2 oz. fresh grated nutmeg

  0.2 oz. ground ginger

  3 eggs, beaten butter

  5 feet natural hog casings, rinsed

  Boudin blanc, or “white pudding,” is a super-traditional sausage, slightly sweet and delicately creamy from the addition of dairy and eggs and a higher amount of fat in the mix. In many old texts, white puddings are regarded as very refined. It’s amazing how much less mainstream they are today, especially considering charcuterie’s “gourmet” rep. I’d like to bring them back, with a tangy upgrade. Some of the oldest recipes I have found call for adding roasted chicken, rather than fresh, to the sausage mix. That makes this recipe a great use for leftovers.

  Here is a perfect example of how we affect texture by messing with ratios. You’ll see below that lean and fat are relatively equal in this recipe, and the liquid component has gone up considerably, with the amount of buttermilk and the addition of egg. This will contribute to the smoother texture typical of boudin blanc.

  Method

  1. Start with frozen meat and fat. If you are using chicken that is already cooked you don’t need to freeze it, just freeze the pork loin and back fat. Sauté the onions in some butter until they are glassy. Add to the meat and fat and grind through the coarse plate of the meat grinder. Mix in the spices and then grind everything again through the fine plate of the meat grinder. In a separate bowl, combine the buttermilk and the beaten eggs. Now pour the milk and egg mixture into the meat mixture and put the whole thing in your stand mixer with the paddle attachment. Mix on 2 or 3 until the mixture is quite mousselike. Taste test. Adjust seasonings if necessary. Stuff into casings and then poach at 170–175°F until the sausages reach 120°F, about 15–20 minutes.

  2. It is best to use a strainer or steamer basket that you can immerse in the poaching water, and lift the sausages out when they are finished to prevent them from breaking.

  3. When ready to serve, brush the sausages with butter and grill them to sear them off. Serve with mashed potatoes and garlicky greens.

  ON SUSPENSION

  Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts.

  WENDELL BERRY The Mad Farmer Liberation Front (1973)

  I WAS FEELING DEFIANT and temperamental recently, so the obvious solution was to make mortadella. The silkiest and most subtly spiced of the meat specialties, mortadella presents a challenge to its creator that requires precision, a light hand, patience and good raw materials. As a result, when I first started my journey into butchery, I avoided it. Now, I regard it as a close but complicated friend.

  If sausage is your fun and artsy pal with his shirt endearingly wrinkled, mortadella is a beautiful but volatile girl you never had the guts to ask for a dance. And it is appropriate, I think, for our relationship with food, to see her in each of us. On days when I am my own worst enemy, when my chef mind will not ease up, when I cannot meet even my own standards, and when everything I have created seems to not want to force itself to coexist, I am mortadella. We are flawed beings, striving for optimum presentation. Our lives are an asymmetry of raw materials, plus a little fuss, mostly adding up to exquisite suspension.

  Meat suspensions are sausages of sorts, but these preparations, which include bologna, mortadella, pâté, hot dogs and all manner of terrines, require a bit more graduated knowledge to achieve. Since you understand the ins and outs of grinding meat, creating bind and formulating ratios, suspensions are not far removed from your practice. What separates these preparations from fresh sausages is chiefly the variability in the ratio of lean to fat to liquid, which enables you to nimbly affect texture. Additionally, the suspensions are traditionally served cold, with a few exceptions. Properly, sausages are flavorful mixtures, but the artfulness of the suspension is to develop a relatively heterogeneous situation, wherein meat and seasonings are suspended into a matrix of fat and sometimes liquids.

  From left to right: pate gratin in lard, Working Woman’s Lunchbox Pate, and Pate en Croute

  In many books and resources (including my first) you will hear suspensions referred to as “emulsifications,” however erroneous the idea might be that you could actually dissolve meat and fat into one another. A mortadella may feel that way on your tongue, and that is a very beautiful thing indeed, but proper emulsification is not happening with suspensions, as the two insoluble main players are not being forced into one, but rather encouraged into an artful partnership of form and feeling. Once I had shifted this terminology in my head, my visual and visceral understanding of what I was creating changed, and eventually I developed an odd, gentle, and astute respect for the variable and quirky suspension, and its place in the charcuterie.

  If you’re like I was as a beginner, you might advance into the world of pâtés, terrines and bolognas with hesitation. After all, in America we either think of these preparations as loaves or tubes of the odd and awful bits, and perhaps we were engraved as children with stories about the horrors of their production. Further, as Americans, it is quite possible that some of us have never experienced these products at all, as they have not been popularized in our culture, however many deserving and useful qualities they possess. I would argue that even the upsurge in the demand for charcuterie has not created a deeper understanding of suspensions and their brethren, nor has it raised the bar in the industry enough to encourage their improved production and reintroduction to the public. Therefore, it feels appropriate for me to extol a bit on their virtue.

  When I think of pâtés and cold cuts, I think there may be nothing better for the hurried American family seeking nutritious but hearty food for lunchboxes or days out erranding. I think of the health-conscious masses, who are beginning to understand the importance of organ meats in the delivery of minerals and protein to the body. I think of social media photos and magazine spreads that scoff about how beautifully we entertain each other with food. The pâté, the mortadella, the terrine have a home in all of these places. They often include wildly healthful organ meats in such a way that you cannot even discern their specific flavors. They are perfect for a make-ahead meal that you can nip a slice off daily, or for lunches or picnics or appetizers for a crowd. They can be veritable sculptures, so artful in their presentation as to wow even the most seasoned hash taggers or the fussiest of h
ostesses. Furthermore, I would argue that suspensions are absolutely genius in the thrifty and efficient use of the entire animal. Their rightful incorporation into our understanding of meat eating is essential activism in creating proper economies within the home kitchen (making use of everything you buy), the farm (demand for every product produced) and the animal (respect for the entire, dynamic body).

  Now that you are convinced that it would be foolish and lazy for you to brush past the pâté, I will share with you four main approaches to creating a variety of suspensions in the home kitchen. From there, you can launch off into a wonderland of creativity all your own.

  THE TERRINE

  The word terrine is French for earthenware dish. However, the meaning has been expanded to pretty much include all suspensions produced in loaf pans or molds, particularly of whole or chopped food enveloped in aspic. Aspic is a collagen-rich stock; its gelatin content will cause it to solidify when cooled, thereby suspending the whole or chopped food items. The most basic example in the whole animal butcher’s arsenal is headcheese, for which a hog’s head is brined to tenderize and flavor, then boiled with aromatic vegetables and herbs. The meat and organ matter of the head is cooked, and as it boils it produces its own stock, rich in the collagen proteins derived from the heating of bone, skin and cartilage. To finish the terrine, the meat and organ matter is pulled from the skull, chopped and further seasoned, and then the very stock it produced in cooking is strained and poured over the chopped meat into some kind of form. The entire deal is then weighted and chilled, and eventually turned out onto a platter. In a single pot, one thus creates the most fundamental terrine — chopped meat and other matter suspended in aspic.

  Of course, variations on this approach abound. The approach for developing any other terrine is more methodical. One determines the ingredients to be dispersed and suspended in the aspic and prepares each separately, according to the desired end result. One then prepares the aspic. The final step is to patiently layer all elements together and cool before serving.

  Below, we explore this process through the preparation of a chutney and pork confit terrine. However, I urge you to grasp how incredibly versatile this concept of suspension is. For an appetizers class, I once created a vegetarian terrine full of edible flowers, suspended in a balsamic-infused stock to which I added a seaweed-derived hydrocolloid called agar-agar that would cause the stock to solidify when cooled. It was beautiful, and not at all specific to meat.

  A few specifics to remember when approaching suspensions:

  1. They are served cold, which masks or downplays our experience of flavor. Thus, the ratios of salt and seasonings increase compared to fresh sausages.

  2. Molding specialties into a form or pan requires some kind of lining in the mold. You may use plastic wrap, strips of fat, bacon or bread. Our recipes below explore all of these approaches.

  3. Suspensions require more time to produce. Many will be as easy to mix as a sausage, however, lining the pan and waiting for the item to cook and then thoroughly chill to form will require some planning.

  CHUTNEY & CONFIT TERRINE

  INGREDIENTS

  Pulled meat from one pork shank confit (see page 76)

  ¾ cup fig chutney (see page 127)

  1 pork trotter

  1 pork ear Some pork skin

  1.5–2 lb. lean muscle from the pork leg, such as the ball tip muscle or eye of round

  2 ribs celery

  2 carrots

  1 bunch parsley, divided in half

  ½ corm of garlic, smashed

  ½ bottle white wine

  Balsamic vinegar

  Salt and pepper to taste

  Feel free to enjoy the fermented fig chutney (page 127) and this pork shank confit (page 76) outside of the mold. All the elements of this dish deserve further exploration on their own merits. The trotter confit, I happen to know, goes very well in homemade handpies. And the chutney, well, just get yourself some cheese and crackers. We have also enjoyed it on pizza, with prosciutto.

  Method

  1. Roughly chop the celery, carrot and half of the parsley and place them into a soup pot along with the trotter, ear, pork skin, leg cut, and garlic. Cover with the white wine and then cold water until you’ve got enough liquid to submerge the ball tip or eye of round. Set that on the stove and let it boil, then turn it down to a simmer and let it cook as long as it takes to soften that lean leg cut enough to where it pulls apart. Strain the pot, retaining the stock, and then pull out the lean muscle and transfer it to a baking sheet to cool.

  2. Lightly oil a loaf pan and then line it with plastic wrap. Set aside. Scoop out a small spoonful of the stock, place it in a jelly jar and stick it in the refrigerator. Watch it to make sure it sets up into a gel. If it doesn’t, you’ll need to put your stock back into the pot and put some more bones, skin or feet and ears in it and let them boil down again. You’re seeking the collagen in these bits, which will allow your aspic to set properly.

  3. When the lean cut is cool enough to handle, pull it apart with your fingers or forks until you have shredded pork. Salt and pepper it to taste, sprinkle it liberally with balsamic vinegar, then chop and add the rest of the parsley. Add any other seasonings you like at this point.

  4. Distribute half of the shredded pork at the bottom of the loaf pan, then pour your stock over just to cover the shredded pork. Place the pan in the fridge and wait for the aspic to set. When it has, pull the pan out of the fridge and get ready to add the fig and confit layer. Dot the top of the set aspic with figs from the chutney, as few or as many as you like. Fill the spaces between the figs with confit pieces. Pour stock over this layer to cover, then return the pan to the fridge to set again.

  5. When the second layer is set, remove the pan from the fridge and top off the terrine with the remaining pulled pork mixture. Pour stock to cover, which should be all you can fit in your pan. Fold the plastic wrap over the terrine, then cover with foil and place a heavy end-grain cutting board on top of it all, for a weight. Return the loaf pan to the fridge and allow the terrine to chill and set overnight, before turning it out and slicing it into servable pieces. Serve with crackers, pickles and cheeses.

  6. Have any leftover terrine, or are you tired of eating it cold? Cut into cubes and freeze. Later, you can place cubes of the terrine inside of homemade ravioli, or into soups.

  The first layer of the terrine

  The second layer of figs and pork shank confit

  The filled terrine, and aspic being added before chilling

  PTÉ OF THIRDS

  This is the approach I tend to use for country or rustic pâtés, which tend to include a lean-meat component (usually pork shoulder), in addition to higher quantities of fat and an organ-meat component. Each component is given equal weight in the recipe, roughly a third of the total mixture. In this way, country pâtés, or any pâtés using the rule of thirds, are more like sausages than their relatives, which we explore later.

  The pâté of thirds is the most approachable pâté by far, and makes a hearty, no-nonsense cold meatloaf of sorts. The cold presentation of most meat suspensions brings us to an important aspect of their preparation. It is more difficult to discern flavors on your tongue when you are eating cold food than when you are eating food that is warm. Therefore, meat suspensions and products that are served cold generally include a higher ratio of salt to the total weight of lean and fat. They also generally accept more aggressive seasoning.

  Additionally, as you get into making pâtés, you will encounter a mixture known as the panada, also referred to as panade. This is usually a combination of cream (though it can be stock or other liquid) and some kind of flour or meal (also breadcrumbs, dry milk powder or grain), and sometimes eggs. Very rudimentary panada will incorporate milk or cream and flour in a 1-to-1 mix, but depending on the other ingredients in the pâté, it will be helpful for you to hold a more flexible space in your mind for these mixtures. Panada is used as a binder for the pâté, but it also
lends rich, creamy elements to the recipe that inform flavor and texture in eating.

  For the pâté of thirds, the ratio is as follows:

  • Lean muscle: 33%

  • Organ meat or secondary lean muscle: 33%

  • Back fat: 33%

  • Salt: 2%

  • Spices: 10–15%

  • Panada: 10–15%

  My dream, at the very least, is for the pâté of thirds to be accepted and loved by Americans for its versatility and its ability to feed us well on the go. I developed the following recipe to encourage this dream along its course. This is meat for the hard-working person.

  WORKING (WO)MAN’S LUNCHBOX PTÉ

  INGREDIENTS

  28.8 oz. pork lean trim

  9.6 oz. pork or beef liver or heart

  9.6 oz. pork back fat, trimmed

  1.5 oz. kosher salt

  1.5 oz. brown sugar

  1.2 oz. crème fraîche

  0.7 oz. brandy or port

  1 egg

  2.5 oz. pâté mix*

  0.3 oz. orange zest

  4 oz. hazelnuts

  2 cloves garlic, minced

  4 oz. onions, minced

  Small handful of parsley, minced

  Bacon, sliced thin for wrapping pâté

  *pâté mix (makes 13 oz.)

  3 oz. ground cloves

  3 oz. ground coriander

  2 oz. dried thyme

  1.5 oz. white pepper

  1.5 oz. nutmeg

  0.75 oz. mace

  0.5 oz. bay leaf