So here is the recipe that I ending up coming up with, with the big change being the brine amount, more on that below:

• 1.5 lbs fresh green and wax beans

Brine:

• 3 cups white vinegar
• 3 cups water
• 1/4 cup plus 2 TB of canning salt

Per pint jar:

• 1 whole clove of garlic
• A small pinch of red pepper flakes

Yield: 4 pints

Probably the biggest difference between this recipe and the pickled carrot recipe, was that I didn’t par-cook the beans before canning them. And also that the brine doesn’t have any white sugar. But other then that, everything else was what you would normally see in a canning recipe (brine making, canning, cooling, etc.) Processing time is 5 mins in a boiling water canner.

As with the carrot recipe, I’m going to give these beans a couple of weeks in the jar before I try them, just to give the vinegar some time to mellow out. And as always, when I finally try them, I’ll let you know how they taste.

Side Notes:
1) For some reason I can’t remember where I got the original recipe. But the original recipe called for 2 cups vinegar, 2 cups water and 1/4 cup of canning salt for the brine. This ended up being only enough liquid for 3 pint jars. So I bumped it up to 2 3/4 cups Vinegar & 2 3/4 cups water and that still wasn’t enough for 4 pint jars, so that was how I ended up at 3 + 3.
2) Here was the recipe that I used for the cooking times, and general recipe guidance.
3) I originally picked about 1.75 lbs of beans. But after cutting the ended and tossing out any damaged beans, it ended up coming in at ~1.5 lbs of finished/cleaned beans.
4) From all the recipes that I’ve seen, the key ratio for the brine seems to be 1 TB of canning salt per 1 cup of liquid. So from there you can pretty much scale the recipe up or down using that ratio.
5) Once again I excluded the crazy dill, since most recipes I saw were for “dilly beans” instead of spicy beans. And since I was making these beans for bloody mary’s. I made the necessary changes to make these “spicy bean”.

Here are the two base recipes (Number 1 & Number 2) that I used as a starting point. But I ended up taking more of a cue from recipe #2, since it was an adapted recipe from Gourmet Magazine:

• 2 lbs baby carrots (Dole carrots in a bag)

Brine:

• 2 1/2 cups water
• 2 cup plain vinegar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 3 TB canning salt

Per pint jar:

• 1 whole clove of garlic
• 1 dried bay leaf
• 1/2 tsp whole black peppercorns

Yield 4 pints

In a pot of salted water, I cooked the baby carrots for 5 mins so that they were halfway cooked. The carrots were then cooled down in an ice water bath, to stop the cooking process. While the carrots were cooking and then cooling down, in another pot bring all the brine ingredients to a boil, then keep the mixture simmering for at least 15 minutes.  At the same time that you are heating up the brine, pre-heat four pint sized canning jars in large pot of hot water. Once the brine is done cooking, remove the pint jars from the pot and drain. Then place the spice mix at the bottom of each jar, placing the par-cooked carrots on top of the spice mix. Finally fill the jars with the hot brine to within a 1/4″ of the top of the jar, remove all the air bubbles using your preferred method (mine is using the Food Saver jar attachment),  cap, and then process in a boiling water canner for 15 minutes. After the jar are done processing, place them on a tea towel in a draft-free location to let the vacuum seal form, and to allow the jars to cool down. After 24 hours, any jars that haven’t seal need to be refrigerated, and the others that did seal can be put away to “age” before consuming.

Side Notes:
1) Since I only canned these carrots this past weekend (so 5-6 days ago.) I’m going to wait another week or two before giving them a taste test. That way the vinegar will have some time to mellow and spices will get a little more time to work their flavor magic.
2) Strangely enough, the amount of liquid listed above is enough to fill up all four pint jars with no waste.
3) For some reason online, their are a lot of recipes for pickled carrots with dill. And the idea of pairing dill and pickled carrots just wasn’t doing it for me. So I pretty much went off into my own direction, with a lot of guidance from the Gourmet recipe for a starting point.
4) Most of the pickled carrot recipes I read online, were all over the board is far as sugar in the brine (1/2 cup to 2 cups.) which to me seemed like way too much. So I went with the Gourmet recommendation of 1/4 cup per pound of carrots.

So last week I started the first of many canning sessions that will happen this year, and the first experiments of the year was 3 quart jars of dill pickles, 4 pint jars of spicy pickled beans (both green & wax from the garden) and 4 pint jars of pickled carrots (I ended up using baby carrots from the store, since the potatoes over took the carrots in the pallet bin.)

I’ll add separate posts over the next couple of days for the recipes for the dill pickles, pickled carrots, and spicy pickled beans. Just to keep the length of this post manageable, compared to the sausagefest post which ran close to three pages just in text.

So now that I had the casing I was off to get a package of pork butt (two shoulders) from Sam’s Club, which ended up costing me $22.61 for 14.31 lbs (or $1.58 lb) of meat. Then it was on the last and most important items, the herbs (fresh and/or dried from my garden) and spices (all from Penzeys).

Could I have just gone to the grocery store instead of Penzeys and gotten a couple of jars of Tone’s or Spice Island spices, sure. But over the last year I’ve finally come to the realization that buying the 4 oz plastic pouches from Penzeys is not only half the price per ounce then getting spices at the grocery store, but that the spices are of a better quality at Penzeys (or for that matter The Spice House in Chicago) then what you get at the grocery store. So it’s now become a no brainier decision to get spices at Penzeys.

So with all the easy stuff out of the way, it was on to the “hard part” which was figuring out what kind of sausage(s) I was going to make. And after about a weeks worth of time thinking about it, I ended up decided on four different kinds of sausage. So in bulk form, wrapped into 1 lb rolls, I made a Maple Breakfast sausage, an Iowa Style Breakfast sausage and a Kentucky Breakfast sausage. And then for links I made a batch of New York Style Hot Links. Three of the recipes (Hot Links, Iowa and Kentucky) are from Bruce Aidells’ sausage book, with a couple of modifications to his standard recipe. While the Maple Breakfast sausage recipe started as your basic country sausage recipe (kind of like a Bob Evan’s breakfast sausage) with a couple of modifications to make it into a Maple Breakfast sausage.

For some reason the sausage making process took a lot longer then I was expecting. When I reviewed the time stamps on my pics, I ended up being in the kitchen on Friday night from 5:30pm until 4am, when the last of the sausage was wrapped up and vacuum sealed, and everything was cleaned up. I did take a couple of breaks during the sausage making to rest my back, but it was an intense session to say the least.

So onto the recipes and technique (I’ve broken down each recipe into three sections meat/herb & spices/liquids just to increase readability):

Maple Breakfast sausage (Have not tried the final product yet)

• 2 1/4 lbs of less fatty pork shoulder
• 3/4 lb of more fatty pork shoulder
• 1 TB Kosher Salt
• 1 tsp whole black pepper corns, ground to medium/fine
• 4 tsp of whole dried sage leaves, ground to medium/fine (original recipe called for 2 tsp dried sage)
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 1/8 tsp Cayenne
• 1 Clove of garlic, finely minced
• 3 TB Maple Syrup
• 1/4 cup water

Kentucky Breakfast sausage (Turned out good, a nice and spicy breakfast sausage)

• 2 lbs of less fatty pork shoulder
• 1 lb of more fatty pork shoulder
• 1 TB Kosher Salt
• 2 tsp whole black pepper corns, ground to medium/fine
• 4 tsp of fresh sage leaves, finely minced (original recipe called for 2 tsp dried sage)
• 1 tsp Cayenne pepper
• 1 tsp whole Coriander, ground to medium/fine
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/2 cup water

Iowa Breakfast sausage (Turned out good)

• 2 1/4 lbs of less fatty pork shoulder
• 3/4 lb of more fatty pork shoulder
• a heaping 1/4 cup of freshly minced Parsley
• a heaping 1/4 cup of freshly minced Green Onions or Egyptian Walking Onions
• 2 tsp of fresh Sage leaves, finely minced
• 1 tsp of fresh Thyme leaves, finely minced
• 1 tsp of fresh Basil leaves, finely minced
• 1 tsp of fresh ginger root, finely minced
• 1 Clove of garlic, finely minced
• 1 TB Kosher Salt
• 1 tsp whole black pepper corns, ground to medium/fine
• 1 tsp Red Pepper Flakes
• 1/4 cup water

New York Hot Links sausage (Turned out good, hot but not too hot)

• 3 lbs of less fatty pork shoulder
• 3/4 lb of more fatty pork shoulder
• 1 TB + 1 tsp Kosher Salt
• 2 tsp whole black pepper corns, ground to medium/fine
• 1 TB Anise Seed, cracked (original recipe called for 2 TB Anise or 2 TB Fennel, but I went with a 50/50 mix instead)
• 1 TB Fennel Seed, kept whole
• 1 tsp Red Pepper Flakes (original recipe called for 1 TB)
• 1 tsp Cayenne
• 4 Clove of garlic, finely minced
• 1 TB Ouzo (original recipe called for 2 TB Sambuca, which I didn’t have on hand)
• 1/4 cup water

How to make the sausage:

After deboning both shoulders, I cut the pork shoulder meat into about 1” x 1” x 1” pieces, or basically pieces small enough to fit into the feed tube of my KitchenAid grinder attachment. After I cubed all the meat, I separated it into two categories, more fatty and less fatty. Since this would help me get pretty close to the fat ratio’s that you would normally see in a sausage recipe.

I then placed all the meat onto a half-sized jellyroll pan and put it into the fridge to cool down a little bit. I would have placed the jellyroll pan it in the freezer, but at that moment I just didn’t have the room in my freezer.

So with the meat chilling out, I started to pre-mix all the herbs and spices needed for each recipe.

Now onto the meat grinding part of this project.

Using my digital scale, I portioned out the meat for each recipe, using the more fatty pork where you would normally use leaf fat. With the large die installed in the grinder, I then ran the meat/fat twice through the grinder, to give it an even consistency. Finally the double ground meat was placed into the mixing bowl of the KitchenAid mixer, along with the herbs, spices and liquids. And with the beater attachment, everything was mixed up about 30 seconds to 1 minute to get everything evenly blended. I then transferred the semi-finished sausage to a Pyrex dish to placed it into the fridge to await final packaging into 1 lb rolls or sausage links.

Stuffing into casing

The only sausage out of the four that I stuffed into casing was the Hot Links. From one of the sections of casing that I bought, I cut off a piece about 60” long, which turned out to only be enough for 3 ¼ pounds of sausage, with ½ lb of sausage meat wrapped up in bulk form. So next time I’ll need more like 75” to 80” of casing for 3 ¾ lbs of sausage.

With the length of casing that I cut off, I rinsed out the inside of the casing two or three times in the sink to wash away the brine and then just let it sit in a bowl of cold water for about 15 mins. So with the casing prepped, I placed the sausage stuffing attachment on the grinder attachment and then placed the casing around the stuffing horn. With everything all set, I pulled the bulk sausage out of the fridge and started to feed it through the grinder into the casing.

This was actually a little trickier then I expected, since I’ve only stuffed sausage with two people. But the main thing that I noticed right away was that the KitchenAid sausage stuffing attachment will get the job done, but it’s not the smoothest of experiences. The big issue was that it wasn’t putting enough meat into the casing. So I had to keep stopping the grinder and with casing between my thumb and index finger, I had to force the meat down the casing in order to get a full/plump sausage. Eventually, I think that I’m going to have to spent the $150 and get a dedicated 5 lb capacity sausage stuffer from LEM.

So with the sausage all stuffed into the casing, I then tied them off into about 6” links, with six links to a vacuum package. Since if I’m going to make my own sausage links, I might as well match the number of links to how many buns are in a package.

Side Notes:
1) Out of the four sausages that I made, I’ve tasted everything but the Maple Breakfast. And all three ended up tasting great. The Hot Links I made were nice and spicy, but not super hot, since I only used a teaspoon instead of a tablespoon of red pepper flakes. But one of these times, I might have to make the super hot version, just to see how hot it could be. The Iowa & Kentucky breakfast sausages were also winners for a mild and a hot breakfast sausage.
2) Just as a quick estimate, if it’s costing me about $2 to $2.25 a pound in raw materials to make sausage, and you clearly know whats in my sausage. It makes you wonder what goes into some of the breakfast sausage that you can get at the grocery store for $1.00 per 1 lb roll. And that’s the retail price, so it’s even less when the store bought it wholesale from the packing house. Call this a little bit of food for thought (pun intended.)
3) I’m sure there are plenty of other side notes that I’m forgetting about. But I can always post those at a later date. Since this post is long enough to begin with.

So it’s pretty surprising to think that just a little bit of seasoning can totally change a potato chip. But that’s the situation we have on our hands with the Krinkle Cut style. Since the Sicilian Style has a wonderful flavor from the garlic and Parmesan, and then when you remove those two flavors you pretty much get a boring chip in the Plain Krinkle Cut.

Better Made makes a couple of different cuts of their plain/salted chips; Original, Wavy, Krinkle Cut and Kettle Cooked Original. Out of those four chips, I have yet to kettle cooked style, so I don’t have an opinion on those. But out of the remaining three, the Plain Krinkle Cut is at the bottom of the list. There really is nothing special about the Plain Krinkle Cut, since if I was going to go with a dipping/fancy cut chip, I’d rather have the Wavy style from Better Made. Since the Wavy is like a Ruffles, but with a better taste compared to Ruffles.

So for the Sicilian Style, those get two thumbs up in my book.
While the Plain Krinkle Cut, gets a sideways thumb leaning toward down. Since you are better off getting the Plain Wavy instead of the Plain Krinkle Cut.

Here is the ingredient list, if you can even call it an ingredient list:
1 cup of leftover satay sauce
Just over 1 lb of beef from a boneless chuck roast

It couldn’t be more simple, in that I bought a ~3 lb chuck roast at the grocery and cut it into three 1 lb chunks. Two of them I ground into hamburger meat for future taco/chili/slider nights. And with the last chunk I cut it into 1/2″ thick slices and then cut the slices into 1″ by 1″ pieces.

I then took all the cut up beef and placed it into a 1 gallon kitchen bag along with the 1 cup of satay sauce. With everything all mixed up in the bag, I then placed the mixture into the fridge to marinate for about 4 hours. After the four hours, I then skewered the beef onto bamboo skewers so that there was about 4″ of beef on the skewers. I then grilled the satays on the Weber for about 5 mins total.

Since I’m using bamboo skewers, I thought that I would use a tip from Primal Grill when Raichlen made satays on the hibachi, in that he covered part of the grill grate with aluminum foil to keep the bamboo skewers from burning. And it turns out that this actually works, as you can probably tell from the pics. So maybe I don’t need to get a set of stainless steel skewers after all.

Overall the flavor was pretty good on the satays, and the beef seems to better complement the peanut sauce verse the chicken. The only downside is that the beef was a bit on the chewy side, but that’s what I get for using a chuck roast. Maybe if I marinated the beef for longer (24-48 hrs) before skewering it might get a little bit more tender, but I kind of doubt it. I’m thinking about maybe using a ribeye steak, like Raichlen did in his satey recipe for the next time I make satays. So if you happen to have any tips on a better beef cut to use, please let me know.

It turns out that the swiss chard has been growing like crazy and basically crowding out the pepper plants that are all around. So the lesson for next year is that swiss chard needs plenty of room. But enough about growing swiss chard, lets talk about eating swiss chard.

I might have had swiss chard once before, but I really can’t remember off the top of my head how it might have been prepared. After a little bit of surfing on the web for some kind of a recipe as a starting point, I basically hit a dead end. So I kind of just cobbled together a recipe with items that I already had on hand in the fridge and pantry.

So here is the ingredient list and recipe:

1 to 2 TB Extra Virgin Olive Oil
2 lb 10 ounces of Swiss Chard, roughly chopped
3 cloves of garlic, finely minced
2 large pinches of red pepper flakes
8 to 10 shakes of fish sauce
8 slices of bacon, pre-cooked and cut into a dice

Instead of chopping up the swiss chard and steaming it in a sauté pan with some chicken stock. I blanched the swiss chard in a pot of un-salted water, and this was a mistake. Since it added too much water to the pan during the saute. So I had to cook for longer and hotter to get rid of all the pan juices.

But with that out of the way, in a sauté pan heated to medium, add the olive oil, garlic and red pepper flakes and cook until fragrant. Then add in the swiss chard and the fish sauce and toss to mix everything up. At this point I turned up the heat to medium high to get a little bit of sizzle action in the pan. After about 10 to 15 mins of this, and in the bacon, give it a quick toss and serve.

Side Notes:
1) All I can say is totally awesome! For swiss chard being a member of the beet family, it tastes more like a hardy and more flavorful spinach. So maybe next time I might try to substitute swiss chard in one of my creamed spinach recipes. Something to think about for next time.
2) Notice again that I didn’t add any salt, since the fish sauce is salty to begin with, so their is no need for more salt. Plus the flavor combination of swiss chard and fish sauce is a winner in my book.
3) I’m on the fence if blanching is the correct method to pre-cook the swiss chard before it goes into the saute pan. Because most of the other recipes that I’ve read about cooking swiss chard, involve adding the chopped swiss chard to the sauté pan with boiling chicken stock in order to get the chard to wilt. I guess one other thing to think about for next time.
4) Add the bacon to the pan, right at the end before serving. Since when I made this the first time around, I added the bacon at the same time that I added the swiss chard and fish sauce. And what I ended up with was soggy bacon when everything was done cooking.
5) Greens are awesome.

Its looking like I should have an insane amount of pickling cucumbers this year, with the first cucumber harvested today. But I’ve got to tell you, these pickling cucumbers are growing like weeds everywhere, and I mean everywhere. Up the corn stalks, smothering the pepper plants, up the rabbit fence and on and on. This year I planted the cucumbers as ground cover, instead of training them to grow vertically. And after what I’ve seen so far, I’m not going back to vertical growing for cucumber for totally exposed outdoor growing. But if I ever got a hoophouse with some 50% shade cloth, I’d give vertical growing for cucumber another try, kind of like this pic.

And speaking of sweet corn, check out all the ears on the stalks. This should also be a bumper crop for the first time that I’ve ever grown corn. And its looking like it might be only another couple of weeks before I can pick a few ears for dinner, which is going to be awesome.

OK, here is something a little bit on the strange side. I was trying to weed around the beets (or what’s left of the beets) when I ran into this huge insect. I really don’t know if it’s a moth, or what it is. But this little bugger wasn’t moving to save its life, so that was how I was able to get the close-up shots. It must have been close to 2” long from its head to the end of its abdomen. If you know what the heck this is, please let me know, because I’m a little curious myself.

From the base of Mt. Fuji, this dragon, a symbol of luck, had brought DORITOS one of Japan’s most intense flavors.

And with only one bite the enigma was solved, and all the clues then made sense. So what do you think the flavor is? Give up?

Wasabi

And I’ve got to tell you; these are some pretty damn good chips. And for once I’ll give Frito-Lay some “props” for coming up with an original flavor and some pretty cleaver packaging to boot. Because after you have a chip you realize, “Oh the pale green color of the bag is pretty close to the color of wasabi” and “Oh now all those Dragon and Japan references make sense.”

As kind of an interesting side note on the ingredients, the bag lists both horseradish and wasabi as ingredients. And you can really taste both flavors on the chip, the horseradish more so then the wasabi. But I have a feeling like they added in the horseradish to keep the costs down, as well as the intense heat down from just “100% real wasabi”. So I’m not going to fault them for going down this road, since 100% wasabi would have been unbearable on these chips.

Overall these chips are a winner in my book.

-AuSable