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

by Meredith Leigh

  This is a thing I make on the weekend, so that during the week I can rush in from the farm, kick off my boots and have a wholly delicious and nutritious sandwich meat in a flash, accompanied by some good cheese, a crusty bread, fresh greens and mustard.

  Method

  1. Grind 1 lb. of the pork and fat, plus liver, garlic, onion and parsley, through the coarse plate of the meat grinder, then through the fine plate. Set aside. Grind the rest of the pork lean trim and the hazelnuts through the coarse plate and add to the meat and fat mix. Chill. Combine the egg, cream, brandy (or port) and orange zest. Set aside. Measure pâté spice mix and add to panade. Remove meat mix from the refrigerator and place in the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment. Add the panade salt, brown sugar and spices and mix on speed 2 or 3 for about 2 minutes. Taste test, adjusting seasoning if necessary. Line the loaf pan with plastic wrap, and then with the strips of bacon, leaving a bit of overhang. Fill the pan with the pâté mixture, then fold the bacon over, then the plastic wrap, and then wrap the top with foil. Bake in a water bath at 300°F until the internal temperature of the pâté reaches 145°F.

  2. Cool to room temperature, weighted. Then transfer to the fridge and chill completely, overnight, weighted. Turn out on to a wooden board before slicing and serving with crusty bread, cheese and condiments. This pâté will keep in the fridge for at least two weeks. I have not had one last longer than that, so I cannot speak to its further stability.

  A typical water bath set-up: the pâtés are wrapped and placed into a larger casserole pan that is filled with enough water to come about halfway up the sides of the pâté pans.

  Working (Wo)Man’s Lunchbox Pâté components

  Working (Wo)Man’s Lunchbox Pâté, assembled

  Working (Wo)Man’s Lunchbox Pâté, finished

  Working (Wo)Man’s Lunchbox Pâté

  Grinding pâté through the fine plate of the meat grinder. This process can be repeated to create finer texture.

  60–20 SUSPENSION

  The 60–20 suspension seems to be the popular way to feature organ meats. I use it religiously in producing mousses and liver pâtés, and it has not failed me yet. The differentiation is rather simple. You are composing a suspension of two main players — an organ meat and fat. Virtually all other instructions and considerations for the pâté of thirds also hold true here, though the panada may be more prominent in the recipe, as the binding action of myosin (which comes from muscle) will be absent when working merely with organs and fat.

  Sieving the mixture to isolate the finest texture, if desired

  To more finely reduce the texture of any pâté, use a combination of the coarse and fine plates of your meat grinder, or just run the mix through the fine plate several times. The more grinding and mixing you do, recall that you may need to stop and chill the mix, so that it does not rise too much above 39°F. Additionally, there will be times when you may want to sieve the mixture, or force it through a tamis or chinois, to screen out larger bits and create a pâté that is supremely silky. If this is the case, you will simply dump the entire mixture, after grinding, into a fine mesh sieve, or a tamis or chinois for even more discerning results, and press it through (this takes patience and time!) into another bowl.

  Comparison of 60–20 pâté mixture that has been passed through a tamis (above) and a pâté mixture that has not (below)

  The ratio for a 60–20 suspension is as follows:

  • Organ meat: 60%

  • Back fat: 20%

  • Salt: 2%

  • Spices: 10–15%

  • Panada: 10–15%

  I use the 60–20 suspension in combination with some of your terrine-making skills to produce pâté gratin here. Gratin refers to the inclusion of some pre-cooked ingredients, in this case fermented peppers and sautéed mushrooms. We will achieve two pâtés, to help you master different principles; for one, the pan is lined with back fat; for the other, you will envelop the pâté in a pastry to create a beautiful pâté en croûte. The filling for both is the same.

  PTÉ GRATIN

  INGREDIENTS

  Filling for both molds

  2.4 lb./38.4 oz. duck or chicken liver

  12.8 oz. pork fat

  0.8 oz. kosher salt

  0.1 oz. ground rosemary

  0.3 oz. black pepper

  0.6 oz. cane sugar

  0.6 oz. quatre épices

  2.7 oz. sautéed assorted mushrooms, the wilder the better

  2.7 oz. fermented sweet pepper (see page 127)

  1 egg

  2 Tbsp dark rum

  1 Tbsp fine ground cornmeal

  Splash of cold heavy cream

  Pâté dough for pâté en croûte

  8 oz. all-purpose flour

  0.75 oz. non-fat dry milk

  ⅛ oz. baking powder

  ¼ oz. kosher salt

  3 oz. unsalted butter

  1 egg

  ½ Tbsp apple cider vinegar

  2–3 oz. whole milk

  Equipment needed: meat grinder, mixer with paddle attachment, 2-cup terrine mold for pâté en croûte, 2-cup loaf pan for pâté in lard, plastic wrap

  1. Combine the flour, dry milk, baking powder and salt in the bowl of a food processor. Add the butter, cut into pieces, and process until crumbly. Add the egg and cider vinegar and transfer to a stand mixer. Mix on low to medium speed, then add the whole milk until the dough forms. It should be dry (not sticky) but hold together well. Wrap the dough and refrigerate it until you are ready to assemble the pâté en croûte.

  FOR PTÉ IN LARD

  1. Obtain a strip of back fat, about 10 inches long, frozen and then sliced into paper-thin 2-inch strips.

  ASSEMBLY OF PTÉS

  1. You can grind the filling ingredients all together for both molds. To do so, first place the moving parts of your meat grinder and the bowl you plan to use into the freezer. Then mix up the panada so it can be chilling in the fridge while you grind. In a small bowl, stir together the rum, egg, cornmeal and cream. Set aside in the refrigerator. Next, assemble the grinder, and combine the duck or poultry liver and the pork back fat with the rosemary, salt, sugar and quatre épices, and pass it all through the fine plate of the meat grinder. Run it through a second time if you so desire. Stir the cold panada into the cold meat mixture, and allow everything to chill in the fridge while you sauté the mushrooms and wash the grinder parts.

  2. To assemble the pâté in lard, line a loaf pan with the thin strips of back fat, as thoroughly as you can. You may want to first line the loaf pan with plastic wrap to make the outside of the pâté more uniform. This is completely optional. Make sure the strips of fat overhang the loaf pan enough to allow you to fold them over the pâté once it is filled.

  Line the loaf pan with the strips of back fat.

  Fill the lined mold ⅓ full with the meat mixture.

  The second layer is the mushrooms and fermented pepper.

  3. Fill the lined loaf pan ⅓ of the way with the meat and panada mixture. Then add a layer of mushrooms and fermented peppers, until the pan is ⅔ full. Fill it the rest of the way with the meat and panada mixture. As neatly as you can, fold the fat strips around the top of the pâté until all the ends are tucked in. Cover with foil and bake in a water bath at an oven temperature of 300°F until the internal temperature of the pâté is 155–160°F. Remove from oven and place an even weight over the pâté, until it cools to room temperature. Then transfer it to the fridge, weighted, to chill overnight before turning it out and serving.

  Fill the remaining space with more meat mixture. It will shrink as it cooks, so fill it quite full.

  Arrange the ends of the strips of fat so that you create a neat package.

  To assemble the pâté en croûte, remove the pastry dough from the refrigerator, unwrap it, and roll it out to ¼-inch thickness, on a floured board. Cut the rounded edges to produce a large rectangle. Grease the terrine mold with a neutral oil, then line the pan with the dough, carefully, leaving over
hang to fold over the top of the pâté filling.

  Fill as described above — first with meat mixture, then mushrooms and fermented peppers, then more meat mixture. You may decide to pipe in the meat mixture to get ultimate uniformity in distribution. If you do not have a pastry bag and tip, you can force the meat mixture into a ziplock bag and cut the corner off. Squeeze from the top to pipe the mixture into the mold.

  Roll out the pastry and trim the rounded edges to form a large rectangle.

  Fit the dough into the mold, carefully, ensuring there is overhang.

  Fill the lined mold ⅓ full with the meat mixture.

  Add the second layer of fermented peppers and mushrooms.

  Fill the remaining space in the mold with meat mixture.

  Trim the pastry as needed, and fold it over the pâté.

  Cut a vent in the pâté using a sharp paring knife.

  Fashion a chimney using aluminum foil and insert it into the vent.

  The finished pâté en croûte

  Trim the dough using a sharp paring knife, and fold it neatly over the pâté, tucking in the raw edges. Using a small knife, cut a vent somewhere into the pâté. Fashion a chimney to fit into your vent. This allows steam to escape without the hole shrinking as the dough bakes. Brush the top of the pâté with a mixture of 1 egg and a little bit of milk. Bake the pâté at 450°F for 15–20 minutes, then reduce the oven to 350°F until the pâté reaches an internal temperature of 160°F.

  MORTADELLA

  INGREDIENTS

  Mortadella

  2.1 lb. / 33.6 oz. lean pork trim

  1.65 lb. / 26.4 oz. pork back fat

  2½ cups / 20 oz. crushed ice

  1.6 oz. salt

  0.8 oz. pure cane sugar

  0.5 oz. fresh ground nutmeg

  0.24 oz. cinnamon

  0.24 oz. cayenne

  0.24 oz. coriander

  0.2 oz. curing salt #1

  1.92 oz. dry milk powder

  0.5 oz. garlic

  4 oz. back fat, cut into ½-inch or 1-inch cubes (omit if you want a more proper bologna)

  1.36 oz. whole black pepper-corns (omit if you want a more proper bologna)

  4–5-inch diameter x 20-inch long collagen or plastic casing, rinsed

  Hopefully I have said enough to make you want her, but this is the grand preparation, which will fill you with a sense of achievement. Mortadella is very much like bologna, however true bologna does not include whole spice. If you’d rather have bologna, feel absolutely free to omit the whole spice in this recipe, and you will not be disappointed. That being said, bologna has many variations, so you can alter the grind process for coarser textures, and tweak the spice mix, and still have bologna.

  Producing the finest textured suspension, as in the case of mortadella, usually involves what is known as the 5–4–3 ratio of sausage making. That is, by weight, 5 parts lean meat, 4 parts fat, and 3 parts liquid. This ratio will come into play in the following recipe, as well as higher ratios of salt and spice; other than that you are making a very large sausage. You will notice that I have included ice as the entire liquid component. This is because I wanted a traditional recipe, but also because mortadella must remain very cold in its processing to preserve its texture. By all means, take some stock and freeze it, and have that as your liquid component, if you dare.

  One ingredient that may stand out to you is the dry milk powder. It is included as a binder here, and should not be taken lightly.

  Lastly, you will notice the inclusion of curing salt #1, or pink salt. Many people include a curing salt to their mortadella, but this is chiefly for rosy coloration; you may absolutely omit it. (More about why and when you might want to do this can be found in Chapter 1).

  Method

  1. Place the moving parts of your meat grinder and the bowl you plan to use into the freezer. Meanwhile, blanch the 4 oz. of cubed back fat for 10–12 seconds, then set aside. Soak your casing in room temperature water until you are ready to stuff.

  2. Assemble the grinder, and send all ingredients except for the peppercorns and the blanched back fat through the coarse plate of the meat grinder. Repeat. Chill the mixture while you exchange the coarse plate for the fine plate on your grinder, then send the mixture through this plate twice as well. Chill the mix while you wash your grinder parts.

  3. In a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, combine the meat mixture, blanched back fat and peppercorns, and process on low to medium speed until well combined, and the mixture is quite leggy. Chill while you assemble your stuffer and prepare a large kettle of water, with a few generous pinches of sea salt. Place the kettle on the stove top and begin bringing it to a temperature of around 170°F.

  4. Place the mortadella mixture into the stuffer’s hopper. Using the largest stuffing horn available with your stuffer, pull the casing as far onto the horn as possible, and begin cranking the meat mixture into it, keeping an even and tight fill as you progress. When you’ve stuffed everything in, tie off the end with butcher’s twine, and carefully lower the mortadella into the poaching water. Monitor the temp as it cooks (it will take 45 minutes to over an hour, at least) to ensure the water stays just under a boil. Try not to temp the mortadella until you are pretty sure it is done, unless you have an infrared thermometer. The hole created by a traditional meat thermometer can allow water into the casing, which can screw up your texture quite a bit.

  5. The temperature of the mortadella should be 145°F internally. When it is ready, remove it from the poaching kettle and plunge it into an ice bath or a tub of the coldest water you can muster. Allow it to chill there, then place it in the refrigerator to chill completely.

  6. To serve, peel back the casing and slice as thin as you can manage.

  ON WHOLENESS

  . . . Some things

  you know all your life. They are so simple and true they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme, they must be laid on the table beside the salt shaker, the glass of water, the absence of light gathering in the shadows of picture frames, they must be naked and alone, they must stand for themselves . . .

  Can you taste what I’m saying? It is onions or potatoes, a pinch of simple salt, the wealth of melting butter, it is obvious it stays in the back of your throat like truth

  you never uttered because the time was always wrong, it stays there the rest of your life, unspoken,

  made of that dirt we call earth, the metal we call salt, in a form we have no words for, and you live on it.

  PHILLIP LEVINE The Simple Truth (1994)

  EVER SINCE THE natural world has brought me to my deepest node of vitality, I have pondered and puzzled about our human tendency to deconstruct everything. I have it. I’ve been acutely analytical since I was a child, and wildly subversive. As soon as I started to pay attention to the world, and see human constructs for what they are, I followed every urge to strategically unravel things, to ask whether they were real or useful, and then, if I felt inclined, to reimagine them into something somehow better. This tendency serves me well most days, but sometimes it becomes an undoing that is more complicated than thrilling, and more unnecessary than it is meaningful. The world is rife with things I’d like to take apart and redesign these days, in service of morality, soulfulness, integrity and joy. I’m working on a balance, of seeing when total revolution of thought and practice is warranted, and where it is perfect, gentle and totally appropriate to just leave things whole and unburdened.

  After all, my main lamentation of agriculture, and dietary hullabaloo, and culinary culture, is that we are missing a holistic perspective that will drive resilience, flavor, community and economy. Our scientific approach of disassembling and reassembling has left us short on information about synergy and interaction, a main artery in our understanding of reality and proper participation, especially with the natural world.

  Whole-muscle charcuterie is your countertop metaphor for this crusade toward a finer incorporation of wholeness. It’s about letting the muscle, or grou
p of muscles, be what they are: a consortium of tissue and action and fat stores, taken and preserved, and that is just that. In this chapter we explore several methods for preserving whole muscles, and introduce the concept of salt curing, a stage in the process not yet encountered in your fresh sausage and suspension adventures.

  Recall from Chapter 1 that what cures meat ultimately is a slow process of dehydration. The chief contributors to this dehydration are salt and time. Through the process of osmosis, salt pulls water out of the muscle, thereby lowering the water activity of the meat. Water activity is a measure of the water in the meat that is available to bacteria. Essentially, this means we are measuring the water available for biological reactions, which have a giant bearing on food safety. This is different from the total water in the meat. Take, for example, a raw piece of meat that is frozen. Before freezing, it is considered to have a very high water activity. As the meat freezes, it reaches a water activity of 0, because all the water in the meat has turned into ice crystals, and is unavailable to microorganisms. There is still water present, but the water activity is 0 because the water is not an actionable medium for bacteria. Take the meat out of the freezer, and as it thaws, its water activity, measured in units Aw, begins to rise.

  For those wanting to understand this more, it is helpful to know that Aw is a ratio measurement. It compares the vapor pressure in the food to the vapor pressure of regular water. This ratio tells a story about how likely water is to move from the food product into the cells of any microorganisms that are present (also an osmotic reaction). Since microorganisms cannot do their work without a certain amount of water, when we achieve a specific level of water activity, the food is considered to be shelf stable. As a basis of comparison, raw meat generally has Aw near 1. Salami has Aw of 0.82 or less.