Hi everybody! So over the past week I've been working on this second bite of the Tour of Thailand menu. This one was a bit of a cluster because I had some issues tracking down a couple of the ingredients and my process for making the sausage needed some refining. But overall, wow, it was really worth the effort.
Everything started last Sunday afternoon when I had a sausage making party for one. This is about half a pound of pork shoulder and then some bacon. The recipe called for pork belly which can be purchased online but getting one in now would be silly so I used bacon which is just pork belly that's been smoked. I'll actually use a pork belly for the final show because there's another dish that uses it and I'll order one for that dish.
My mom has actually moved away from using a Kitchenaid mixer, which frankly I think is sacrilege, but it worked out because I have one and because of that I was given the sausage making kit. So I busted that out and ground the meat, first through the large die and then through the small die. This was the result.
With the meat ground you need to season it. The seasonings for this sausage included salt, sugar, fish sauce, white pepper, ancho chile powder, cooked rice, garlic, bactofirm (Fermenting culture), pink salt, coriander and a bit of water. All of these ingredients were folded into the pork and then I let the whole mix sit in the fridge until I was ready to stuff.
This is what the pork looked like after all the seasonings went in.
So what's a sausage without a casing. I actually tracked down some
natural hog casings so much so that the entire package I bought is enough for 100 pounds of meat. I'm definitely not making that much but I've got plenty of casings for future sausage adventures.
From there I fired up the Kitchenaid again this time with the stuffing attachment and this was the result. Pretty good for my first time making sausage don't you think? This little adventure makes me want to continue to make more sausages but I also know why it's such a pain now too.
Now that the actual sausage was made we get to the fermenting part. The fermenting is accomplished through a combination of the bactoferm that was added to the pork, the correct temperature and time. Traditionally, in Thailand these sausages are just hung outside because of the temperature and humidity. Here in Illinois the weather isn't consistent enough to pull that off. So this time I used a crockpot to accomplish the job. The problem was the wild swings in temperature (ideally this would sit at 90 degrees for five days) but I decided to pull it out after 2 1/2. Next time I do this I'll rig up something else to try and maintain more consistency.
Fastforward to today. I finally had all the ingredients (I had to order the galangal and chiles online at the last minute, otherwise I would have done this earlier) and the time to finish this sucker.
Don't know what happened to the ingredient picture but this is the relish which is a combination of ginger, galangal, peanuts, red Thai chiles, salt, peanuts, fish sauce and grape seed oil. I took all the ingredients for a spin in a food processer and the picture above is the finished product.
Then I prepared the garnishes which went on the grill as well.
The sausage got grilled hot and fast just to basically warm through.
Then at the very end the green onion went onto the grill as well just to wilt a bit.
The final product. I cut a bite size piece of sausage off the link, topped it with a couple small spoonfuls of the relish then garnished with a chive flower and green onion.
Honestly, throughout this whole process I was a bit scared of the sausage. Sour and meat usually isn't a winning combination. HOWEVAH! This was amazing.
My sister-in-law is a Thai national so this process has a personal meaning to me. In talking with her I found out that this style of sausage is my brother's favorite Thai dish and now I know why.
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