Home Cookin' - You know the saying..."Sausage and laws. You don't want to see how they're made."

I've got a strong stomach, but there is no way I can stomach watching legislators, so I figured I'd stick to making sausage!

My neighbors Dave and Shawn decided that it would be a good idea, so I thought I'd lend a hand.  Who doesn't like spicy Italian sausage anyhow?

Shawn and I went up to one of my favorite butcher shops, The Laurel Meat Market, and had them grind us up 60 pounds of pork shoulder.

We brought it back to Dave's house and got to work.

 This is Dave's 5 lb. Sausage Stuffer.

 First we did a one pound batch to make sure we had the spices right.  Luckily, we did.  Dave had the following recipe from a cookbook of his:

60# pork shoulder coarsely ground

10 T coriander

10 T black pepper

20 cloves garlic

10 T salt

12 T fennel, cracked

1.5 T crushed red pepper

This was obviously multiplied out for our purpose.

I mixed in the spices...we did two 30 lb. batches based on the restrictions of our mixing bowl and the fact that we wanted to keep the meat refrigerated as much as possible during the production. There hasn't been a case of trichinosis in a long time, and I didn't want to be the first.

 Here's Dave spooning in the salt while I mix.

Here is Dave handling the casing while Shawn cranks the stuffer.

 Et Voila!  Yards of tasty sausage ready to be cooked.  In our case, we are freezing and vacuum packing most of it.

 Yes, that's me making a dick joke.  The room was full of them. How could you pass it up?

It was a very nice experience, and the sausage was great. Remember to keep it as cold as possible for as long as possible, and if you're handling the casing task keep your hands wet!

Until next time....

Epic Smokehouse....from the smoker with love

Epic Smokehouse

1330 S. Fair St. (though your GPS might like 1330 S. Fern St. better)

Arlington, VA

571-283-4582

http://epicsmokehouse.com/

Joon Yang and Wayne Halleran opened Epic Smokehouse to friends and family Saturday for a preview. I had done a short post about the restaurant during construction.  You can find there here.
Some of the pictures you see here are not of the actual dishes they will be serving.  Some are merely tastes of parts of larger entrees.  I asked them to put out a little of a lot of different things so I could get a feel for what they were trying to do here.
Above is a taste of their smoked brisket and smoked pork.  The smoke flavor in the brisket is intense.  The pulled pork isn't sloppy/mushy.  They pay attention to their times and temperatures.

This is shrimp with some of the nicest polenta I've ever tried. Good butter sauce.

This is a view from the food bar.  The restaurant is long and slim with windows all the way across.  The woodwork is creative and attention to detail was apparent.

Here's another shot of that shrimp dish.

This is the cold-smoke scallop dish.  The crispy kimchi under it was a perfect foil to the sweetness of the scallops.  I'm not sure if you can tell in the picture, but these scallops were probably 3-4 ounces.  Huge.

Just smoke to rare, then seared.

This is a treat you won't find anywhere else:  (at least anywhere else I've been to) The smoked prime rib.  There is an understated horseradish crusting, but the reason it's understated is because the smoke flavor is off the charts.  This meat must spend a long time in the cool smoke to get it like that.  I recommend it even if you're not a prime rib fan. 

The last thing we tried was a bit of short rib.  The meat was fork-tender, as it should be, and the sauce had just the right balance of salt. 

All in all, a great first night.  Please stop by and check them out.  If you do, tell them you read about it on Pleasures of the Table.