Basic Breakfast Sausage

Adapted from “Home Sausage Making,” by Susan Mahnke Peery & Charles G. Reavis

• - 3 pounds ground pork
• - 1 tablespoon kosher or coarse salt
• - 1 1/2 teaspoons dried sage
• - 3/4 teaspoon freshly ground white or black pepper (fine grind)
• - 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
• - 1/4 teaspoon dried marjoram
• - 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
• - 1/8 teaspoon crushed red pepper

In a large bowl, combine the ground pork and herbs, mixing thoroughly with your hands.

Home-Cured Bacon

Adapted from “Charcuterie,” by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn, and “Well-Preserved,” by Eugenia Bone

Time: 2 hours, plus 7 to 8 days’ refrigeration

• - 2 1/2 pounds pork belly, rind removed
• - 2 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt
• - 1/2 teaspoon pink salt, optional

FOR A SWEET CURE, ADD:

• - 1/4 cup maple syrup, or honey, brown sugar, white sugar or molasses
• - 2 tablespoons cold strong black coffee, bourbon or apple cider

FOR A SAVORY CURE, ALSO ADD:

• - 2 garlic cloves, smashed
• - 1 tablespoon black peppercorns, crushed
• - 2 teaspoons fresh thyme
• - 1 teaspoon fennel seed, toasted
• - 1 teaspoon coriander seed, toasted.

1. Place the pork belly in a large Ziploc bag. Add the salt (and pink salt if using) and the cure additions. Rub the cure into the pork belly, turning the bag over and over and pressing the cure into the flesh. Close the bag, squeezing out all the air and refrigerate for seven days. Each day, flip the bag over. Some liquid will begin to gather in the bag.

2. After seven days, wash the cure off the meat, rinsing thoroughly. Pat the bacon dry with paper towels and set it on a rack over a baking sheet. Allow the bacon to air-dry in the refrigerator for 6 to 24 hours.

3. Preheat the oven to 225 degrees. Roast the pork belly in the oven to an internal temperature of 150 degrees for about 90 minutes. Chill the bacon well, then slice thick or thin, to preference. Any bacon that doesn’t easily slice may be cut into chunks, for starting a pot of beans or soup. Wrapped in parchment paper, then wrapped in plastic wrap or foil and placed in a Ziploc bag, the bacon will keep for three weeks in the refrigerator and three months in the freezer.

Yield: About 2 pounds.

Ham in Hay

Recipe by Fergus Henderson, The Whole Beast – Nose to Tail Eating.

Ingredients:
– a big bundle of hay (organic, for obvious reasons)
– 10 juniper berries
– 14 black peppercorns
– 10 cloves
– 6 bay leaves
– 1 whole fresh leg of pork with bone in; brined (see brine recipe below) for 12-14 days but not smoked (We’ve used this recipe on a 1/2 leg of pork and brined it for 6 days)

In a big pot make a base of hay, sprinkle on your spices and bay leaves, and lay the ham in your hay nest. Cover with more hay around and on top. Cover with water. Bring to a boil, then straightaway turn down to the gentlest simmer. Put a lid on and cook either in the oven or on top, making sure that it is not boiling too fast. Cook until tender all the way through (check by probing with a thin, sharp knife) for 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 hours. The hay is sadly not edible.

Serve with mashed rutabaga (if possible made with goose or duck fat). The pink ham and the orange rutabaga look like a sunset on a plate.

Making a Brine

Recipe by Fergus Henderson, The Whole Beast – Nose to Tail Eating.
You can use this brine to preserve many meats including pork belly, beef brisket, bottom round, or tongue.

Ingredients:
– 2 cups superfine (caster) sugar
– 2 14 cups coarse sea salt
– 12 juniper berries
– 12 cloves
– black peppercorns
– 3 bay leaves
– 4 quarts water

Bring all the brine ingredients together in a pot, and bring to a boil so the sugar and salt melt. Decant into a container and allow to cool. When cold, add your meat, and leave it in the brine for the number of days required for your recipe.

Even though the brine is a preserving process, we are celebrating its flavor-enhancing properties, so just in case in these somewhat bacterially anxious days it is probably no bad thing to keep your brine and it’s contents in the fridge.

Some Briny Thoughts: Your brine bucket (made of a non-corrodible substance), kept in the fridge, will become a nurtured friend, whose character should improve with time and should give delicious results. Think of a corned beef sandwich. Your bucket makes a very useful holding tank if you are trying to amass some of the less readily available piggy parts – ears or tails, for example.

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