Heavenly Souse

[Butterbean]

I just pulled this chub from the cooler and I have to say it is pretty good.




What I did, was boil a head down in salty water with the appropriate amount of cure 1 for about 2 hours till the meat pulled.

Pulled the meat from the skull. Skinned the tongue. Ended up with just under 10 lbs of meat.


Mixed it together.

To this I added

1 cup or so of chopped bell pepper
1 10 oz jar of green olives - drained
1 cup or so of sweet pickles I had diced up
1/2 cup of vinegar
6.5 TBS of canning salt
1 TBS of white pepper, oriental mustard, onion powder
3 TBS of sage
2 TBS ground cloves
2/3 cup of gelatin dissolved in 4 cups of the broth intentionally scooping from the top when possible

Mixed all this together with the meat.

Seperated the meat from the fat and ground the fat with a small plate and the meat with a larger plate. (edited)

Stuffed in a bolgna casing and chilled for a day. How something can taste so good and be so good for you is beyond me.

Flavor is really good. Each bite is interesting going from sweet pickle to the saltiness of the green olive. Its so good in fact I don't think souse does it justice and believe it should be called Hoghead Terrine.

[redzed]

Wow! Looks great. I could almost taste it. Curious about your method in grinding the fat through a coarse plate and the meat through a fine plate. I would have done it the opposite. Did you use any skin?

[Butterbean]

Wow! Looks great. I could almost taste it. Curious about your method in grinding the fat through a coarse plate and the meat through a fine plate. I would have done it the opposite. Did you use any skin?

OOOPPPS, you are absolutely right. I had a brain fart. I'll fix it if I can still edit it.

Edited and fixed. Thanks for pointing that out.

[Chuckwagon]

Maaaaa Maa!
Butterbean, that looks amazing! What a terrific recipe. How should I list it in the MRI? Yikes, I've just got to give this a try. Thanks for sharing.

Best Wishes,
Chuckwagon

[IdaKraut]

Butterbean,
Your recipe sounds amazing. I am curing some hocks, feet and tongues right now and will be making some sulze next week. I have a couple of questions: you said you used "1 TBS of white pepper, oriental mustard, onion powder" Is that 1 TBS of each of these spices? Also, you mentioned vinegar (I plan to add vinegar to mine). How much water, if any, did you add the amount you mentioned to? Or did you add this to the 4 cups of broth to which you added the gelatin?

Also, you said you added some cure #1 to the cooking water. Did the meat come out pink because I could not really tell the color from your pictures. Thanks, and great job!! I love it when guys come up with unique recipes using ingredients not normally found in sausage recipes.

[crustyo44]

Butterbean thank you for sharing your recipe. I like the peppers, vinegar and Polski Ogorki in them. Right up my alley. No doubt I will be making it soon.
I am waiting for Rudy (Idakraut) Sulze recipe, with vingar also.
I definitely will have to watch my waistline.
Cheers,
Jan.

[Butterbean]

Butterbean,
Your recipe sounds amazing. I am curing some hocks, feet and tongues right now and will be making some sulze next week. I have a couple of questions: you said you used "1 TBS of white pepper, oriental mustard, onion powder" Is that 1 TBS of each of these spices? Also, you mentioned vinegar (I plan to add vinegar to mine). How much water, if any, did you add the amount you mentioned to? Or did you add this to the 4 cups of broth to which you added the gelatin?

Also, you said you added some cure #1 to the cooking water. Did the meat come out pink because I could not really tell the color from your pictures. Thanks, and great job!! I love it when guys come up with unique recipes using ingredients not normally found in sausage recipes.

On the spices, yes, it was 1 TBS of each one listed.

I didn't add any water just the broth. I thought this would give double insurance for it setting properly was my reasoning.

The curing salt did make some of the meat pink. I think if I was really after the pink color I would make the brine and soak for a few days then cook it in the same brine - is my thoughts. I was just in a hurry cause this head was fresh and never frozen and I was getting worried about it.

I don't get hung up on recipes. I just try to use what I have on hand. Life got a lot simpler when I finally learned this and I doubt many people could come up with a jar of my probate judge's sweet pickles if you know what I mean.

All joking aside, this is a very good souse and if I had more time I think pickling the meat first would be the best way to do it.

[Cabonaia]

Butterbean that looks just fantastic. It brings together a lot of flavors I miss from lunchmeat from when I was a kid. It is bookmarked and on my to-do list. Thanks for sharing the pictures and recipe.


Jeff

[Butterbean]

Jeff, our mom's must have packed the same kind of lunches cause that is the first thing I thought about when I sliced it. But this, I think, is much better than that pickle and olive loaf my mom would buy for my sandwiches.

[Cabonaia]

I don't doubt that for a minute. I remember pimento loaf, which had olives in it, maybe pickles too. I bought some olive loaf at a deli counter last summer, and I could hardly eat it. And I'm not picky, either. I'm really looking forward to trying out your formula.

[crustyo44]

I fully agree with both your comments, here we have in deli's summersausage style loaves, some with fancy German names, the prices range from $3.99 to 15.00 per kilo. The cheaper ones have just more sawdust and muttonfat in it and all have a crappy taste
Just in-edible, even our dog won't touch it. Next month I will be making quite a few sulzes, headcheeses and souse etc. Most of them to be given away.
Cheers,
Jan.

[Chuckwagon]

Our pal J.M. (Butterbean) in South Georgia has been down the road and back a few times. I`d like to point out just a few things if I may. Butterbean has added the appropriate amount of Cure #1 to prevent clostridium botulinum from developing in the pork. This was placed in the cooking brine where the meat particles would be sure to pick up 200 PPM sodium nitrite. Many folks don`t realize that sodium nitrite is so quick to break down into nitric oxide (not to be confused with nitrous oxide), that it is done almost instantly... when it has permeated the tissue. In large piece of whole muscle, it must have time to penetrate. By placing it in cooking brine where the meat is actually broken down into fibers during the cooking process, it is quick and it is thorough. He also has prevented any possible trichinella spiralis by exceeding 137 °F during the cooking step in the preparation. Because Butterbean has chosen not to cook the other non-meat ingredients, this is truly a unique and safe recipe. My congrats sir. I hope you don`t mind if I list it as South Georgia Heavenly Souse. Again, thanks for sharing J.M.

Best Wishes,
Chuckwagon

[Butterbean]

CW, you bring up a point of interest to me. While I didn't give a second thought about the noncooked ingredients since all had been previously processed either through blanching or pickling your post makes me wonder about the risk - if any - of contamination had I used green peppers straight from the garden. Not wanting to split hairs or anything like that just wondering if in a perfect world these should not be at least blanched before going into the souse or anything else for that matter that will not be cooked again.

You wouldn't do it for a salad or anything like that but I was just wondering about the meat environment.

Of course all these ingredients could be dumped in the pot just befor finishing. Just wondering about other people's thoughts on this.

[Chuckwagon]

Butterbean wrote:

just wondering if in a perfect world these should not be at least blanched before going into the souse or anything else for that matter that will not be cooked again.

Yes, technically it could be a problem because the other ingredients are not sterile and, although the possibility is extremely remote, it is nevertheless possible for an ingredient from a garden to actually host clostridium botulinum or any number of any other pathogenic bacteria.

In an anaerobic atmosphere such as an enclosed sausage casing, it is definitely possible for facultative anaerobic pathogenic bacteria to multiply, and unquestionably possible for any obligate anaerobic bacteria to develop. And they do so quickly. Microaerophile bacteria, requiring very little oxygen, may also become active in less than an ideal environment. All you need is lack of oxygen, a moderate temperature, and a nutrient in a moist environment, and presto - you`ve got bugs! Yes, blanching may help solve much of the problem if it is a "long" blanch, but there are some microtoxins from spores, so resistant to heat, that they may even survive boiling water. Heck pal, they've even found a species now that survives nuclear exposure.
One day, some thirty years ago, I got a "bad dose" of my own garden-raised, non-sterile, basil. It put me in the hospital. I`ve never added "garden" ingredients to sausage since that day. Only "sterile" spices for this old man now. It`s interesting to note that during the Clinton administration, legislation was passed giving suppliers the option of "irradiation", where low-dose gamma rays destroyed any bacteria present. However, the American public has been slow to accept this "sterilization" of spices and herbs. Heck, this process would wipe out virtually all trichinella spiralis in pork! Yet, Americans are afraid of "irradiation" although it has been proven to be entirely safe.
Butterbean, these days it is bad enough to battle the "old regulars", some of which are the rod-shaped, bacillus cereus, or the Norwalk virus (calicivirus), or even the campylobacters in the lower strains of a species, without worrying about the new guys on the block such as E-Coli (E.coli0157:H7) or shigella. If that weren`t bad enough, we also must be aware of new parasitic infestation such as cryptosporidia (crypto).
How do these pathogens get into your food supply? From the ground. You know... the place where animals crap. This completes the cycle as we gather fresh herbs and spices and put it right back into our sausage without being treated.
No, the cooking process will not stop them all, but it sure will help. I just wouldn`t put "fresh" ingredients from your garden into the sausage without cooking them. Even the cooking process won't insure you of 100% microbiological pathogenic destruction. But it will put the odds on your side! Hope this has helped pal.

Best Wishes,
Chuckwagon

[ssorllih]

Can we then use fresh herbs in fresh sausage that will be cook before consumption? Parsley and onions are popular additions.