Sicilian Chicken-Artichoke Sausage w/
Pecorino Romano Cheese & Chardonnay
15 lbs deboned chicken thighs w/ skin
2 tbsp powdered dextrose
2 tbsp black pepper
6 tbsp salt
5 tbsp fennel (toasted, then ground)
1 tbsp corriander seed (toasted, then ground)
3 tbsp cracked red pepper
2 & 1/2 cups chardonnay wine
1 cup Pecorino Romano cheese (coarse ground)
3 hearts and trunks from jumbo artichokes, cooked, then refrigerated
Grind chicken and skin thru 3/8" plate. Chop artichoke hearts and trunks with sharp knife, medium fine. Mix dry ingredients with wine, pour over chicken grind, add chopped artichokes and Romano cheese, mix 2-3 minutes until sticky.
Stuff into 32-35 natural hog casings
The chicken thighs were still pretty frozen due to me being at the grocery store at 6:30am. A fifteen pound batch would be enough for this experiment

I boiled the chokes and trunks for the standard 50 minutes then let everything sit in the fridge overnight

After scraping the choke meat from the leaves and chopping up the hearts and trunks I assembled everything for a photo-op, then it was time to mix.

A minor hangover inspired me to forego the use of my meat mixer and just throw it all into the tub in the sink. After about ten seconds I realized that I needed my gloves, arthritis, so I Pam'd them up and got back to mixing

I threw the tank for my stuffer into the freezer for an hour before I got to the stuffing end of things, and I'll make a habit of doing that from now on. The meat coming out of the tube was still extremely cold a hour and a half later when I was done. You can see the tank sweating the frost, that has to be good!

I'll be sampling the batch in just a little while. I kept feeling like I should add some garlic to the recipe but I didn't want to over-power the other ingredients. I'll see in a bit. RAY