Our Inner Fat Girls

Matt and I are gangly skinny bitches but that doesn't stop us from joking about our "inner fatties". Let's face it...we love to eat. All the late night Coney runs or those over-indulgent Sundays never add to our waistline. We might be inclined to feel guilty about getting away with eating so much garbage if it wasn't for the fact that we eat healthy the rest of the time. Hardly any meat, plenty of hearty grains and tons of fresh veggies while steering clear of MSG, HFCS, sodas, boxed/frozen meals, and artificial sweeteners.

It's our inner fat girls that give Matt and I our kicks of inspiration for our next indulgence. This usually involves us salivating at the mere description and talking like valley girls:

"OMG! Shut your mouth, that sounds sooooo good!" -Matt

Our latest kick happened at 1am last night. I can't even remember what got us on the topic of sausage, but that's where we ended up. Salivating over Googled recipes and images of various kinds of sausage.

Yeah. We're fatties alright.

Matt loves his Chorizo, so that was obviously a must. I love Chorizo too...I just love pork. So much...so freaking much. But then I came across an interesting recipe for a Greek sausage. Loukaniko. And of course we haaaad to make this as well : )

Here is a link to the recipes we used:
Loukaniko Recipe
Chorizo Recipe

The Loukaniko originally caught my eye because it not only called for wine (yay!) but orange zest as well. Usually I absolutely detest orange zest. To be honest, I fucking hate it. Terrible in carrot cake and don't even get me started on why anyone would put it in a chicken salad. But here it was in a sausage recipe and I was intrigued. What I gathered from my research was that this was a sausage from Greece and each region has their own take on it. One region used leek onions instead of orange peel. Other regions have their own unique curing process. I decided, for whatever possessed me, to stick with the orange zest.

As we wiped up our drool from our food porn that night, we decided to go on a meat spree in the morning. We hit up Sobie Meats for our pork butt and hog casing, went to Frank's Market to look for lamb. Unfortunately we had to go to Meijer's for that. It's been duly noted that we'll have to call in ahead of time if we want to order a fresh chunk of lamb.

We got home and dived right into our tasks. While making sausage, we were simultaneously researching how to make sausage. Yes, we were that anxious to get at some lovely meats.

Matt started dicing up the pork and lamb as I put all the spices in order. We skipped the cure because we didn't want to deal with nitrates or nitrites. We also didn't bother with the powdered milk.

It was right around the time of  grinding the Loukanika that we decided to check out Alton Brown's Good Eats episode on making sausage.

Sneaky Alton...almost had us worried that hog casing would be too tricky. Not for the hands of Matt and I apparently! But we figured out how to twist the casings once they were all stuffed.

Peek-A-Boo!

We cooked up some samples of the Loukanika and it was amazing! Orange zest and all! Makes me a little sad that we only made half the recipe...you know, just in case the zest just wasn't working for me. This recipe is fantastic and I would definitely make this again. The orange was subtle but detectable and worked well with the rest of the spices. This made me so excited, Matt even dropped some off at Siciliano's!

The chorizo, we found out, had to set for three hours in the vinegar before grinding it. So I finished that later on in the day. It was a pretty good recipe but i'll have to do more research. I threw in some cayenne even though it never called for it. I remember chorizo always being pretty spicy. I'll have to kick it up even more next time. The recipe called for paprika but I used up the rest of that smoked Spanish paprika instead. I'll have to get a whole bag of that at Penzey's next time I go, as that worked really well in the chorizo.

Chorizo.

We decided not to put any of this in casing. Matt and I enjoy making huevos con migas but have never put chorizo in it. Now we can ^_^

There is still plenty of casing leftover that I'm sure we'll use up on Sunday.

Lazy Bastard

Finally got around to making a barbecue sauce. It's laughable that three years have passed when I first wanted to make it. This was back when I was working at the Meadows golf course at the Grand Valley campus up in Allendale. I worked there with a good friend of mine, Nathan. We were equally pumped about pumpkin but never got around to incorporating it into a BBQ sauce.

Well today I had my hand at it. No pumpkin though. Sorry. I figured I'd start with the basics and throw in some Founders Dirty Bastard. For the most Part, this is the recipe I roughly followed:

1 large onion, finely diced
6 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon ground cumin
2 tablespoon olive oil
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup molasses
1 (40 oz) bottle tomato ketchup
1 cup apple cider
1/2 cup cider vinegar
2 tablespoons yellow mustard
1/8 tsp. mesquite smoke (just a few drops - optional)
3/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper, freshly ground

More of the recipe HERE

My usual way of cooking involves no measurements whatsoever as well as other unlisted ingredients. I didn't have any apple cider, but I did have homemade applesauce...so I threw that in. No liquid smoke? well how about smoked paprika and some Chicago steak seasoning. Oh! And that bottle of Dirty Bastard!

This ended up being a pretty standard Louisiana style BBQ sauce. Thick, sweet, tangy, and just a little spice. The Dirty Dastard was barely detectable. I'm always worried about the bitterness that cooking with some beers can have. My motto is low and slow...especially with highly hopped or dark roasty beers. This beer is pretty malty so I wasn't too frightened by the possibility of off flavors.

When it comes to canning...I'm lazy. I just give the jars and lids a quick rinse under hot water and start filling them up. I also don't bother filling the whole pot with water. Just enough to bring the water halfway up the jars. The steam is the same temperature as the water. With the BBQ sauce, I just let it boil for 10 minutes and called it good. Again, not too worried. There is a pretty high acidity with all the ketchup and vinegar so there is a lot less risk for spoilage.

As always, there is always room for improvements. Next time I may use more beer and actually try to track down some liquid smoke. Or perhaps in the summer I'll have a go at smoking a bunch of tomatoes. That way I won't have to use ketchup...or liquid smoke.

Tofu. Forever lazy and a complete bastard.