What's Cooking?

[chris snell]

It's the NAS-ROW food thread!

We have some friends spending the holiday with us so I made up a double batch of Sunday Gravy which, I guess, is a Midwestern Italian term for meatballs and gravy. I got this recipe from Steve and Mike Rupp, who each have their own variants of their family's standard.

This is about 2 gallons of sauce and about seven pounds of meatballs. I was cooking until 2AM last night.

 

[jymmiejamz]

What are you doing with your life?

 

[chris snell]

What are you doing with your life?

Ninja, please. This is small-town Kansas. I was lucky the find the Muir Glen organics. The food situation here is dire.

 

[jymmiejamz]

I was about to send post a link to Amazon, but then I realised they are over $10 per can. Let me know if you need a care package sent out, we have everything here.

 

[chris snell]

So this batch was just ho-hum. The sauce was actually fine but the meat was shit. The Italian sausage that I found locally was not spicy and the spice balance was all fucked up. It was really heavy on caraway seeds and didn't have enough red pepper and oregano. I could have probably fixed this early in the cooking if I had known.

I think I also messed up the spice and breadcrumb distribution in the meatballs. The meat was really cold and it was tough to knead it by hand. Next time I'll let the meat warm up or use kitchen gloves.

 

[Svonc]

Letting the meat warm up will help immensely next time.

The oldest kiddo flew in Friday, my mom flew in on Saturday....so Chris smoked ribs and a brisket on Sunday. He made me buy TWO turkeys because he has rub variants to try. I was even a nice wife and stopped by Dizzy Pig to buy some things for him when I went to DC to Ikea Sat.

 

[rjl]

Do they have Scimeca's Italian sausage in Manhattan? That's the old Kansas City Italian standard, but not sure if it's distributed that far.

When I first moved to KC I saw a white van with "Scimeca's Sasuage" scrolled on the side. Having never seen a sausage van before, I was near certain it was a surveillance van like you see in the movies until I wised up and saw the sausage in my local grocery store.

 

[chris snell]

Staci, have y'all ever bought a whole or half pig at a time? Our house guests were talking at dinner tonight about how they bought half a pig. Sounded interesting and potentially like a good way to get nice meat way out here where the high-quality stuff is grown but all shipped away to the East Coast markets.

 

[chris snell]

Do they have Scimeca's Italian sausage in Manhattan? That's the old Kansas City Italian standard, but not sure if it's distributed that far.

When I first moved to KC I saw a white van with "Scimeca's Sasuage" scrolled on the side. Having never seen a sausage van before, I was near certain it was a surveillance van like you see in the movies until I wised up and saw the sausage in my local grocery store.

I'll look for it. I don't think so. This place is like a food desert.

 

[Svonc]

Staci, have y'all ever bought a whole or half pig at a time? Our house guests were talking at dinner tonight about how they bought half a pig. Sounded interesting and potentially like a good way to get nice meat way out here where the high-quality stuff is grown but all shipped away to the East Coast markets.

The boys have bought and smoked whole pigs a few times, we have a few local farmers. I feel for you living in Manhattan...when I was in Raymore, MO ( south of KC) the food selection was shit. Here I have been so happy, I just put my lamb order in, working on my beef order, and made friends with another source for pig. I'll let you know how getting a pig for the house goes. I also get fresh chicken, milk from the dairy/creamery up the road, and most of my other foods all fresh from one of the 5 farmer's markets by us. The one thing I miss is all the fresh seafood I could easily get growing up in New Orleans. When we lived in Austin my brother shipped it.

Oh, and if you can get your hands on Scimeca's, definitely grab some.

 

[mike_rupp]

Chris, ask around at butcher shops or grocery stores if they sell or can get sausage casings. I can walk you through how to make your own italian sausage that will blow away anything tat you can get at a store. My barber when I was a kid is from Calabria and once or twice a year I'd help out making sausage and sopressata. I swear it was like a scene out of Goodfellas. Just imagine about 15 Italian guys swearing at each other for a few hours.

 

[chris snell]

Chris, ask around at butcher shops or grocery stores if they sell or can get sausage casings. I can walk you through how to make your own italian sausage that will blow away anything tat you can get at a store. My barber when I was a kid is from Calabria and once or twice a year I'd help out making sausage and sopressata. I swear it was like a scene out of Goodfellas. Just imagine about 15 Italian guys swearing at each other for a few hours.

That's awesome. I will look into it. The sausage that I've been buying for Sunday gravy is just the loose kind. Do you have a good recipe for spicy sausage that you can share?

 

[mike_rupp]

I buy a 6lb pork shoulder and grind it using the large die of the Kitchenaid grinder. I like to get a fair amount of fat into the ground pork. The problem that most people make is to trim away all of the fat and then you have a nasty dry sausage. Too much fat is better than not enough.

Then I add about 2tbl kosher salt, 1tbl of toasted fennel seeds, 2tsp black pepper, and a tbl of chili flakes. These are what I use: https://www.amazon.com/Dried-Calabr...d=1480013923&sr=8-2&keywords=calabrian+chiles. I grind them in a blade style coffee grinder that I use just for spices. Then I quickly toss everything to blend and then start stuffing the casings using the Kitchenmaid sausage stuffing attachment that goes on the grinder. It's important to keep everything cold or you'll start to melt the fat and you can get a weird texture.

Just don't overcomplicate it by using weird stuff like red wine, paprika, etc. Sausage is all about pork, pork fat, and the right amount of salt. I love fennel, so I tend to use more than most people. You might want to half the amount on your first try and go from there.

 

[mike_rupp]

Oh, make sure to rinse the sausage casings. Trust me.

 

[mgreenspan]

Not just weird texture, but if you let the mixture warm up too much it becomes incredibly slow to feed that thru the kitchen aide sausage stuffing attachment. I'll find my sausage recipe that I use. I've found adding in Cuisinart blended oats makes the sausages exactly like British sausages.

 

[Uncle Douglas]

I buy a 6lb pork shoulder and grind it using the large die of the Kitchenaid grinder. I like to get a fair amount of fat into the ground pork. The problem that most people make is to trim away all of the fat and then you have a nasty dry sausage. Too much fat is better than not enough.

Then I add about 2tbl kosher salt, 1tbl of toasted fennel seeds, 2tsp black pepper, and a tbl of chili flakes. These are what I use: https://www.amazon.com/Dried-Calabr...d=1480013923&sr=8-2&keywords=calabrian+chiles. I grind them in a blade style coffee grinder that I use just for spices. Then I quickly toss everything to blend and then start stuffing the casings using the Kitchenmaid sausage stuffing attachment that goes on the grinder. It's important to keep everything cold or you'll start to melt the fat and you can get a weird texture.

Just don't overcomplicate it by using weird stuff like red wine, paprika, etc. Sausage is all about pork, pork fat, and the right amount of salt. I love fennel, so I tend to use more than most people. You might want to half the amount on your first try and go from there.

How is that grinder attachment ? Its kind of small and was wondering how the plastic would hold up.

 

[mgreenspan]

How is that grinder attachment ? Its kind of small and was wondering how the plastic would hold up.

It is stout. I found out how to shatter the lock ring, though. If you put anything dry in the grinder it'll snap it and shoot parts in your kitchen. That said, the time i did this i ghetto fabbed a piece of tin can to retain the funnel part and that worked for an entire batch of 70 or so sausages.

As long as there is moisture in whatever your grinding you're good. I've made hundreds of sausages with the kitchen aide attachments and am impressed. I may eventually go to a sausage specific stuffer because my biggest complaint is the speed and ease of stuffing the sausage with single person ops.

 

[Uncle Douglas]

any of the metal grindings issues ? After asking here I checked reviews on amazon.

 

[mgreenspan]

I haven't had any problems from the attachment and have been using it regularly for 3 years. My only complaint on the kitchen aide mixer itself is the noise, but my wife said the big industrial ones she used in a previous job were noisy so whatever.

 

[javelinadave]

We have used one for many years with zero issues. I will say it is amazing as to the amount of fat that sticks to the cold metal auger once you take things apart to clean. Pretty disgusting.