The Aspiring Luddite

	I carry no phone An aspiring Luddite In a wired world. Mastodon Verification Link	Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, a late adopter of Twitter, and declines to adopt Facebook. With the death of Google+, he migrated to the Fediverse. He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance. He hates cell-phones.

Dry-cured Garlic Sausage and Goat Liver Terrine
2 June 2011

For some time, I've been wanting to experiment with using whey from my cheese-making (discussed previously in several articles on this site) in dry-curing some sausage. The acid should help with preservation, add some flavor, and the bacteria may also work to ferment the sausage itself. I note, for instance, that some commercial products for sausage making contain "cultured whey protein" or "whey protein isolate," so I think I'm not completely off-base here. Since the sausage making will take several weeks to come to fruition, I'm also revisiting terrines. I've given a recipe for a pork terrine before, so this time I'll provide some variations in ingredients and technique.

[My little aging chamber]

Garlic Sausage with Whey

2 kg pork, this cut was Boston butt which has a good amount of fat
35 gm salt
8 gm pepper
13 gm sugar
5 gm pink salt
8 gm garlic
80 ml whey

Normally, I'd use DQ #2 curing salt for this, which can be purchased at specialty stores or on the internet. DQ #2 has both nitrates and nitrites in small quantities. However, I used pink salt for this exercise, mostly because it's what I had to hand. Pink salt has sodium nitrite but not nitrate.

If you don't have whey, you can just skip adding any liquid at all and you'll still get a decent result.

The process is simple. Grind the meat. I grind the garlic with the meat. Mix the spices in and stuff in casings. (I've gone over the process is more detail here.)

Transfer to your aging apparatus, and leave for several weeks. Since I'm a city-dweller at the moment, my aging apparatus is a two-chambered wine cooler. At the moment, I've got cheeses in the top compartment and the sausage is hanging in the lower one.

I'll be providing updates as the meat cures and in a few weeks let you know how it turned out. Once again, I highly recommend Charcuterie by Ruhlman and Polcyn, if you are planning on doing any serious dry-curing.

[A terrine]

Goat Liver Terrine
One of the things that's great about terrines, is that they provide so much scope for personal preference and experimentation. There are some general guidelines and a few basic techniques, but other than that, go crazy!

350 gm chicken liver
500 gm goat liver
4 cloves garlic
1 1/2 Tb salt
pepper
1/3 cup creme fraiche
2 Tb flour
1 egg
some slices of bacon

Put a pan of water in the oven and preheat to 325F. Make sure the pan of water is large enough to hold your terrine baking vessel and that the water level will come most of the way up the sides of said vessel.

On to the liver ... I had goat liver and chicken liver and decided to use them both. You could, of course, use pork liver or beef liver or just chicken liver, although the final result will vary. Sear the liver in batches in butter, sprinkling it with salt and pepper, just to get a nice crust and some color on it. Then run it through the meat-grinder. Mince the garlic, or run it through as well. Add the rest of the ingredients, except the bacon but including the rest of the salt, and mix well. Pour into your baking dish, terrine mold or loaf pan.

Top the terrine with bacon. Thin slices are best for this and try for pretty solid coverage. Then place it in the oven, in the water, and cook for about two hours.

Remove from the oven. It should look like the picture now, and as you can see the bacon has shrunk a bit. Let cool for a bit, then cover the top with plastic wrap, weight the terrine and place in the fridge overnight.

The Aspiring Luddite