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.

Recipes: 08 September 2023

Recently, a discussion over on Mastodon reminded me of Sausage Joe, and I was surprised to find that I'd not written about it before. Allow me to rectify that oversight.

The earliest reference I can find to Sausage Joe is an email from February of 2007, which means that the genesis of Sausage Joe can be traced back to at least August of 2006, although I suspect that it was probably 2006. August is pretty clear, since the concept was born at Pennsic. (I don't know if it was the same Pennsic where the zombies on zip lines strategy was discussed, but I digress.)

We were sat around at Sharc camp discussing the ideal breakfast food. Implicit in the discussion was 'for Pennsic or similar events.' Something to feed people, get them moving, and be convenient. The answer seemed obvious, caffeinated sausage on a stick. The name, as I recall, fell into place fairly quickly. Then we began speculating on marketing slogans. There were many contenders, including:

• Sausage Joe, it was never for breakfast anyway.
• Sausage Joe can beat up your breakfast and take it's lunch money.
• Sausage Joe, not just for the breakfast that comes after you've been up all night drinking anymore.
• Sausage Joe, hair of the dog. Well not literally. Usually.
• Sausage Joe, legal in twelve States.
• Sausage Joe, it'd eat you!
• and many more ...

• Sausage Joe, it burns! Twice.

In any case, never one to let a good joke or a mediocre culinary concept languish, I went ahead and made Sausage Joe on a few occasions. (And Porkacinno once or twice, for that matter.) For a rough and ready version of Sausage Joe, one can simply purchase breakfast sausage (I seem to recall using Jimmy Dean regular or Sage) and mixing in some instant coffee. However after consulting the inaccurately named Meat Curing and Cheese Journal (inaccurate since it also logs non-cured sausages), I found two recipes for Sausage Joe, one labelled 'for Pennsic' and dated 30 July 2011, and another without an instructive note dated 26 June 2012. An email with the same date requests that the Joe be clearly indicated to 'avoid heart palpitations, and an email from 2008 says that it shouldn't be used to kill Nataliaa ('Sausage Joe, it's not just for arrhythmia anymore.') which suggests that I'd been making some version of it since mid-2007 for a different SCA event in July. (Which is why I suspect Pennsic 2006 for the origin story.)

In any case, here are the two versions of home-made Sausage Joe for which I logged recipes.

• 1.46 kg pork
• 25 gm salt
• 170 ml whey
• 4 gm black pepper
• 23 gm sage
• 2 gm thyme
• 3 gm ginger
• 1 gm dried parsley
• 10 gm espresso powder

• 1 kg pork
• 20 gm salt
• 6 gm sugar
• 6 gm black pepper
• 6 gm ginger
• 10 gm sage
• 5 gm espresso powder
• 120 ml water

A couple of notes. Obviously if you don't have whey, water will do. I might have to try it with actual coffee as the liquid at some point, though I've not made it in a decade. If you don't have a meat grinder, you can buy sausage meat/mince/ground pork and use that. It's much simpler and if you've got a source for ground pork you trust, it's a great convenience.

The beating until it binds is important. If you don't get that right, the sausage will break when you cook it and all the liquid runs out.

Here ends the Sage of Sausage Joe.