Taylor Ham a.k.a Pork Roll

[NePaSmoKer]

pork roll

[OU812]

You suck.  ;D

Just kiddin.  :D

Any chance of gettin a sample so I know how is saposeto taste when I make it?  ::)

[deb415611]

Habs, thanks for writing it up.  I may try it soon with fermento.  I have bacon to smoke this weekend so I will have bacon ends.

[Habanero Smoker]

If you smoke/cook it fully in the Bradley, let us know how it turns out.

[Smokin Soon]

I know this is an old topic, but while picking up some pooper pellets today I stumbled on this. Nice thin slices.

[pz]

MJ;

I finally got around to writing this up. I rechecked some notes and I only brought the sausage up to 142° - 145°F.

As mentioned earlier, what could go wrong did, but I still ended with a fairly good product. The first problem was trying to find pork butt. For some reason most of the stores were out of it, so I ended up paying $2.50/lb.

I wasn't able to get the sausage made when I wanted to, but three days later I had to do it then or freeze the butts. So even with the bad snow storm coming in on Tuesday of that week, I ground the meat on Sunday, and seasoned/stuffed it on Monday morning. I made two different batches, one five pound batch following the recipe, and the second batch I added 2 tablespoons of crushed hot red pepper flakes, and 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne.  The storm was now about 16 hours from hitting; so I knew it couldn't be finished in the OBS. Oh! I forgot to mention that my grinder attachment broke, while I was grinding the left over butt for ground pork.

With the weather forecast, I would have to ferment them in the OBS, and finish by poaching. Knowing that I didn't have a stock pot deep enough to poach them full length, I made them half lengths. Even with the half lengths I have to put them in horizontally to make sure they would be fully submerged.

Click on photos to enlarge:It was cold that day so I didn't want to mess around hanging them vertically. I found that I could fit 3 half loafs on each tray with plenty of air space. The picture below was taken around mid-night, after 12 hours of fermenting. All the sausage is shown on one tray, but I used two trays, and didn't apply any smoke.



The following picture is not the sausage prepared for storage, but made ready to poach. Len Poli states if your fibrous casings are not water proof, this step is necessary. He recommended poaching at 160°F – 170°F, until an internal temperature of 152°F. I did two halves at a time, and they were crowded in the pot. Rethinking this I should have only poached one at a time.



Using my DigiQ II, I set up the poaching station like I would use it for Sous Vide. I haven't used my Sous Vide set up for some time, so I could not find my second food probe. The clip that is holding the food probe in the water was taken form my Maverick CT-03; a Oil/Candy thermometer. The hot plate is a Proctor Silex 1,000 watt, and it was more then enough to heat the water to 158°F and maintain that temperature. That is an eight quart stock pot.

In the first picture note the steaming basket on the bottom to ensure water circulation underneath the sausage. The second picture you can't read the display, but it is set to 158°F, and it held that temperature to ±1°F. That temperature was confirmed by my Thermapen.

   

Though the recipe indicated it would take about 90 minutes, it took close to 2 hours for the sausage to reach 142° - 145°F (that is the temperature I decided to pulled them out). During that period of poaching, a lot of liquid and fat escaped from the sausage, and the diameter of the sausage shrunk about 1 inch; which was not noticeable during poaching because you could not tell want was going on by looking through the FoodSaver bag and casing. After shocking and refrigerating overnight it had firmed up, and I was able to slice it. I found that a bread knife worked better then a slicer knife. There was still plenty of fat in the sausage, which was evident when I fried it. The texture seemed a little firmer than hamburger, but not dry nor crumbly.

   

Overall, I liked the flavor and it is worth another attempt; and I hope the texture will improve. Next time I will fully cook it in the Bradley. I still may go with the half loaves, so I can put them on trays and rotate them for more even cooking.

I'll have to figure out what cause the sausage to fat out, when the water temperature never got over 160°F. Maybe because the sausage was crowded in the pot, the water did not circulate well enough.

Sorry to have to revive this topic, but the words "sous vide" immediately caught my attention.  Habanero Smoker, do you have a post where you detail how to use the Auber cooking controller to do sous vide?  I think I get the gist of it from this post, but if you have any other tips, it would be muchly appreciated

[Habanero Smoker]

There are a couple of threads on sous vide, I'll try to find them, and give you a more lengthy reply later; this morning I'm a little short on time.