#lifeofacook

Above are some of the charcuterie that I enjoyed making and curing, such as Bresaola, Duck Jambonneaux, Toulouse sausages, Pastrami and Rabbit terrine with foie gras. Depending on the sizes and types of meat you are curing the process can take up to 5 weeks.

My two favorite charcuteries I really enjoyed making was toulouse sausages and pastrami! Toulouse sausage consist of 75% meat and 25% fat, you freeze the meat and fat until its solid enough to pass through a meat grinder. Now my not so favorite part of the process would be freezing my fingers in the walk-in fridge to mince the meat. Then you mix the ground meats with the rest of ingredients in a stand mixer or by hand until it binds together. And now the fun part!! pushing the meat through the sausage filler into the pork casing! for some reason its very fun but yet relaxing to form sausages, as its pushing through the casing hoping it doesn’t burst! 

As for the delicious pastrami its takes 3 days and 3 hours; a longer process but surely worth the wait! The type of cut used to make pastrami is beef brisket(located around the breast area or lower chest) or Beef plate ( located at the lower belly). We marinated the beef in a brine and pickling spice for 3 days in the refrigerator, then coat the beef with toasted coriander seeds and black peppercorn; hot smoke the beef with the option of maple or cherry wood. speaking of wood reminds me of the time Chef Oli showed the class how cold smoke cheese and that ANYTHING we could image could be cold smoked.. Anything!( it was mind blowing!)