Celebrate Sausage S01E01 - South African Boerewors

Hey everybody, my name is Eric. I'm the YouTuber, two guys in a cooler. Celebrate Sausage is all about the love for sausage. And in the world of sausage making, there are many different types of sausages. I want you to sit back, relax, and enjoy this series that I've put together as we've got four different authors, a lot of different YouTube personalities, and we're all here under one common goal, and that's to celebrate sausage. Let me first start off by welcoming you to Celebrate Sausage. I'm glad you could make it. We've got an awesome show lined up for you. The videos in this sausage series are designed to give you a high-level approach to sausage making. You're gonna get to see the different techniques that we use to make all different types of sausages. For the sake of not being redundant, we're not gonna cover the same thing in every single video. We're gonna save that for the bonus video. So be sure to subscribe to the channel if you're not already subscribed, because through the series, we're gonna sprinkle in some bonus videos like 10 tips on how to grind your meat perfectly, how to mix your meat to get the right texture, how to stuff your meat into a casing, and how to link it so that your casings don't explode. Finally, we're gonna talk about the different types of casings, and we're gonna talk about how to cook your sausage properly. We've got a lot of stuff to cover, and if you like sausages, you're gonna love this series. Before we get started, I just gotta say that this show was made possible by the patrons of this channel and some really awesome sponsors, Smokin' It Smokers, Evodry Apparat Instruments, and The Sausage Maker. I'm gonna put a link to their websites in the description box below, and if you're gonna get into sausage making, you're gonna wanna check them out because they got everything you need to make your job easier. Kicking off the season this year, we've got a very special guest by the name of Mark LaFay. Mark LaFay just published a book that came out a couple of months ago called Charcuterie for Dummies, and I gotta tell you, this book is absolutely incredible, especially if you're just getting started into sausage making. His book, Charcuterie for Dummies, is quite possibly one of the coolest books for entry-level sausage makers that I've ever read. It oversimplifies the process, teaches you how to choose the right equipment, pick the best raw ingredients, make things like sausage, salami, bacon, even prosciutto, and all of this with no prior knowledge needed. It's a great book to have if you're just getting into sausage making because the recipes and the directions are incredibly easy to follow. Today, I'd like to welcome Mark LaFay, author of Charcuterie for Dummies. Welcome to Celebrate Sausage. Mark, how you doing? Hey, thanks a lot for having me on. I'm excited to celebrate Sausage 2020 with you. Mark, I gotta ask, after reading your book, hands down, quite possibly one of the easiest to read, easiest to understand books on the topic of charcuterie. I can't believe it hasn't been written before. What inspired you to write Charcuterie for Dummies? Primary motivators for that is that I've always wanted to write a cookbook, cooking at home, barbecue, utilizing wild game, all that stuff. It's just something I've just been really into, and then also just honing my own craft at home. And I felt like the Dummies book, the style itself is fun to write. It's very formulaic, but it's intended truly to help the person that has little to no experience whatsoever on any given topic be able to navigate that topic and not become an expert, but at least to become confident. Mark, is there a golden rule when it comes to sausage making? And what advice would you give anyone out there who's looking to get started into making sausage? You know, I think when it comes to making sausage, if there were any golden rule whatsoever, and I think this is universal for working with food in general, but definitely potentially hazardous food, it's hygiene and sanitation. So making sure that, you know, you are, you're washed up clean, work surfaces are clean and sanitized, your gear is clean and sanitized, you're respecting the product that you're working with, making sure it's not getting hot, making sure you're not doing anything that's gonna allow potentially harmful bacteria to be able to grow. If there's any advice that I can give, it would be to just take a deep breath, relax, be methodical, and then just start working through the steps and take your time. Okay, so this year's Celebrate Sausage is all about the love of sausage making. And in 31 episodes, we're gonna be making 31 sausages from all over the world. I'm gonna take the Celebrate Sausage challenge and dedicate this video to whatever your favorite sausage is. So let me have it. What's your all-time favorite sausage? I would say it is South African Boer Horse. In another lifetime, we used to manage heavy metal bands and we did a tour in South Africa. We played about eight gigs across two weeks. And I just remember when we touched down in Johannesburg, got out of the airport, went to the promoter's house, his housekeeper was there, and she grilled up some Boer Horse with some chakalaka and some pop. And we drank Boer Boss tea, hung out on the back veranda. And it's the first time I'd ever had that sausage and it was just totally surreal. Challenge accepted. I gotta be honest, I've never had South African Boer Horse, but it sounds incredible and I cannot wait to make it. We appreciate you being here on Celebrate Sausage, Mark. Any parting words for our guests? Number one, check out the book, Charcuterie for Dummies. Get it on Amazon. I'm excited you're watching this. Take your time. Don't get overwhelmed. You know, start small and just start adding on. You got your whole life to continue to refine and master the craft. All right, Mark. Thanks for being here. It's time to make South African Boer Horse. To make this South African farmer's sausage, let's see what we're gonna be working with. We're gonna start off with some lean beef. I'm gonna be using some eye of round. We've also got some pork back fat and some lean pork. We're using some ham from the hind leg of the pig. This has been properly chilled and we're gonna grind this one time through a 10 millimeter plate. It's gonna be a coarse ground sausage. If you prefer a finer texture sausage, you can grind it twice or grind it on a smaller plate. Once everything's been ground, we're gonna add our seasoning mix and then we're gonna add a little bit of vinegar and a little bit of Worcester sauce. This is gonna help acidify our meat slightly, give it a little bit of extra flavor and then we're gonna just toss that to combine. At this stage, I'm not mixing my meat. I'm just making sure that the seasonings are well incorporated because what we're gonna do is we're gonna take this and we're gonna place it into our refrigerator overnight. This is gonna allow that vinegar to help cure the meat. This is gonna allow those seasonings to penetrate. After flushing these casings and rinsing off the salt, we're gonna let them rehydrate for 30 minutes to an hour in some lukewarm water. The trick here is to make sure your sausage casing is nice and wet, not only the inside but the outside and to squeeze the tip just barely enough so that the sausage meat is just pulling the casing off the horn. Now, we've got a dedicated video on how to do this entire process, so be sure to stick around for that. But once we've got that completely filled and this is what that's gonna look like, we're gonna roll our sausage into a spiral and pop it in the fridge overnight. This is gonna dry our casing up a little bit, let it adhere to the sausage meat a little bit better and it's now time to cook our sausage. This is what it's gonna look like. Now, if you've got a barbecue pit, that's the best way to cook this. We had an unfortunate incident with our barbecue pit, so this is gonna be cooked in our smoker. I'm gonna brush a little bit of olive oil on the top and the bottom. That's gonna give our skin a nice crispy bite. I'm gonna set my smoker to 325 degrees and I'm gonna add just a couple chips of some fruit wood. I think in this case, I'm using some applewood, something relatively mild. I just wanna give it a kiss of smoke. Looks like everything's ready. Let's go ahead and start cooking our sausage. We're gonna cook this in our smoker until the internal temperature is about 135, but I do like that fiery element that you get from a barbecue pit. So we're gonna finish it on a griddle with a little bit of oil to give it that flaming sensation. Here we go. Time for the moment of truth and my favorite part of this entire process. Let's give it a slice and see what it tastes like. South African Boerwurst. First things first, we've got a nice smooth slice and because we did a coarse grind on this, we're gonna get a really nice meaty bite. It looks great, it feels great. Wow, that's good. It's slightly smoky. The flavors are incredible, super juicy, super meaty. And that's how we made South African Boerwurst. What a cool sausage. It's got a great texture, a lot of flavor. The coriander really comes through in this particular sausage and it's just a great sausage. I hope that you get a chance to try it. I wanna thank Mark LaFay for joining us on this episode. You can check out his book, Charcuterie for Dummies by clicking on a link in the description box below. And if you wanna make this South African Boerwurst sausage, there's a recipe for you in the description box as well. Thanks for watching. And if you've got any questions, leave them in the comment section below. Be sure to stick around because tomorrow, same time, same place, here at the Two Guys in a Cooler channel, we have a brand new episode and we're gonna be airing a brand new episode every day through the month of October. We appreciate you being here. We'll see you tomorrow. Bye-bye.