Bacon Pepper Jack Brats

hey welcome to Phoenix kitchen today I'm going to show you how we made these Smoky delicious juicy homemade bacon pepper jack BR worst here we go all right first thing we're going to do make sure we've got all of our seasonings and ingredients measured out for our BRS we're going to use traditional BR seasoning which is going to include obviously salt uh pepper some ground ginger mustard nutmeg little thyme coriander carway and then as a binder we'll use some milk powder we're going to use um bacon and pepper jack cheese as two of our big flavor ingredients here uh it's going to make an amazing BR for cooking particularly over the fire pit so when that skin cracks open that bacing juice starts to drip it's an amazing smoke smell and taste that ends up all over you're brought so we're going to get these measured out you'll notice in the recipe down below everything is done in grams that's so we can make sure that we are easily adjustable depending on how much meat we're going to be using and right now what we're going to do is use 3 lbs of pork to make these BRS so we're going to be measuring it out and that's the recipe that I have down below now of course if you notied there in the video you saw me remove some salt salt and grab my pen and make some changes to my recipe that's because at the last minute I realized all of this bacon is salty this cheese is salty and if I use the normal ratio of salt to meat uh that we would use if we were making a sausage this thing would have been overly salty so we went ahead and cut that back with all of our seasonings measured and Blended set aside it's time for us to go ahead and weigh out our cheese we are using high temp pepper jack so that these little cubes will hold their shape and not melt and run out of the BRS um that way you get a nice cheesy bite when you bite into the BRS um we're using 6 oz of cheese to go into our 3 lb of meat and we get this all done in set aside we're going to go ahead and chop up some bacon all right so we're going to be putting about 7 oz of cubed bacon into this now this is homemade bacon so we're able to cut this off of a slab and actually make cubes nice and thick so that when we're biting into the sausage we're really getting a good bite of bacon and tasting all of that flavor um if you have to use store balt that's fine at least try to make sure that you're picking up some of the thickest bacon that you can find um if you get really thin sliced bacon then through the process you can end up just rendering all of it out and there's nothing there left to chew on you know when you actually eat the sausage so if you haven't tried homemade bacon before and you want to obviously we have a video on how to make that it's one of our favorite things to do around here you can check it out I'll put a link in the description below so we're going to go ahead and get this cubed up and measured out and and then we'll be ready to grind our [Music] meat all right like we said earlier we're going to be using 3 lbs of pork so we've got our scale set up and we are going to measure out this pork now the pork that I'm using here are leftovers uh this is actually a trimmed off in piece from the pork belly that made the slab bacon that we saw here in the video a few minutes ago um you know we trim that up so that we have some nice even pieces that fit into my containers a little e more easily um and also anything that the butcher messed up with little Nicks and cuts we're able to use that now obviously that is a much higher fat content than what I would normally want and the way we're going to even that out is I've got a little pork loin here uh that's actually pork loin that's trimmed off of a huge loin that we use to make Canadian bacon so I'm going to go ahead and trim some of that down down and get us up to the 3 lbs that we're looking for then we'll Cube that up uh you'll notice I'm having to really work to cut through it that's because this is partially frozen and I Want It That Way pork fat it melts very easily just to even to your touch it begins to melt and get all over you and everything that you're touching so once we run it into the grinder and that friction starts it can really gum up the grinder and end up with a messy grind uh and and really tie things up for you so what we do is we keep it partially frozen and that helps it to stay together and get a clean grind throughout the process so let's get this cubed up and into the [Music] grinder all right we've got everything together to be able to Gra grind and blend everything into our sausages we are set up with the medium siiz dye so that this is going to be not really a coarse grind but we don't want it to be hot dog mush either right so we're looking for a nice uh medium sausage grind so we can really get a good bite when we when we bite into the BRS uh you'll notice if you see just over to the right of the picture there that is beer in the measuring cup uh we're going to make these the right way none of that water stuff right we want to make sure our brats have beer go ahead and get these things through the grinder and get all of our stuff mixed in and we'll be ready to [Music] go all right we've got our 3 lbs of pork all ground up it's a nice clean grind not a lot of smudging or or smearing from the fat so we're in really good shape we're going to go ahead and just dump in our seasonings and then we start the mixing process while we're doing this we're looking to make sure that we have even coverage of all of our uh spices and herbs we could do this in the mixer with a paddle uh but it's really better in my opinion to get your hands in there get them dirty go ahead and just really work it in it takes a good 5 to 10 minutes of work uh to get them mixed thoroughly because as you're mixing it you're also starting to emulsify that fat a little bit like we didn't want to happen through the the grinder but we do want it to happen here in the bowl so that our meat starts to come together the proteins and the fats really start to conal we want them to create the sausage um instead of becoming something crumbly and nasty with a bunch of Grease so we're going to get this all mixed in once it's mixed thoroughly the meat becomes really tacky it wants to stick to everything uh so at this point we will add in our moisture which in our case is going to be beer you could use water uh this will help us then to mix in our other ingredients the bacon and the cheese um it just loosens things up makes it a little little easier to get everything mixed in so we'll go ahead and get these mixed together and then it's on to stuffing all right we're going to go ahead and get this sausage into the stuffer I highly highly recommend if you want to get into making sausages using a separate stuffer stuffers come in all sorts of different sizes and um price ranges this one is a 5 lb stuffer and you can see by the handle it's a manual crank you pay a lot more for the electric foot pedal um but for what we're doing on this scale making them at home this is perfect uh 5 lb is a good deal of sausages the reason that I recommend this so much I have made this same sausage before and you've never seen a video because originally I used the stuffer that came with that grinding attachment because I don't have a separate grinder I used my kitchen a stand mixer with the grinding attachment which if you're going to learn to make sausages and you want to practice it's a great starting point that doesn't cost a lot of money if you've already got the the kitchen aid stand mixer um it does a good job up to 3 or 4 lbs beyond that it really starts to struggle um but at any rate when you use that device to put your sausages into the casing it's running through that grinder again it's emulsifying that fat and those chunks of cheese and chunks of bacon that we have will grind down and go into nothingness and what you end up with when you eat it is really just another BR you might get a little pocket of flavor every once once in a while but with this you get those chunks you get the textures you get the taste and that's amazing so the one thing we want to do here you notice we got that loaded up and we're bringing that all the way out to the tip because we are not interested in having big air pockets in our casings so we're going to be casing today in natural hog casings we're using the 32 to 35 mm casings uh these have been soaking for about a half hour in some lukewarm water uh they come to you if you've never done this before they come to you packaged in salt as a preservative uh so we need to soak these it's going to do a couple things number one it's going to rinse off the salt the second thing it's going to do is make these loose and pliable again you know they tend to get dry packed in that salt and we need these to be nice and pliable so they'll stretch after we've soaked them before we put them onto our extruder we want to make sure that we run some water through the casings just dipping these down into the water letting it run through and pushing it all the way out the end will get the salt out of the inside of the casing so you don't end up with salt bites we're going to rub just a little bit of water on the extruder to help things slide a little more evenly and smoothly across it as we load the casing up we're going to leave about an inch or so off the end for us to be able to tie a knot which in all honesty is the most difficult part of this to me the little things are slippery and you're trying to tie a knot it's just rough anyway once we got this ready to go we make sure we have no air pockets we're just going to slowly start to fill our sausages you can make these as thick or thin as you want however I think you're better off getting them a little thicker so you have a nice plump sausage that really helps that casing to hold and you get that nice Snappy bite that you're looking for uh in a sausage you have the option of putting everything together in one long link and then twisting off your separate individuals if you do that you do not want to fill it quite as tight you want to leave yourself room to pinch to to make your your twist points or you can do what I'm doing here and twist as you go uh I'm making these just a little longer than bun length because we really want to make sure we're filling the bun up the entire point of this is to have a delicious sausage the Bun's just a way to hold it so we're going to go ahead and get these all wrapped up and ready to go and get them onto this wire rack and into the fridge so that the Skins can start to dry and tighten down so we'll be ready to receive some smoke [Music] tomorrow [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] all right we've got them on the rack they're going to go into the fridge overnight so that those uh casings will start to dry out uh and really get down nice and tight on the sausages we're going to bring them out the next day and get them onto the smoker so when we bringing them out those Skins are nice and tight we can easily snip through the twist with a pair of scissors we've got them all ready to go we're going to get our fire going nice and low and slow we're going to cook these using hickory today uh I've got them on you see there also some Uli you can watch for that video later uh we're going to smoke these for about 3 to 3 and 1/2 hour hours at 250° um that's the reason this particular BR worst recipe has curing salt in it you'll see many that don't because they're made to do hot and fast when we come off we're going into an ice bath to stop the cooking process and make sure that the casings become nice and snappy it also allows us to clean off the sausages you know sometimes you have a little stuff on the grill you want to make sure these things are nice and clean and ready to go all right so we have the sausages out of of the ice bath so we can take a nice picture and get a good look at them I've got one that we kept warm so we can cut into it and get an idea how these things look on the inside all right the Moment of Truth we cut in and we find out did we get a nice tight juicy sausage or did we end up with a crumbly mess and I would say that looked nice and juicy a nice tight bind a nice tight skin just the way a sausage should be you give it a squeeze that cheese is nice and Oozy the nice rendered fat from the bacon and the pork just oozes out that's going to be an amazingly delicious bite now obviously at this point you can do with these what you wish you can warm them up on a stove top in an oven you could boil them if you were crazy enough but we're going to do this the way I think that God intended this time of year with the cool even ings we're going to light the fire pit we're going to throw it on a bun with some good relish and mustard and have a wonderful evening I really hope you guys will tried this recipe these things turned out to be absolutely amazing so delicious so Smoky so good give them a try we're giving away a five piece cast iron Lodge cookware set when we hit 1,000 subscribers all you have to do is like a video and subscribe to the channel to be entered in the giveaway

Channel: Phoenix Kitchen

Views: 3,841

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Id: HC5mcLi_oDA

Length: 16min 34sec (994 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 16 2024