Let Me Show You Erik's Sausage Room | Kenji's Cooking Show

hey everyone it's kenji i'm here again at my restaurant worst hall today we are actually open for business um and i thought because my sous chef eric is downstairs making sausage right now um this would be a cool experience for everyone to see how the sausage gets made so um i'll take you down there hello all right we're going through our prep kitchen hey eric hi how are you good good um i thought we could show people um how our sausage room is set up and how and how sausage so you're twisting links right now i am yes we're making porchetta today okay so what's in there so in porchetta we've got fennel some a lot of black pepper fresh garlic um lemon lemon zest uh and rosemary and so that's all in there very cool so why don't we go backwards so you show us how you how you're how are you forming these how are you twisting these so uh there are many ways to twist sausage links the one the way that that works best for us is by taking so i twisted this link right and i take another length the length that we need and i just pinch here and then take it and twist it so you basically you're twisting every other link exactly so that so that the twists end up actually going in alternate directions exactly that way when one of them starts to untwist it doesn't untwist all of them yep and you can like twist you can twist one direction and then another direction yeah but if you're doing this if you want to work quickly and efficiently the best way in most circumstances is to twist this way right very cool and so i like to coil it like this and then when we cut the links i just kind of go the opposite direction and put them on trays got it okay so these are these are the trays yes of sausages we make eight different types of sausages here um all of them get cooked upstairs in the cvap ovens which you saw in our other video they get cooked to 135 is that where we set them at 140 140 and then we finish them off on the on the flat though okay so do you want to show us can you show us now the stuff the uh the stuffer yeah how the sausage gets into those links all right uh okay so we've got here do you want us let's work backwards yeah let's go let's go that's right um so yes so we have here a piston style stuffer um this is a manual one you can also get ones that are electric but we are very happy with this one so there's a there's a handle there's a hand crank with a um i can't remember what these types of gears are called pinion a worm gear an opinion or something like that but um and then it pushes basically it's just a piston that pushes um pushes the sausage down through here um if you've made sausages at home using a meat grinder like maybe a kitchenaid with an attachment those have an auger that yes that pushes forward um a piston style stuffer is what you would want if you're really serious about sausage making you want to make a lot of it because it it gives you a lot more pressure and control and it also doesn't heat up the sausage mixture as much which is important and it also eliminates um air so yeah air bubbles are are something that i was struggling with when i first got into sausage making and as soon as i knew i was somewhat serious about it i invested in a very small right yeah you can get you can get these in various sizes yeah for under well under 200 you can get a small one yeah and so sausage casing which is um pork intestine it comes it comes on these um so it comes all wrapped up and clean um on these plastic insertions and you basically slide that over the end of the of the tube here and slide all the casing off and then as it comes out the sausage fills up the casing and you kind of feed it out with one hand while you crank with the other exactly um and that's the thing that if you if you're first starting out using two people is easier than doing it doing one one-handed um but um yeah yeah practice it yeah all right so now let's get to the mixer to the mixer yes okay so going back in time we've got a mixer here and i'll just kind of pull it out for you um so it's very important to mix sausage thoroughly before you stuff it and so this contraption here can hold up to 50 pounds of sausage at a time and we actually hook it up to this motor here so yeah the grinder motor right connects right into here and that's what drives the um those paddles around that's right um that mixes the sausage yeah so it mixes together while it's mixing we add whatever liquid we're putting in uh to the sausage and your last your final seasonings that's right and then every batch we make we test to make sure that the seasonings are right that the texture is right and then once that's ready we then put it into big meat lugs there are some stacked over there the red ones over there and then from there we take the mixed sausage put it in the stuffer and right right and the way we test it is we'll take actually a small ball of it sort of like the size of a hamburger patty and fried in a frying pan upstairs exactly um to test it um at home the way i test my sausages in the microwave we don't have a microwave at the restaurant but using like a little you get like a little quarter sized amount of it put it on a plate and microwave it for like 10 seconds and that's an easy way to taste raw meat mixtures to make sure that they're seasoned the way you like them yeah and actually microwave uh works really well because of the the challenge with cooking a sample in a skillet is that the my yard reaction and like this the salt and the sugar is kind of caramelized right so the flavor is not exactly the same so it's hard to gauge the flavor sometimes yeah we're good at it but the microwave is best all right and then down now to the beginning so um before it goes into the mixer the sausage goes through the grinder which is here do you want to show us quickly how you put this together and what the parts are yeah so we've got the the grinder kind of body here you've got a motor right here and a worm gear okay stick that in okay um and then you've got a series you've got a knife grinder knife at the front there and a series of grinder plates so that fits over the end here that's right um and we do keep it in rice to um to keep the moisture out of those um places yes yes so we uh it's something that i that i do at home and here as well these grinder plates get a lot of use and they're they're quite they're at least a couple of years old now and they look brand new and keeping them clean of course and then keeping them in rice is a good way to ensure that they'll last a long so they come in time sizes that's right yeah yeah what size do you generally do for your so for all the sausages right now um we have two sizes so we have um we have this which i think is a it's a 10 millimeter right and this one is a six millimeter so all of each of our recipes specifies you know what percentage of meat that we're going to grind through this small dye and which which we're grinding through the baby so it's a mix of two different grind sizes so that you get that sort of textural contrast so some of it binds some of it adds little meteor chunks um it's all it's all carefully calibrated carefully calibrated for flavor yeah exactly and we always grind through the fine dye first while everything's nice and cold so one thing that you're not seeing in this video is that if we were grinding this would have been in the freezer right right for at least an hour because he heat is the enemy of exactly good sausage you know even though this uh this is a very good grinder and it does isolate most of the heat in the body of the grinder it does generate heat you know distribution of movement moving through yeah we're making hundreds you know uh up to 100 pounds of sausage in one go and and things warm up so here's the feed tray fit right on here right and there's your grinder that's it um we ended up adding a foot pedal to this so that's very cool yeah um and and it really helps us keep the grinder from overheating right so that you don't run it when it doesn't suit yeah so you can run this thing continuously if you want but it's going to generate heat yep um and so having the foot pedal does help us control it quite a lot uh do we want to take when we take one quick look in the walk-in at the meat we're using yes yes uh let's see what we've got because because the very first step of sausages is trimming and curing the meat yep so in the spirit of going backwards in time let's start here okay so we this is beef we're actually this is beef for burgers and so we trim this and sealed it in bags we're going to grind a lot of this over the weekend for the burgers so it's all kind of set up there and then we've got fat back fat uh really nice back fat that we get um and that too is is uh sealed up and so our sausages comprises basically what comprises our sausage or for pork is pork shoulder and back fat it's a combination of those um and we also make sausage with beef of course and with chicken oh well but right now what's in the water you're seeing are those oh and this is our vegan sausage which is made with um impossible meat um that we season and uh combine with a flax seed slurry which helps it retain moisture and then uh that stuff we um we pack it into those vegan cellulose casing uh uh vegan casings and then um uh par cook them yes actually then we fry them what we're doing now for casings is actually using plastic cases those are classical so we we cook them in plastic casing that's right peel them off yeah peel them off and then actually finish them in a deep fryer um and that provides that kind of texture crispy there that crispy crunch on the outside that you don't get with natural casing sausages but not with the vegan sauce yeah so it's not quite a ripper right right but it is it is kind of that that approach yeah all right everyone um i hope that was interesting for you um yeah thanks thank you eric thank you pleasure all right thanks for stopping by all right see you later everyone [Music] bye-bye [Music] you

Channel: J. Kenji López-Alt

Views: 102,720

Rating: 4.9578314 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: 3e8XFqQYORM

Length: 11min 8sec (668 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 30 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/chittad]

That’s very kind of him