• Reported by Nate

Note to regular readers: This is an atypical post, a story written by long time friend, and not at all related to anything normally discussed here. I'm experimenting with opening up the topics here a bit, to include generally fun reading.

The bratwursts have landed, and that most deliciously.
Thomas van Geel
After a day of aging them in the fridge to marry the flavors, Beth and I sampled our first taste of homemade sausage last night, I with grainy French mustard, Beth with smooth American ketchup. They were, without question, the best sausages we have ever tasted ? fresh, succulent and juicy, with pronounced caraway and delicate mace flavors that blended perfectly with the savory pork and veal. A triumph in the art of charcuterie they were, and surely the first of many.

American wurstmeister Bruce Aidells was my muse. To be perfectly honest, the bratwurst was his recipe. As the foremost expert on sausage making in this country, his was the book I chose to buy, in anticipation of getting a meat grinder/sausage attachment for my Kenwood mixer for Christmas. In an unintentionally ironic twist, the book arrived with a calendar featuring unbearably cute pictures of piglets that I had ordered for Beth. She finds pigs adorable. I find them delicious.

The day before I had picked up a pound and a half of pork butt (an unfortunate name for pork shoulder), a pound of veal shoulder, half a pound of pork fatback, and approximately enough hog casings (a fortunate name for hog intestines) to reach from Cambridge, MA to Cambridge, G.B. The casings come salted and required softening in water for two hours. Meanwhile, I assembled my shiny new grinder with shaking hands and cut the meat into long strips. The grinder worked to perfection, extruding finely ground meat through the face plates multiple holes. Beth started reminiscing about the Play-Doh Fun Factory of her childhood, and it occurred to me that there was perhaps no better way of introducing your children to the carnal joys of home sausage making than to buy them a Play-Doh Fun Factory no later than the birthday they achieve the recommended age.

After mixing the ground meat with generous amounts of salt, pepper, caraway, mace, and milk, I replaced the grinding plate with the sausage-stuffing attachment. I flushed the casings with cold water per Dr. Aidells instructions (he holds a Ph.D. in biology), almost losing them down the sink because  and I learned this the hard way  there are few things more slippery than a wet pigs intestine. Slipping the casings over the nozzle wasnt any easier; you have to keep your eye on the full three feet of casing at all times, or invariably the neglected end would attempt to slither between your fingers and onto the floor.

With Beths help, I fed the sausage mixture back into the grinder and the casing began to fill. The first foot or so looked anemic and wrinkled, not at all the plump beauties I had envisioned. Beth quickly realized that controlling the rate at which the casing slides off the nozzle could control the tightness of the filling; the right consistency was achieved with slight pressure on the forming sausage toward the nozzle. We tied off the ends, and twisted it into links. Then we put them into the refrigerator and bid them goodnight (Beth may deny this).

Here I must digress from this beatific description to explain my theory of why sausage holds such a magical allure to cultures across the globe. I wouldn't dare try to demystify sausage, for to do so is pure folly - there can be no mundane intellectual explanation for the joy that sausage brings to our lives; to bite, chew, and enjoy, that is enough (perhaps too much?) for us unworthy souls. Sausage needs no explanation. However, I will offer my humble theory, incomplete and inadequate though it may be, as to why sausage is the ultimate meat product.

Think of all the problems one encounters when cooking meat. I concentrate on three main categories: toughness, dryness, and difficulty in seasoning.

1. Toughness. The muscle fibers in meat range in tenderness depending on the type of animal, the age of the animal, the activity level of the animal, and the cut of the meat. Young animals (lamb, veal) are prized for their delicate, mild flesh, and their price is correspondingly high. The tenderest cuts are those that include muscles that endure the least work during the life of the beast; the locomotive leg muscles tend to be tougher and more sinewy, while postural muscles such as the tenderloin are prized for their delicate texture. Again, the price is correspondingly high. And these cuts also tend to lack some of the meaty flavor present in the muscles that see more use.

Sausage to the rescue. Sausage scoffs at filet mignon, lamb chops and pork loin. The grinding process does our teeth's work for them, and even cheap cuts of meat thus outstrip the best prime rib. It is obviously less expensive, and we can use the more flavorful parts of the animal. My bratwurst aside, sausage also sidesteps the moral objections to veal (calves are cruelly immobilized in small pens to keep their tissues soft).

2. Dryness. The most prized steaks have streaks of fat between the muscle fibers (marbling) that keep it moist when cooked. Such prime steaks can cost upwards of $20 a pound. Senior Americans think back wistfully on the pork of yesteryear, which contained much more fat, and flavor, than todays (over the past few decades, pork producers have caved to health mavens and tinkered with their pigs to produce drier, leaner meat).

Sausage to the rescue. The amount of fat in sausage is up to the maker. You can have healthier, leaner sausage, or juice it up with all the fatback your heart desires (or can stand). Bear in mind that fat transmits the flavor of many spices to our waiting taste buds, so dont skimp too much. The casing also keeps moisture in the meat where it belongs.

3. Difficulty seasoning. A hunk of meat is like an impenetrable fortress to which our spices must lay siege. Man has devised many a method of flavoring meat, all of which fall short of ideal. Marinades, brines, and spice rubs never achieve true flavor penetration. Some have even bought special syringes that can inject spices into meat.

Sausage to the rescue. All the above methods have their place, but the dream of seasoning the meat through and through can only be realized by taking the meat apart, mixing it with spices, and putting it back together. Only then can the meat and spices truly commingle and harmonize.

I am considering a career as a sort of sausage ambassador; traveling the country preaching the message of peace and goodwill that is integral to the consumption of plump little packages of porcine pleasure. With Johnny Appleseed as my model and my trusty electric grinder on my back, I will tramp the countryside leaving a swath of sated, slightly pudgier people in my wake. Johnny Bratwurst will be my nom de pork. As I walk into the sunset, the townsfolk will wonder, with the sheen of pork fat on their lips and memories of sausage resonating in their cerebral cortices, who was that man? And why are all those dogs following him?