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[DISCUSSION] Introduction post and chat (thelemmy.club)
submitted 1 day ago by to c/cooking@lemmy.world
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Hi everyone, I'm scrodumb and I am a retail butcher and sausage maker in Toronto, Canada.

My culinary experience extends far beyond that but these days my specific interests are mostly meat and meat processing. Starting to get into charcuterie and expanding my sausage repertoire into fermented, cured, smoked and emulsified products. Will be making my first coppa and pancetta this coming week. Have some Cantonese style lap cheong drying too.

I'm happy to help with any meat related questions or troubleshooting, feel free to ask here or message me directly. Love bouncing ideas back and forth especially with other foodheads.

A couple weeks ago I ordered a half hog of Meishan pork for myself and made a bunch of sausages for my friends and family. The pic is my personal versions of Barese sausage (coiled) and Chipolatas (breakfast sized links). Both are super popular and I'm happy to share the formulations if anyone is interested. I have dozens more sausage formulations too, just ask. I can turn nearly any red sauce pizza recipe into a sausage. Hawaiian absolutely SLAPS. Other dishes too. I created a Cubano sausage that tastes just like the sandwich.

I'll try to post every week or two but seriously if you have any meat related queries hit me up I'm always happy to help. Next post will likely be some tips and tricks I've learned and discovered in my journey.

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[–] 3 points 1 day ago* (1 child)

I have a meat slicer and do a lot of my own lunch meat. Roast beef is a no-brainer, it's not hard to find a ham to slice down, I've dabbled in some curing to make my own corned beef, pastrami, and bacon, and I've totally ruined myself for the overpriced grocery store versions of those things.

But what I haven't quite cracked the code on yet is turkey and chicken. Not that I can't roast up a perfectly good Turkey breast, but slicing down a bunch of individual breasts of whatever is kind of a pain, they're small and sort of irregularly-shaped and just not very well suited to a meat slicer.

I've kind of resorted to getting those boneless butterball turkey roasts to scratch that itch, and they work pretty well and are sized pretty nicely for my slicer, but I'm sure they're some sort of a brine-injected, meat glue abomination.

Do you know of any way to make something similar at home? Basically looking for a big, fairly regularly-shaped log of Turkey or chicken, ideally without needing to grind it up and stuff it into a casing.

I did a test of cramming a bunch of chicken breasts into some netting, let them sit in a brine for a day or two, roasted it in the net, and it almost kind of worked, but it didn't hold together well enough for it to be worth the effort.

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 1 day ago

    I've never made it before but from what I understand you need to use salt and cure #1 on the breast then you can stuff it in whatever casing and netting you have. Once cured you can smoke or roast or sous vide it until cooked. Ice bath, rest at room temp for 30 minutes then into the cooler overnight before slicing.

    The salt will catalyse protein extraction which will make the meat bind to itself once stuffed, creating a seemingly solid sphere of turkey breast. The cure will preserve colour, give it that smooth deli meat texture and also prevent botulism while you slowly cook it through the danger zone.

    That's my two cents but as I said I've never done it nor researched it properly so I could be wrong or incomplete. YT is always my go-to when I want to learn a new process.

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