Culinary School – Week Twenty Two – Advanced Meat Preparation

I have definitely been exposed to some interesting things during culinary school… but I must say… nothing compares to this. Be warned that some images are kinda graphic… and this post is not for those with a weak stomach… but its so cool that you just have to read it!

Let’s start with the finished products…

These Seafood Sausages were stuffed with salmon, shrimp and a whole bunch of herbs and were served atop a bed of sauteed fennel!

This is a Pork Basil Crepinette… served with some country style bread, mustard and a few baby pickles.

Here we have Turkey Chicken Bratwurst which we stuffed ourselves with a mixture of chicken, turkey, fat, liver and other lovely ingredients 🙂 We made a little side of salsa to accompany these baby bratwursts.

We also made Stuffed Whole Chicken which was stuffed with forcemeat consisting for ground pork, and also Country Pate… both of which will be pictured next week!

Okay…. now this is how we got there!

This is caul fat… lovely huh?

And it is what we use to wrap the Pork Basil Crepinettes.

You can also use bacon to wrap these mini burgers but since we are bad ass culinary students we used the fat.

Next we learned to stuff our own sausages in order to make the bratwurst. Now lets talk a little bit about sausage. For those of you who buy it on a regular basis, make sure you are buying it from a sausage maker rather than your deli at the market. Because… chances are there is a lot of disgusting stuff in your sausage… scraps from all the meat, eye balls, tongues… and who knows what else. (Just kidding about the eye balls and tongue… well who knows… maybe)

That is why its important to buy from a company that specifically makes sausage – because they actually buy real pieces of meat to grind up… which is what we did this delightful week at culinary school.

First you have to get your intestine ready… ewwwwwwww. This is the small intestine aka the casing.

You need to rinse it a few times to make sure all the blood and other horrific bodily fluids are not present.

Lovely isn’t it?

Then you need to grind all of your meat, seasonings, vegetables etc to make the stuffing. We ground ours into 3 different sizes so there is variation in the meat. I mean come on… you don’t want to eat a sausage that is all super finely ground… there needs to be some texture.

Then you need to put the intestine onto the stuffer…

And then start stuffing… make sure you don’t let it get too thick… you want there to be some room for you to shape it and twist it and all that jazz at the end.

Next you shape it…

And Viola! You have yourself some snausages…. 🙂

Next you have to boil them, grill them, serve them with a side of salsa, and eat them!!

Hope you all have a lovely weekend!