That doesn't make much sense, but at least I know what it was. In passing, this is yet
another situation showing how silly it is to have text on a black background, especially
dark blue.
Things were slightly different this time, though, possibly because the starting terminal
didn't go away:
Finally got round to making Bratwurst from
the sausage ingredients that we bought on Thursday. It was the largest amount that we have ever made, a total of 7.76 kg of
meat, and coincidentally almost exactly a 2:1 ratio (more exactly 2.026:1). Made a point of
taking photos of every step, starting with the ingredients:
And only then did I think to look for the casings. Not even Yvonne could find them! We had two different kinds; surely we couldn't have lost
both of them. Frantic checking in the car fridge, but finally found them in two different
places: the hog casings need to be refrigerated, but the collagen ones don't.
And then the fun with the new, easier-to-use hog casings on a stick:
We couldn't even get them onto the nozzle! Oh. I had chosen the wrong nozzle, the 24 mm
one instead of the 20 mm one. After changing that, we were at least able to get the casing
over the nozzle. But it was still extremely difficult to push on. With a combination of
water, oil and brute force, we finally managed it after only 20 minutes:
Even filling the sausages was an issue: at one point one burst because it couldn't pull the
casing off the nozzle. Poured water over the remainder, and it didn't happen again. My
guess is that these casings need soaking in water before use, something that we hadn't been
told. Conventional hog casings are salted and require soaking to remove the salt, so it
wouldn't happen with them.
As if that weren't enough, the gasket in the sausage machine tore:
Panic? Not quite. We got a spare with the machine, and we were even able to find it. But
we have only used the machine 3 or 4 times. Is it normal that the gaskets fail? Or should
I avoid putting it in the dish washer?
In total, we filled 73 sausages from the casings, and we still had a lot of filling left
over. A good thing that I bought those collagen casings, which went on without any problem
at all.
And that took us almost exactly 2 hours, a sixth of which was spent fighting these hog
casings. How much did it cost us? From recollection:
Item
Price
Weight
Total
Percentage
Per sausage
Pork shoulder
7.99
5.196
41.52
38.6
0.4235
Pork belly
13.99
2.565
35.88
33.4
0.3777
Casings
30.00
30.00
27.9
0.4110
for 73 sausages
Total
7.761
107.49
1.13
Per kilogram
13.78
That's not really complete, since it doesn't include the collagen casings. But it's really
amazing how expensive the hog casings are. Still, it's a price of $13.78 per kg, compared
to which makes for a price per kilogram of $13.78, compared to Sinclair Meats' current price of $5.99 for BBQ
Sausages and $19.99 for rump steak But we know why we choose to make them ourselves.
What did we forget to photograph? Actually cranking the meat into the casings. There's an
obvious reason for that: we were both busy and with greasy hands.
What did we eat for dinner tonight? Bratwurst, of course, but also the remaining chicken things that we bought on Thursday.
The problem with collagen casings is that they split. I have never been able to avoid it.
As I wrote eight years ago, there seem to be numerous reasons why this should happen:
Overfilled. Possibly, though they didn't look particularly full.
Too many air bubbles. No, the filler worked well.
Collagen casings not left to rest overnight. This was definitely the case with these
sausages.
Cooked too quickly.
Put in a hot pan.
Sausages pricked (“don't to that”). We don't do that any more.
Too much liquid. Not in this case.
Most of these don't seem to apply, but how about “cooked too quickly” or “put in a hot pan”?
We can easily address the latter, and I did, and I also tried to cook them really slowly.
The result:
My guess is something else altogether: when they come into the pan, most sausages are
pre-cooked. Ours are raw. And I'm guessing that collagen casings just Don't Work for raw
filling, which changes in shape considerably when cooking.
The results were as expected for the sausages. This time I cooked the chicken thumbs (what
are they really called?) less, and they looked good:
But they tasted completely boring, somehow more so than on Thursday. We can do better. Why
is there so much insipid food on the market?
We still have 19 collagen sausages over. Next time I'll try grilling or something similar.
But I no longer have much hope, especially after reading this diary article: I've tried this before.
Our photovoltaic panels are
rated at at total of 10.8 kW. But that's a simplistic way of looking at things: when the
sun shines directly on them, they should manage that much. Two arrays (7.2 kW) face 11°,
and the other array (3.6 kW) faces 281°. And then there's the issue of elevation, for which
I need to know the inclination of the roof.
I've been watching the PV statistics for a couple of months ago. The documentation I had
received suggested an equivalent of 3.5 hours of “sunshine” output per day, in other words
37.8 kWh. During the winter we got nothing like that, but what about in the summer? So far
the maximum we have had per day is round 51 kWh.
Should that have been at the solstice? Not necessarily. On 21 December the elevation at
azimuth 11° was 75°, far higher than the normal of the panels. Today, over a month after
the solstice, I noted a power of 7.07 kW coming from the panels.
What's the maximum I have had? Why have I been sniffing the inverter information for the
past nearly 2 years? A bit of querying showed that I've had up to a peak of 11.122 kW, on
3 December 2019 at 13:32:58 And I've had over 10 kW from early October
to early March. I suppose that at least means that the panels are working correctly: the
maximum was close to apparent solar noon, so the western panels contributed almost nothing.
I'm gradually getting through the meat we bought on Thursday. Still 2.4 kg of pork ribs, something that I'm already regretting.
That's 3 double portions. Freeze two, prepare the third for cooking sous vide.
Why sous vide? There's lots of gristle and cartilage in the things, and I want to break
them down. Two years
ago I tried a recipe in an “air fryer”, and the results (like almost everything in an “air fryer”, I fear) were less than
spectacular, in particular neither juicy nor falling off the bone.
What recipe? Started far too late and had to hurry. Decided on this recipe for “Sous-Vide Char Siu-Style Chinese Baby Back Ribs”, which still looks
very US American to me, down to these stupid volumetric measurements which elicited
considerable grumbling while preparing the marinade. Finally I had this recipe, which will grow:
Next, how long and how hot should I cook them? Various recipes ranged from 61° to 79°. My
guess would have been round 70°, but the recipe I chose recommended me to set my ”Anova Sous
Vide Precision Cooker to 167ºF (75ºC)“. OK, I can forgive them for this advertising,
since it's the Anova site, but then I read:
You’ve probably seen plenty of sous vide rib recipes that call for cooking them 12 hours,
even 24 hours. But – let’s face it, we’re all pressed for time. If you’re under deadlines
at work, have a dog to walk and yourself to take care of (imagine that!) – you likely
don’t have an entire day to spend making finger-licking good ribs. .... And all it takes
is about 4 hours.
In other words, they cheat. This isn't sous-vide at all. And if you don't have time to
make them properly, there's a simple answer: don't make them at all. It's also hard to
understand the rationale: once the ribs are in the cooker, it doesn't make any difference
whether you cook them for 4 or 24 hours: they're just there. And even if you cook them for
only 4 hours, that means starting at least 5 hours in advance. If you have a normal daytime
job, it wouldn't work; but 24 hours would.
So I set the non-precision ALDI sous-vide cooker to 70°, put the bag in and went to bed.
This page contains (roughly) yesterday's and today's entries. I have
a horror of reverse chronological documents, so
all my diary entries are chronological. This page normally contains the last two days,
but if I fall behind it may contain more. You can find older entries in
the archive. Note that I often update a diary entry
a day or two after I write it.
Do you have a comment about something I have written? This is a diary, not a
“blog”, and there is
deliberately no provision for directly adding comments. It's also not a vehicle
for third-party content. But I welcome feedback and try to
reply to all messages I receive. See the diary overview for more details. If you do
send me a message relating to something I have written, please indicate
whether you'd prefer me not to mention your name. Otherwise
I'll assume that it's OK to do so.
