debreceni prep

one of my favorite things to make is homemade fresh sausage. it's not that complicated to make, and you can really let your imagination run wild with the ingredients and flavor combinations. i made 4 types of sausage for my friend's 30th birthday party, but let's focus on the debreceni for right now.
Every food culture has their own style of sausage, and debreceni is a hungarian kolbasz, or sausage. hungarian sausage typically uses a lot of paprika and garlic. my friends ben and sally are currently living in hungary, and ben informed me debreceni comes from the town of debrecen and they live an hour and half away from it. small world, huh? ben has apparently been indoctrinated by the hungarian government and told me that the bell pepper used to make paprika is not indigenous to hungary. it was brought to europe from the early explorers of mexico and south america, and hungary has an optimum growing climate for the bell pepper. so that's nice to know. ok kids, the food history lesson for today is over, let's get down to business. i got the base recipe from bruce aidell's complete sausage book, and substituted the beef chuck with more pork shoulder and added the caramelized onions.
mise en place

*3 tbs sweet hungarian paprika
*1 1/2 tbs minced garlic
*1/4 onion, minced
*1 tbs kosher salt
*2 tsp fresh ground pepper (side note- NEVER USE PRE-GROUND PEPPER!!!)
*1 tsp sugar
*1/2 tsp ground coriander
*1/8 tsp ground ginger
*1/8 tsp allspice
*2 1/2 lbs pork shoulder
*1/2 lb pork fat

start off by caramelizing the onion and garlic. here is a good description on how to caramelize onion. make sure you add the garlic late in the caramelization process so it doesn't burn and turn bitter. once the onions and garlic are done caramelizing, put them on some parchment paper or foil to cool down. you want these to be room temp when you mix them with the spices and pork. put all of the spices in a ziploc bag, and it should look something like this, the debreceni mix is the second one from the bottom.

now it's time to cut up the pork. i usually try to get bone-in pork shoulder with the fat still attached, thus avoiding having to buy the fat separately. trim the fat off and dice into 1 inch cubes. then cut the pork into slightly larger cubes, maybe 1 1/2 inch cubes. you will want to keep the pork meat and fat separated to ensure you get an even distribution if you are making more than one type of sausage. once everything is diced up, this is what you will have. bad-ass knife not included

now throw the meat in the ziploc spice bag, give it a good tossing to distribute the spices, and throw it in the fridge overnight to marinate. now go drink a beer, read a book, or whatever the hell it is you do with your free time. grinding and stuffing will be in the next post. this blogging stuff is a lot of work!