Hot Dogs

https://www.foodrepublic.com/2016/06/29/a-step-by-step-guide-to-homemade-hot-dogs/

Servings: Around 40, assuming a five- to six-inch twist-off per sausage

Ingredients

• • 5 pounds fully pastured/grass-fed beef (either ground by your butcher or in cubes for you to grind at home)

  • 1 tablespoon paprika

  • 2 tablespoons mustard powder

  • 1 teaspoon black pepper

  • 1 teaspoon garlic powder

  • Pinch of celery seed

  • ½ teaspoon coriander

  • 2 tablespoons salt

  • Just over 1 cup ice-cold water

  • Sheep casings (24-26 mm)

Directions:

Mixing:

• 1. If you’ve purchased beef cubes and/or fat from your butcher, place them on a baking pan and place in your freezer. You don’t want to freeze the meat; you just want a crunchy exterior surface.

  2. Once the meat is sufficiently cold, nest a nonreactive bowl into another containing ice (keeping things cold here) and quickly grind. If things start to warm up, you can grind a few small pieces of ice with your meat to bring the temp back down.

  3. Add your spices to the ground meat and mix until thoroughly combined. You’ll also want to add just a bit of ice water here to help with the bind. You’ll know it’s mixed well when it becomes tacky and starts to stick to the bowl. Place the meat back into the freezer and set up your food processor.

  4. Working quickly, place your meat and about half the ice water in the bowl of your food processor and begin to mix. Continue adding the ice water to this process, which should take no more than 5-6 minutes. If you’re like me, you’re constantly worried about breaking your emulsion, so work in batches, returning what’s been emulsified to the freezer. When you’re done emulsifying, it’s time to test both for taste and to ensure that the emulsion has not been broken.

  5. Spoon a tablespoon of the farce into a pan and cook. Adjust your spices if needed, and if it exudes any water, your emulsion is broken. Let’s not let that happen. At this point you can cover your farce and place it in your refrigerator overnight. This allows for fuller flavor development as the meat proteins react with the spices.

Stuffing:

• 1. You’re now ready to stuff! You’ve kept your stuffer and its parts in the fridge in order to keep it cool and your farce has either been in the fridge overnight or in the freezer while you set up your stuffer.

  2. Sheep casings are what you’ll use here as they are thinner and help with that traditional hot dog snap. I like a slightly larger one at about 24-26 mm, since they’re easier to work with. And of course, just as we do with our non-emulsified sausages, you’ll soak and flush them to remove any excess salt.

  3. Place a sheet pan, with a bit of water on it, underneath the nozzle of your stuffer and quickly begin to fill the casings. The watered sheet pan helps the filled casings move easily away from the tip of the nozzle.

  4. Once your casings are filled, twist off into desired lengths and it’s back into the fridge while you get your cooking implements set up.

Cooking:

• 1. You can poach, roast or smoke. You’re looking for an internal temp of around 145°-150°F. That’ll happen in a 170°F smoker in about an hour, in a 200°F oven in about 30 minutes, or, how I like to do them, in a water bath of 160°F for about 30 minutes. Once the sausages are fully poached, you’ll want to toss them into an ice bath to stop the cooking process.

  2. Since they are fully cooked, you’re only looking to finish them, and that can be done in a few ways. My two favorites are once again poached, in something like sauerkraut, or sliced lengthwise and cooked on a flat cooking surface.

  3. For the first method, pour the sauerkraut and its liquid into an aluminum pan, and along with the hot dogs bring to a bubble over direct heat. This should take about five minutes. Slide them over to the cool side of your grill and in about ten minutes, you’ll have perfectly heated, unwrinkly hot dogs! Pop them directly on the grill for a minute or two for a bit of char.

  4. The second method is kind of self-explanatory. This will take about five minutes.

  5. As for buns, let’s keep things simple here with the old standby — Martin’s potato roll. Save the split tops for your lobster. I don’t love to grill buns as I don’t need any extra crunch. I like them steamed: Place a wire rack over an aluminum tray of water and heat that water over direct heat on your grill. You’ve got steamed buns!