Pete’s Charcutes: Salmon Gravlax

I’ve started to frame how I think about food as being most similar to flight patterns when you live near the airport.  For a few months here and there, maybe you’re in the flight pattern and you have to deal with it, then without notice it goes away and you barely recognize that the change has happened.  That’s generally how my interest in cooking food cycles.  This one has been in the thought pattern for awhile now.

Recently I haven’t been as intrigued by cooking offal at home.  I still enjoy eating it (I ate a pile of Burmese pig ears and organs at my desk, courtesy of Dupee, this week) and have a freezer full of it waiting for me.  But, I can’t think of anything to cook with it.  On the other hand, I am back into cured meats and their wealth of possibilities.  Gravlax has been on the brain since the delicious version I had at the Vergennes Laundry last winter.

Hell of a sandwich. I alternated between loving that I brought Janet with me (because she was waving to people and laughing) and disliking it (cuz she ate all my gravlax)

Not sure where I had eaten gravlax before that fateful day in VT, but previously I always thought of the cured salmon dish as a pickled, sweet and vinegary concoction.  It’s much more similar to smoked salmon with the same buttery texture, minus the dried outside, and with the light flavor of smoke replaced by dill.  After the Laundry, I was on board with gravlax and heard it was pretty easy to make at home.  And now, here we are.

After a little research, it started with a nice piece of wild caught salmon.

These white plastic cutting boards and I are going through a slow break up.  I recognized last week that I have put them through hell and they were showing the pain of that treatment, so its time to let them go and have a chance at a second life.  I wish them the best and hope their next owner likes sticky cutting boards that never feel clean

When buying a large portion of salmon (this is about 2 pounds), you gotta go to Costco.  Sure you could throw caution to the wind and buy a $10/pound cut of farmed salmon, but your gravlax will likely end up tasting like liver pellets and mud.  Costco has the wild caught stuff for $13 a pound.

In order to make the filet relatively symmetrical, I trimmed off the belly meat strip and a bit of the end.

I strove for symmetry yet seemingly had no eye for it when taking this picture

I saved the trimmings for the grillfest I was planning for later in the weekend and cut the filet into two roughly equal sized portions.

As I quickly learned, the beauty of gravlax is in its complete simplicity; the only other ingredients consistently recommended were sugar, salt, and dill. Although the recommended proportions of each varied widely.

For starters, I roughly chopped most of a store bought bunch of dill and threw away the stems.

One of Jack Ryan’s favorite stories involved telling someone that they couldn’t give a nun dill bread because it was made with dill dough.  Say it out loud and it will be more clear.  Now you get my sense of humor?

To the dill I added 2/3s of a cup of kosher salt and 1/3 of a cup of white sugar.  This proportion was the subject of much debate (in my mind) since every recipe called for a completely different ratio with many recommending more sugar than salt.  With my memory of crappy sweet pickled salmon from my first gravlax experience, I elected for the greater salt amount.  Also, I zested half a lemon in as well since citrus was recommended in about half of the recipes I saw.  Stirred that up so that all ingredients were well distributed.

Could have used less of the salt/sugar since I left a lot in the bowl, but I definitely don’t mind being wasteful with that stuff for some reason.  On the other hand, I have a sprig of dill in my fridge that is way past its prime that I am hoping to find a Hail Mary use for so I don’t have to throw it out

I placed the two halves of the salmon filet on parchment and pressed/packed the dill curing mixture onto the meat until it was fully covered with a thick layer.

Again, very simple process: press a bunch of stuff onto the salmon.  Definitely had the potential to get out of hand if I had continued to try to fit the entire bowl of dill/salt/sugar on there but I gave up with about a quarter left and decided not to try and fit more on

Then, with all the grace of when you’ve put toppings on both sides of your sandwich bread, I indelicately slapped these two pieces together.  Then, the usual sandwich process of scooping up everything that fell out and attempting to press it in from the sides. Eventually I had a salmon sandwich.

I’ll admit it, I trimmed the salmon end wrong.  It needed to be a mirror image of the other side and I cut the angle opposite.  Made for the one end being mismatched.  If I was a kid and this was the bread used for my grilled cheese, I would have lost my effing mind and believed the sandwich to be inedible (though I would have eaten it eventually because grilled cheese is delicious)

Using the parchment, I wrapped the salmon up burrito-style, folding in the ends as I rolled so I would have a nice compact package.

Not m’best burrito rolling.  On a quality scale of Annas Taqueria to Chipotle in terms of burrito rolling, I would give this a Qdoba.  Meaning it looked about as good as Chipotle, but was inexplicably sh*ttier

Every recipe I saw recommended some extensive plastic wrapping at this point to seal all air out.  Following a brief temper tantrum when I discovered we were out of plastic wrap, I realized that the Food Saver vacuum sealer would do as good a job and definitely have less risk of leakage.  So, I sealed it up and put it in the back of the fridge with a one pound weight (package of ground turkey meat) on top.

Over the next 36 hours I flipped the the package over about once every 8 hours and replaced the weight on top.  The goal was to avoid one side spending too much time sitting in the salty/sugary liquid that formed.  Around breakfast the second day, I removed the package from the fridge.

MMMmmmm, questionable yellow fish juice.  I would have been pretty ripped if this stuff had leaked all over my fridge as was the chief complaint with the plastic wrap method

The meat felt much firmer than it did when it went into the bag and the size was noticeably smaller.  I cut into the package over the sink to minimize fish juice spills and pulled out the salmon sammie.

Much darker than when we started.  I rarely cook meals for the blog in the morning and couldn’t believe that I got natural light everywhere in the kitchen at 9AM.  Who knew?!?!   Also, nice thumb there, Mr. Mutant Baby Thumbs

The pieces came easily apart and I lightly scraped off the dill, zest, and unabsorbed sugar/salt.  Then rinsed each piece lightly under cold water to remove any excess ingredients followed by patting each piece dry with paper towels.  Which left me with this.

These were significantly flatter and not nearly as thick as when the filet was whole.  No comment on how they weren’t really the same size at all despite my earnest attempt and what I claimed earlier

Even with a little help (Conman to the rescue!), I knew I couldn’t consume both of these pieces in one day so I put one into a fresh food saver bag and sealed it up for the following weekend.  The other piece I got to work on with the sharpest, thinnest carving knife I had.

The goal was to cut the pieces as thin as possible, but also to slice on a heavy bias so that each piece had some decent surface area.  Took some practice, and the first couple cuts were subpar, but eventually I got the hang of it.

Dece contrast shot showing how much darker the pieces looked before they were sliced thin.  They looked like salmon jerky in their whole form but sliced up tender and buttery

Once I had a bunch of pieces sliced, I quickly tacked on another round of temper tantruming when I realized I didn’t have the perfect bagel that I was looking to eat this on.  Nothing less than a Bagels-4-You everything would have done the trick at that moment.

I reluctantly accepted my fate and went with a little wheat toast, cream cheese and capers.

There were multiple open faced sandwiches made that morning, this one just happens to be the smallest and makes me look the least gluttonous

The texture of the fish was very soft and, to use it again, buttery.  I don’t say this often but it really did melt in your mouth.  The fishy flavor normally found in lox was very mild and less pronounced than the dill and citrus from the cure.  I think the traditional way to serve this would have been with some aquavit or mustard or creme fraiche or maybe all of them, but nothing beats cream cheese and capers for me.

I would absolutely make this again and can’t wait to. I much preferred it to the inconsistent smoke flavor found in most packaged smoked salmon in stores.  Really really tasty.

Pete’s Charcutes is no longer the most seldom used category on the site!  Uncle Timmy?  You ready to talk about your stupid recipes for jerks?

Pete’s Travels: 36 Hours in Washington D.C.

Last weekend Kristi, Janet and I headed to Washington D.C. to visit our friends Lenny and Shelley (yes all of my friend’s names end in y).  We got back yesterday and as I write this I am on a flight to Las Vegas for a tradeshow.  So, lots of restaurant eating and not much cooking lately.  I described my feelings on writing about restaurants about a year ago but in case you missed it:

“Aside from my Philly post, I generally avoid giving any kind of restaurant reviews on this blog.  There are 200,000 active restaurant blogs with over 95% of them located in the 25 biggest cities in the U.S.  Pretty crazy right?  Well, I made most of that up but I’m guessing it’s relatively accurate, and what I am trying to say is that area of blogging is pretty well covered.  Who needs another blog that tries to sound like Bourdain while they give the millionth opinion posted online of a Best of Boston restaurant’s seared scallops.  I’ll save you some time: they tasted good and were cooked well.”

I still feel that way, but in the interest of writing something this week, and because we did some pretty dece grubbin’ between our late night arrival Friday and our exit on Sunday, here’s my recap of 36 hours in DC.

After Janet woke up in the 7s on Saturday we went for a walk to the Dupont Circle Farmers Market and discovered it is only open on Sunday.  At which point we headed home hungry, researched the new Union Market and drove out there.  I was immediately reminded of Reading Terminal Market in Philly except it was newer, cleaner, and everything just looked nicer.

Every food stand had a cool name and ornate signage. In Philly all of the restaurants look like this, but you get to Reading Terminal market and most of the signage is handwritten on the bottom of a previously used paper plate. I’m exaggerating, but the truth isn’t too far off

To continue Lenny and my longstanding pattern of arriving at restaurants before they start serving, we got to Union Market 15 minutes before most of the restaurants opened.  Which brought us to Buffalo Bergen, the only establishment open for breakfast and serving authentic NY style boiled bagels and a few unique knish options.

I will eat any bagel but I also understand that most of them are crap.  They can never hold up to the NJ and NY bagels that I grew up eating, but the bagel with cream cheese and scallions at Buffalo Bergen was one of the best I’ve had outside NJ.  And because I was extremely hungry, I got a braised short rib knish as well.

This knish was great, but while it cooked/cooled I annoyed everyone within earshot gushing about how brilliant it was that instead of scallion cream cheese, the bagel was served with cream cheese and a handful of crunchy fresh chopped scallions pressed into the cream cheese. I was probably a little over the top, but it made a big difference

Since there were potatoes mixed in with the shredded short rib, this knish was basically like an entire dinner surrounded by flaky pastry.  And that’s a good thing.  The short rib was tender and had the traditional pot roast-like flavor I associate with slow cooked short ribs.  I was surprised that the Dijon mustard they served on the side actually went really well with it, but, that’s why they do this professionally and I just play make believe.

When the other food establishments started opening we noticed that Red Apron butcher served Bells Two Hearted Ale, my fav thing and brewed near where Shell grew up in Michigan.  We stopped in for a pint (I’m really happy I haven’t admitted what time stuff opened) and while there I stared at their class case of house made charcuterie.  After being asked to leave multiple times due to the nose grease smudges and knish breath fog I was applying to the glass, I ordered a couple ounces of their liverwurst and morel mushroom & pork terrine.

A Jack Ryan favorite, and also one of mine. I have been loudly mocked by sassy deli counter workers twice in my life when ordering liverwurst, and my fear of that experience keeps me from ordering it more than once or twice a year. Soooo, yeah, I fully believe mocking and humiliation can lead to better health

The consistency of terrines keeps me away from them a lot of the time, but mushrooms make everything better for me. That may be the most Bates College thing I have ever said in my life

Liverwust is cheap food; usually it is the lowest priced deli meat in the case because it’s made with a lot of cheap cuts.  I’d never had an artisanal version of it and couldn’t imagine that it would be as different as it actually was.  The flavor was rich, distinctly porky and didn’t have the strong liver flavor that hits you right away with the cheaper stuff.  However, you did get a pretty sharp liver aftertaste at the end which I didn’t mind but made Lenny not enjoy his sample much.  You know who did enjoy it?

Not to get too sappy but we often talk about how much Janet reminds us of Pop Ryan when she smiles and how she’s like a little Jack Ryan. As stupid as her enjoying scrapple, liverwurst, and other weird Dad foods seems, it makes me smile more than any normal food could. Keep grubbin’ like the greats ‘lil gal!

The terrine was also pretty tasty and I found it more enjoyable than most terrines.  The pork meat was so well blended with fat that it had a creamy texture you normally would associate with a mousse but still with some of the meat grain.  The mushroom flavor wasn’t as strong as I was hoping but added a nice texture contrast along the way.

Since I was momentarily stuffed on meat products we all headed off to explore the other offerings in the market like oysters at Rappahannock.

Kristi enjoyed her half dozen sampler though she’s become accustomed to the incredibly briny ones in New England so she was slightly disappointed. She will likely be more disappointed that I used this picture of her

Or the first shop that we were drawn to upon arrival, TaKorean.  The tacos looked ridiculous but Len ended up going with some sort of enormous mixed meat bowl with chicken, shredded beef, lots of sauces, herbs, and greens.

My biggest knock on the entire gourmet food court/truck experience is that they still use plastic cutlery that has the structural integrity of pipe cleaner and seems to start melting at exactly 100F. Yet Wendys has soup spoons that could double as a professional quality tennis racket. Step it up Union Market!

This meat bowl was freaking ridiculous and I would definitely make TaKorean my first stop on a return visit.  A ton of different strong flavors coming together with a lot of cilantro and greens making the whole thing taste fresh and crunchy.  You know who else enjoyed it?

Depending on your definition of adorable this competes with the earlier shot of Janet. Sure she is a cute toddler, but she was eating liverwurst, and look how sick Lenny’s coif looks!

The flavors in the bowl gave me a little second wind to try out one last establishment: DC Empanadas.

These things were hot and extremely crispy. Not sure why I thought that this completely uninsightful picture was a better idea than taking a bite and showing the contents of these dough pockets. Well, they both had stuff inside

I went a little boring on the my filling (three cheese) compared to Kristi’s (some sorta crazy teriyaki thing) mainly because the salsa verde looked like something I would want to use lots of.  I was correct in that assumption since it was most similar to a cross between creamed spinach and salsa verde but with cilantro as the strongest flavor.  I would use that stuff on every taco I eat for the rest of my life and I wish I had purchased some to take home.

As we wrapped up the savory portion of our “lunch” we all looked for the dessert we would finish our time at Union Market with.  I chose poorly with baklava stuffed with rose cream, which was much closer to an eggy custard than a cream.  Not bad, just not my thing.  Shell on the other hand walked away with the holy grail of Union Market desserts: Dulce De Leche Pudding from DC Empanadas.

A naturally lit shot without Pete’s kitchen radiator cover in the background? The hell you say! That’s right, I actually photographed a piece of food outdoors for once. Real sun and everything

This stuff was absurd.  Very creamy, sweet and rich but not so much that it made you want to stop eating.  Instead, it made it completely addictive and impossible to stop eating.  Handing the spoon back to Shelley felt like I was Samwise Gamgee handing the ring back to Frodo.  Lord of the Rings references!  Just in case you forgot I didn’t have a girlfriend until college.

After Union Market we headed home for naps (I drove everyone out of the room by snoring on the living room floor) and then a walk to the zoo (Janet loves her some monkeys).  We had dinner at Firefly, which offered some pretty awesome food but incredibly awful lighting for fotos.

I would rather scream curses at someone else’s child in a quiet restaurant than ever take a picture of my food with a flash. I am embarrassed for other people when they take pictures of their food in nice restaurants. Act like you’ve been there before! I pretended I was texting our babysitter something important while I shot this one

My tartare was pretty solid; well seasoned and I appreciated that they didn’t add capers or pickles, just let the meat stand on its own.  I really can’t speak highly enough of my entrée, though: smoked lamb shoulder with leaks, feta, and mint served over pappardelle with watercress pesto.  The type of meal that I immediately started making plans with Brother Tim to smoke some lamb and replicate in the future.

After a couple Guinness we headed home for the night and looked forward to packing in more eating the following morning before our flight.  As it turned out, the Dupont Circle Farmers Market that wasn’t open on Saturday because it’s open on Sundays was indeed open on Sunday.  So we went there and I made it two booths into our opening lap before stopping to buy grub. In this case, empanadas from Chris’ Marketplace.

I tried to stealthily take this picture the first time and this nice woman photobombed it. She was blinking so I gave her a second shot, which came out much better. Look at those empanada fillings!

Given my love of smoked fish, I had to go with the smoked bluefish empanada, which I correctly assumed would be more like a pate than solid pieces.

For the fourth or fifth time during the weekend Kristi excitedly asked me, “what’d you get?” hoping it would be something she could have a bite of, only to groan in disappointment when I told her

Awesome filling for an empanada.  The flavor wasn’t overly rich, smoky or fishy so you didn’t mind a big bite of it and the outside was light and flaky.  The range of options for fillings was overwhelming and I could have spent a whole day there sampling each variety.  My only knock was that the temperature was closer to lukewarm than hot, but the flavor was still great.  I would get a mushroom one a few minutes later, but I had heard a lot about the fresh baked pizzas at the market.

The breakfast pizza, a concept I wholeheartedly support and think is crucial to our evolution as a species. We’re really learning people, we’re starting to get it

Considering that a runny egg yolk is one of the few foods I’ve found that can actually upset my iron (not on the outside) stomach, it’s pretty stupid that featuring an egg on top of any food item is a surefire way to get me to order it

I didn’t actually taste the breakfast pizza since I was reaching my full food sampling capacity at this point, but I had a couple slices of the ricotta, asparagus, and bacon pizza.  I will admit that I was slightly bummed out since I had such high hopes for the pizza and the combination of flavors, which were good.  In the end it just needed something to tie it all together, like the vinaigrette mentioned on the menu that I didn’t actually taste on the pizza, or possibly a little salt.  Overall, it didn’t have the punch I was expecting but definitely made me want to experiment with asparagus on pizza moving forward.

Ending on a dag, but a really fun and delicious weekend.  Big ups to Len and Shell for being awesome hosts (they slept in the living room so we could have their room with Janet!) and feeding me lots of awesome food.  Thanks again duders!

Uncle Timmy’s Stupid Recipes for Jerks: Kielbasa

(PPnote: Our first guest blogger, none other than Brother Tim. He’s Janet’s uncle. Hopefully guest bloggin’ will be a way for me to post more regularly without losing my job)

While this is my first time writing for this blog, it’s not my first appearance. I’ve silently sat by while being vilified over the years that this blog has existed. However, there have been some kind words said about me in the past. So when Peter (from here on out known as PP) asked me to guest-write, I jumped at the opportunity.

PP and I have learned how to cook together over the years. The main difference between our styles is that he cooks blindly, while I pretty much always cook from a recipe. When we end up in the kitchen together, it frequently escalates to raised voices and dead-arm punches (I deliver them, and I’m not proud of it… he’s just soooo annoying). Many a holiday would have been ruined if we didn’t have such an understanding family.

I first learned of PP’s aversion to recipes when I gave him what I thought was the finest Christmas gift ever- the very extensive and very expensive Cook’s Illustrated New Best Recipes… his response was “yeah… I don’t really cook from recipes.” What a gracious gift receiver. He eventually did use it- for Janet to stand on when she’s in her go-pod.

PPnote: Look, I got some good use out of it in this role, learned how to properly debone a leg of lamb from it, and Kristi references it all the time.  I ask for driving directions, am terrible at home improvement projects and can’t throw sports balls; can’t we just let my insistence on cooking my way be my tiniest shred of manhood?

People tend to assume that since I’m a woodworker, musician, and cook, that I’m creative. Nothing could be further from the truth. I can count the number of original thoughts I’ve had in my life on one hand. So I’m a slave to recipes. The other day I made scrambled eggs with chopped anchovies and parmesan, and actually consulted a cookbook (it was delicious, try it).

PPnote: Uncle Timmy shamelessly blaming me for a meal he wanted no co-credit on.  He has gotten slimmer.  I have not.  Jerk.

Recently, occasional blog personalities JT and Jill moved into a house that has a wine cellar. Since they aren’t oenophiles (PPnote: nice word choice, nerd), I promptly announced that I would be taking control of said cellar. Cool, dark, temperature and humidity controlled… perfect for curing and salting meats. I had prosciutto and salami on the brain, with no idea where to start. And it appealed to my twisted mindset that the longer it takes to prepare, the more complicated the process is, the more I want to make it.

Apparently, the craft of smoking, salting, and curing meats is known as “Charcuterie”. So I picked up the bible on Charcuterie, written by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Poleyn. It is a fascinating and intimidating book, so I’m taking baby steps…

I expect to get a lot of mileage out of this book.  Its got everything from pickles to prosciutto.

I started with pastrami- I wish I had documented it because it was unbelievably delicious. But I didn’t. So let’s move on to kielbasa.

A little background: Mom Ryan is an excellent cook, but no mother can be expected to crank out a from-scratch dinner seven nights a week. When she didn’t have time or just wasn’t feeling it, she’d turn to the processed food aisle. Fish cakes and spaghetti were one favorite (see January 2011 post); Kielbasa with Mac and Cheese was another… and yes, I capitalized that.

Hilshire Farms Kielbasa paired with Velveeta Shells and Cheese is still my ultimate comfort food. It’s an odd pairing, but it works. If I ever kill PP in the kitchen over an argument about how to slice an onion and am on death row, this will be my choice for my last meal.

So when I saw a kielbasa recipe in the Charcuterie book, I realized I had to try it. Okay, enough chit-chat. As Walter White would say, “let’s cook”.

It was really weird taking pictures of food in the grocery store. I don’t think it’s illegal but it felt like I was doing something wrong. PS this isn’t a magical hidden section of the supermarket, it’s a magical combination of two photos

I’ve made sausage in the past, but had a lot to learn. There are two types of sausage; fresh sausage, which is meat ground with spices and stuffed into casings (like breakfast sausage or Italian sausage), and emulsified sausage, in which the fat and meat are uniformly dispersed in a fine texture (like hot dogs, bratwurst, and- you guessed it- kielbasa). Mayonnaise and hollandaise are also emulsions. I pretty much copied this paragraph from the book.

I started by dicing and partially freezing 1 ¼ lbs beef chuck roast and a pound of pork fat. The freezing makes it easier to grind. Next I ground them together through the large die grinding attachment on my Kitchenaid mixer. After struggling for about ten minutes and wondering why it wasn’t coming through, I realized I forgot to install the cutters. Brilliant.

The last time this Kitchen-aid mixer appeared on this blog it was stuffing a pigs stomach. Also, I can’t stand it when PP complains about his camera, but I’m going to have to do the same. I could not get a decent photo.

Next the coarse ground meat went into the freezer. The authors stress that everything must be kept cold to achieve a proper emulsion. So I froze everything- the mixing bowl, the mixing paddles, even the grinding cutters and dies. I wasn’t taking any chances.

After the meat had frozen a little, I mixed it with salt, sugar, and pink salts. Pink salts are a mixture of regular table salt and nitrite. Nitrites are dangerous to consume in large quantities, so it’s not sold in stores and must be handled appropriately. The mixture is dyed pink so it’s not confused with regular salts. It gives cured meats their pink color, provides flavor, and, most importantly, kills bacteria, especially the kind responsible for botulism. Botulism is bad. I understand why pink salts are required for dry cures, in which the meat is never cooked, but wasn’t sure why this recipe called for it. I’m guessing for color and preservative properties. Whatever, I just do what I’m told.

Normally I wouldn’t allow anything with that kind of warning anywhere near my kitchen.

I ground the meat mixture through the fine die along with crushed ice, which seemed bizarre to me. Next I mixed it on high speed with pepper, mustard, and garlic powder for four minutes. Then added some dry milk powder and mixed for another two minutes.

Appetizing.

Even more appetizing. I swear this could be a video. After the dry milk mixture went in the mix really stiffened up. It stayed like this for several minutes.

And into the casings, with difficulty…  The casings are natural hog casings packed in salt and need to be rinsed and soaked for several hours before stuffing. I started with my old school sausage stuffer.

As I was wrestling this 50 pound contraption up my very narrow basement stairs, shirtless and sweating, I looked up to see my friend Jamie standing at my kitchen door with a look of horror on her face. I quickly donned a shirt and she was gracious enough to let an awkward moment pass. There might have been acoustic Bon Jovi playing really loud on the stereo, too.

It worked but it took forever. The mix kept squeezing out of the top of the press.

I have the attachment for my mixer but the authors warn that using a machine can break the emulsion and the mixture will “collapse”… whatever that means. After stuffing one link with the manual stuffer, I decided to risk it. So I moved on to the kitchen aid stuffer. That too was a pain. So I stuffed the third link with a simple pastry bag. While the results from the pastry bag weren’t as professional looking, it was by far the easiest method.

I recommend this method if you’re starting down the emulsified sausage path.

I tied the sausages into rings and put them in the fridge to dry overnight. By the time I finished cleaning up my mess it was morning and time for the smoker. The sausages went on the smoker at 180 degrees for several hours over hickory, mesquite, and apple wood chips. When they reached 150 degrees I dunked them in an ice bath, sealed them individually, and put them in the fridge.

Going into the smoker. I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of this Yoder smoker. It weighs about 400 lbs and will last a lifetime.

Four hours later. Lookin’ good!! That’s a thermometer cable. I just started using instant read thermometers a couple years ago and have never looked back. An indispensable tool.

To serve, I broiled them the way Mom used to, sliced them, and served with Dijon mustard. They were outstanding. Just incredibly delicious, fresh kielbasa, verified by the rate at which it was devoured by friends.

Okay, not the best presentation, but that’s not really my forte. Delicious.

I’d make it again, but will plan the stuffing part a little better. It was a nightmare. There are a lot more recipes I want to tackle from this book, and hopefully my annoying little brother will ask me back to share them.

(PPnote: Sigh. I wish he had written an awful blog that I could rub in his stupid jerk face and make Mom include on our Christmas card update, but this was kinda awse. I look forward to the next one and hope you do too)