Sausagefest

I am a firm believer that the world needs more well-crafted sausages (and food in general). When I worked as a cook at Concordia Language Villages, I would sometimes encounter kids that were more comfortable eating bologna than eating roast pork loin (they often called themselves 'partial vegetarians'). I like to think that those kids still believed in 'the meat faerie', more comfortable not knowing what they were eating. Then there were the other kids who were totally skeeved out by cold-cuts, not wanting to eat 'lips and assholes'. From where I sit, I'd be more concerned about the fillers that get added to any type of mystery meat. Why try to remove yourself from knowing what you consume? I suppose it's the nature of the distance we seek to create from our collective environment. It's easier to consume without consideration for the effects that our demands have. At the end of the day, an animal died to take center stage on your plate, don't we owe it to ourselves to make as many tasty consumables from that animal as is possible?

That being said, I'm incredibly excited about the charcuterie that's happening over at The Meat Hook. We picked up a sampler pack of all the sausages they carry yesterday and had a little tasting for brunch.

Tom Mylan helpfully listed out the flavors we acquired on the package. I opted to roast the weiners in the oven rather than pan-fry or boil. I wanted each tubesteak to maintain it's identity through the cooking process. I think we did a 350 oven for 10 minutes or so. I wasn't fully awake and often cook by smell and sound.

From left to right we have: merguez, parm parsley, rabbit, green chorizo, chicken w/ herb, and lamb w/ rosemary.

Let me preface the review by saying that they were all delicious, some of the best sausages I've ever had, but there were two that I clearly preferred, the merguez and the green chorizo.

We started with the merguez, which in hindsight may have been a bad idea. I'm a sucker for spice, and this sausage did not let me down. It was sweet and salty, and had a nice finish. The parm parsley had a nice depth of flavor. It wasn't as cheesy as I'd expected it to be, which was nice. The rabbit fell a flat for me, especially compared to the others. I probably should've started with the rabbit in order to fully appreciate the mild nuances it brings to the table. The green chorizo was the big winner for me. It was fresh and springy and made me think of an herb salad, truly unexpected. The chicken with herb was easily the best chicken sausage I've ever had. I like to stick with classic pork sausages for the most part, but this chicken was juicy and flavorful. It tasted really, well, chickeney, but it had a great mouthfeel that is often lacking from chicken sausages. The lamb with rosemary was good, but it just didn't have a hope of being as good as the merguez, and as it was later in the tasting, it wasn't as juicy as I would've liked. All in all, I give the collection an enthusiastic thumbs up, and I'll certainly be back for more.