A New Take On Headcheese

I was having a discussion with a friend of mine about different foods that we have tried and he mentioned headcheese. His exact comment was, "I don't eat enough Headcheese", I completely agree. I don't think any of us eat enough headcheese.  I don't now why that is, it might be because its called Headcheese, not a very appetizing name. It might also be because not many people sell it and the versions that are available at the store aren't very good. It might also be that nobody knows  how to make it, or that it looks to complicated to make. None of those reasons are good reasons, a properly made headcheese is a thing of beauty, not just visually but from a taste stand point as well.  Most people have never even eaten it, they just know they wouldn't like it. I believe that headcheese can be a wonderful addition to any meal and is delicious, but you have to cook it right.

Headcheese is very versatile and can take on any flavor that you choose. I have eaten and made several different types and each one was unique. I had eaten a red hot headcheese at a place in Minneapolis called Haute Dish that was made with PBR and jalapenos and was fantastic. I have also made some very simple versions with lemon and parsley that were wonderful. The only downside I can think of is that is is time consuming to make and that might turn some people off.

The process for making a headcheese is really quite simple, you place a pigs head in a large pot with a couple of pigs feet, add some seasoning and water and simmer for a couple hours. Once the head has simmered the meat falls off the bone and you pick the feet and skull clean. While you are picking the head clean remove all the herbs and spices from the remaining liquid and boil the liquid until you have about 2 cups left. This liquid is mostly collagen and is used to set the meat and hold it all together. That is pretty much it, some what time consuming but very simple.

I would like to clear up a common misconception, headcheese is not brains, it is meat, it is all the muscles around the face and skull. You can use the tongue if you want to and it adds to the dish but if eating a tongue is to far out for you, you wouldn't have to use it.



If you are interested in making a headcheese the first thing you need to find is a pigs head. These are not always easy to find, but if you talk to your butcher they can usually find them for you. Specialty Meats and Gourmet in Hudson, WI can order them for you and sometimes they have them on hand. I like making headcheese so I usually order several heads ahead of time and keep them in the freezer. I also like to buy my pigs head spilt in half. This recipe only used half of a pigs head and yielded plenty of meat. Plus getting them split means they are smaller and easier to fit in your pot.

The Idea for this headcheese came a couple of weeks ago when I was watching Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern. He was at some place in Portland,  and they were making a headcheese with polenta and kind of looked like a scrapple. I didn't have any polenta at the house but I did have some grits so I thought I would give it a try. The idea here is that instead of reducing the cooking liquid down and using it to hold the meat together you use the grits. After this is chilled for 6-8 hours it holds its shape really well. After slicing a couple of pieces I gave them a quick fry in a pan with a small amount of butter to give them a little color and to warm them up. I served this with a little maple syrup and whole grain mustard mixed together with a dash of Worcestershire sauce.

I was absolutely amazed at how good this was, the pigs head gave a great porky flavor with just the right amount of salt cut with the dried cherries. The grits held it all together and gave it a rich creamy texture. It was incredible, I would highly suggest that if you are the least bit on the fence about headcheese that you try this and it will make you a believer. 

Headcheese with Dried Cherries and Grits

1 half pigs head

2 pigs feet

1 lemon (cut in half)

1 bulb garlic (cut in half)

6 tablespoons salt

2 large carrots (roughly chopped)

2 stalks celery (roughly chopped)

1 medium onion (quartered)

1 small bunch of fresh thyme

1 bunch of parsley

4 bay leaves

5 whole tien tsin chillies

1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

1 tablespoon black pepper corns

1 teaspoon mustard seeds

enough water to cover the pigs head

1/2 cup dried cherries

2 cups cooked grits

1. place the head and feet in a large stock pot and cover with water by one inch.

2. add the rest of the ingredients minus the grits and cherries. If you make a small satchel with cheesecloth to hold the peppercorns and mustard seeds it will save you some time trying to pick them out late.

3. bring the water to a boil, cover and reduce to a simmer, simmer for about 2 hours or until the meat is falling off the bone.

4. remove the head and feet from the stock and allow to cool. At this point if you wanted to make a more traditional headcheese you wold reserve all the cooking liquid and return it to the stock pot and reduce it down to about 2 cups. If you don't want to then you can discard all the liquid and seasonings.

5. When the head is cooled down enough to handle pluck the meat off the head and feet and set aside

6. prepare your grits and mix with the meat, taste at this point and add salt if needed

7. stir in the dried cherries and pour the mixture into a terrine mold or loaf pan, allow to cool and set up for 6-8 hours

you can eat it chilled or if you would like, sear it in a pan and serve warm.



Beet Cured Salmon

People are always giving me things that they have caught or hunted or foraged and most of the time it is a heart or some other form of offal they don't want. Sometimes I get lucky and people give me things like morels, a few weeks ago I was given about 4 pounds of salmon that was caught over in Lake Michigan. This is the first time someone has given me salmon, truth be told I am not a big fan of salmon. It might be because I have never had really good quality, freshly caught salmon. Or it might be because I haven't prepared it correctly. Grilled, baked, fried or sauteed it doesn't seem to matter,salmon has always just been, OK,  the only way I really enjoy salmon is raw, smoked or cured.

I have never been salmon fishing, either fresh water or salt water, so the only raw salmon I have eaten has been in restaurants. I really love smoked salmon and eat it from time to time, when I find it at the market. But my absolute favorite, is cured salmon or gravlax, salt cured and dried slightly I just love the texture and flavor of salmon done this way. I have always thought about trying to make it myself but I have never been salmon fishing so the only way I could have done it was to buy it, and salmon is far to expensive to buy fresh and possibly ruin. So when I was given some salmon a few weeks back I knew exactly what I was going to do with it.

Salmon are anadromous, meaning they live in fresh water and salt water, because of this they are susceptible parasites and it is recommended that they are never eaten raw. You can get around this by freezing your salmon. If your freezer is set at 0 degrees Celsius leaving your fish in the freezer for 48 hours should be enough to kill any parasites in the meat. If your freezer is warmer than 0 Celsius you might want to leave it in the freezer for 7-10 days before thawing it and eating it. Of course cooking your salmon will kill any  parasites, so you don't have to worry about how long it has been frozen unless you plan on eating it raw or cured.  

I always inspect my meat and fish thoroughly before I start to cook with it, if I see anything in the flesh that doesn't look normal I won't use it. Freezing and cooking are for the unseen things that may be lurking in the meat.  Curing salmon adds a good amount of salt to the flesh of the fish and preserves the life of the meat. There are hundreds of different methods of curing but the most popular is probably gravlax. By adding salt and sugar and sometimes dill and lemon you can change the texture and flavor of salmon to something that is next to heavenly. 

For my cured salmon I chose to make a beet cured salmon. I had never made this before but it looked amazing so I figured I better give it a try. The original recipe for this came out of the book Cured by Lindy Wildsmith It is a very simple recipe and doesn't require much active cooking time. Once the ingredients are mixed together and spread over the raw salmon it is just a waiting game until it is all ready. When it is finished it has a beautiful sweet earthy flavor from the beets and has taken on a wonderful sunset color. After making this I am planning on making a trip over to Lake Michigan to catch some salmon. 

Beet Cured Salmon  (Based off the recipe from Cured BY Lindy Wildsmith)

2 pound piece of salmon (previous frozenwith the skin on)
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup sea salt
2 tablespoons cracked black peppercorns
1 tablespoon juniper berries
5 tablespoons Aquavit
1 cup Dill (chopped including stalks and all)
2 pounds shredded beets

1.  Shred the beets and add all the ingredients together minus the salmon
2.  Place the salmon in a non reactive pan and cover with the beet mixture
3. Place in the refrigerator  for one week stirring the mixture every other day to redistribute the mix
4. After one week remove the salmon from the beet mixture and pat dry with a paper towel
5. At this point the salmon is ready to eat but I like to dry mine for a few hours by placing it on a wooden rack and setting it outside for a few hours to dry.When it is done you can slice it thin and serve it with a bagel or any other way you see fit

Corned Elk Tongue

It's really no secret that I have a taste for the exotic, most people who know me, know that at some point in any dinner party I throw I am going to slip in something a little strange. More often than not, it is met with some reservation but eventually everyone tries it and all enjoy. I have found that the best way to get people to try something new is to prepare it in a form they are familiar with. Cutting cross sections of heart and serving them, isn't a large enough disconnect for most people. If you slow cook a heart until it is fall apart tender then serve it in a taco more people are going to try it and be more willing to try it again. I have found this to be true about most offal, but the one thing people seem to have the biggest problem with is tongue.

I don't fully understand why people are so afraid of eating a tongue, after all it is just a large muscle and when prepared correctly, it is as delicious as any piece of meat I have ever had. Recently a friend of mine told me that her father was going to be butchering one of his farm raised elk and wanted to know if I would be interested in any of it. I told her that if he didn't want the offal I would happily take it. Shortly after that conversation I was given a bag with an elk heart, liver and tongue in it. I knew instantly what I was going to do with the heart and liver but the tongue took a little more planning. 

I have cooked tongue in the past and couldn't make up my mind which way I wanted to cook this elk tongue. I have cooked beef tongue and have used deer tongues, but this was my first elk tongue and I wanted it to be special. I had made shredded beef tongue tacos in the past and have also smoked a beef tongue and they were magnificent. I have pickled deer tongues and really enjoyed that but I thought I would try something new with this elk tongue. I have really enjoyed corning antelope roasts so I thought I would give corned tongue a try. Using the recipe from Hank Shaw's book Hunt, Gather, Cook I brined the tongue.

After sitting in the brine for three days I placed the tongue in a pot and filled it with water till it came about 3/4 the way up the tongue. I simmered the tongue for about 3 hours until it was almost fall apart tender. I let the tongue cool down a little and then peeled the skin off and wrapped it in clear plastic wrap and refrigerated it over night. the next day the tongue had firmed up a little and was easy to slice. I piled it on some swedish rye with some sauteed cabbage and horseradish and served it with some fried whole potatoes. It was one of the best sandwiches I have ever made. The corned tongue was tender and juicy and had a brilliant corned beef flavor. I would almost be willing to bet that nobody would be able to tell the difference between the corned elk tongue and corned beef. 

Venison Osso Bucco

Last year I did a pretty good job of stocking the freezer full of meat to use until the next hunting season comes around. I shot 2 deer and 2 antelope which is a lot of great meat to use, bad news is, it is almost all gone. I have a couple of roasts left and some livers and hearts but the one thing in the freezer that I kept staring at every time I looked in it were these shanks. Last year before I had even started hunting I had made my mind up that I needed to keep the shanks of one of my deer whole and try to find a way to prepare them. Usually I just cut the meat off the bone and grind it up for sausages. Every time I went to the freezer they were right there in front and I kept reaching over them to get to something else because I didn't know what I wanted to do with them. At first I was thinking about a maple braised shank with a dill mustard sauce but while I was looking for recipes for a venison braciole I was making, I came across a recipe for Osso Bucco.

Osso Bucco is Italian and quite simply means "bone with a hole", there are some recipes for Osso Bucco that use other cuts of meat but a truly authentic osso bucco is made with a cross cut piece of shank that is about 3 inches thick. I have a couple of friends who have debated that for a while, one of them made an osso bucco like dish but didn't use the cross cut piece of shank. The other friend then called him on it and told him it wasn't an authentic osso bucco, so when I made this dish I couldn't help but stir that pot again.

I have only eaten osso bucco once in my life and I loved it, it was tender and rich and when I pulled the marrow out of the bone and spread it on a piece of bread I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I am actually amazed that this is the first time I have ever made this dish. Usually when I make something for the first time I will follow a recipe without changing anything, but with this dish I felt I needed to use those venison shanks instead of veal or pork shanks. The hardest part about this recipe was getting the cuts, I used to have a hand bone saw but it was really hard to make clean cuts with, so I went ahead and bought a sawzall that I use exclusively for cutting meat. It made very quick work of cutting the shanks down to size and honestly when I look at those cross cut pieces of venison shank I don't know that I have ever seen a prettier cut of meat.

Osso Bucco isn't a quick dish to just throw together so if you have never made it before you should know that this will take several hours before it is ready. The good news is, most of that time is hands off and just waiting for the meat to cook. My Osso Bucco is adapted from one by Mario Batali in his book Molto Italiano. It is a very easy recipe to follow and this dish is well worth the time you put into it. I served mine over a thyme and rosemary risotto and was absolutely amazed at the end result. The meat was fall off the bone tender and the sauce that it was braised in was rich and delicious. 

Venison Osso Bucco

4 three inch thick pieces of shank 

1/4 cup olive oil

2 medium carrots cut into one inch chunks

1 medium onion diced

1 rib of celery diced

1 tablespoon fresh thyme

1 tablespoon rosemary

2 cloves garlic

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

salt and pepper

1 quart tomato sauce

2 cups chicken stock

2 cups white wine

Gremolata

1/2 cup chopped Italian parsley

grated lemon zest

juice of half a lemon

1 clove garlic

1/4 cup chopped pecans

2 tablespoons olive oil

salt and pepper 

1. Sprinkle the shanks with salt and pepper about a 30 minutes before you start cooking. Heat the olive oil in a heavy dutch oven or other oven proof pot over medium high heat. Right before you put the shanks in sprinkle them with the cinnamon. (for whatever reason cinnamon and venison just work together)

2. Brown the shanks on all sides then remove and set aside.

3. Add the carrots,onion and celery and cook for about five minutes, then add the herbs and the garlic and cook for 2 more minutes 

4. Place the shanks back in the pot and add the tomato sauce, chicken stock and white wine. bring to a boil and then cover with a heavy lid and transfer to the oven at 325 for about 3 hours. (you can check on it after about two hours to see if the meat is tender enough)

5. Mix the ingredients for the gremolata, when you are ready to serve place a piece of shank on your plate and top with the gremolata and some of the braising liquid. I served mine with risotto but I think any starch would work, even some mashed potatoes.

Venison Braciole

There is nothing I hate more than ordering something at a restaurant and being told, "I'm sorry we're all out of that". It's hard enough for me to order at restaurants and when I finally make up my mind of what I really want, it is very disappointing to here those words. Now I need to go back and choose again, only this time I am on the spot and everybody is waiting on me. No matter what I order at this point it isn't going to be my first choice and my meal is always going to be a little off. This happened to me last week while out at one of my favorite Italian joints. I ordered Braciole and they were all out, I had never had Braciole before so I really didn't know what I was missing. I settled on the linguine with clam sauce but I have been thinking about Braciole ever since.

 

I have never eaten Braciole before, I have heard about it and wanted to try it for some time now. So I figured it was time to try making it. I read a few recipes and found out that Braciole is a classic Italian dish that each region of Italy makes there own way. It is a common Sunday meal and is usually made with thin slices of beef but sometimes made with pork or chicken. It should come as no surprise to anyone that mine is made with venison.  When I looked at all the different recipes there were two things that stood out to me. Some of the recipes called for a large piece of meat like flank or brisket and the others called for small cutlets of meat. I chose to go with a large venison roast, cut flat and pounded out just a little.

 

Venison is very lean and can become a little stringy when slow cooked because it has almost no fat. Inside of my braciole I put down a layer of guanciale, which is the salt cured jowl of a hog. Guanciale is almost all fat and added the fat that was needed, it also added a little salty porkiness that never hurts. After spreading the mixture of bread crumbs, Parmesan, provolone and parsley over the guanciale you roll the meat up and tie it up nice and tight. It is important to season your food at all stages of cooking so at this point I gave the roast a light dusting of powdered cinnamon and salt. Cinnamon and venison work incredibly well together and gives the whole dish and very pleasant sweetness without being to sweet. 

 

The next step is to brown the roast on all sides in some olive oil, once it is browned remove it from the pan and add a medium sized onion, finely diced, and a few cloves of garlic. Once the garlic and onion are soft add the roast back and add one quart of tomato sauce. Put it in a 275 degree oven for about 2 1/2 hours, what you end up with is an absolutely heavenly meal. My venison was as tender and succulent as any venison I have ever had. One of the unexpected bonuses was how wonderful the sauce was, everything came together beautiful. I am not sure if this dish needs much improving but I think I would like to make it again using small cutlets instead of one big roast. I like the idea of serving small one or two bite pieces as an appetizer.

 

 

Venison Braciole

 

One 3-4 pound venison roast (filleted open and pounded  down to about 1 inch thickness

5-6 slices of guanciale or bacon if you don't have guanciale

4 slices of provolone cheese

1/4 cup bread crumbs

1/3 cup grated Parmesan

2 tablespoons chopped parsley

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 medium onion, diced

3 cloves of garlic smashed

1 quart tomato sauce

3-4 tablespoons olive oil

 

enough butchers twine to tie up your braciole

 

1. cut your roast open and lay it flat, then pound it out so that it is about 1 inch thick

2. layer the guanciale or bacon then the provolone on top of that, mix together the parsley, Parmesan and breadcrumbs, then spread that mixture evenly on top of the provolone.

3. roll the roast into a tight spiral and tie it up with butchers twine.

4. sprinkle the cinnamon over the outside and sprinkle with salt.

5. heat the olive oil in a heavy Dutch oven then brown the braciole on all sides.

6. remove the braciole and set aside, then add the onion and garlic and saute until soft.

7. place the braciole back the Dutch oven and add the tomato sauce

8. place in a 275 degree oven for 2 1/2 hours. then slice one inch thick pieces cover with sauce and serve.

Answering A Couple of Questions



I have been writing this blog for a little over three years now and have been enjoying most of it. I sometimes get lazy and don't feel like writing but I always seem to get over that and put something up. I am going to try this year to fight through that laziness and be more regular with my posts. I am not off to a very good start this year but I just bought a new laptop and hopefully that will help me be more organized. Over the past few years when people find out that I write a food blog they always ask, "Where did you learn to cook?"or " How do you know what goes together" the answer to those questions, comes in three parts.

 

The first part of the answer is from my family, growing up I watched my grandmothers and my mom do a lot of cooking. My family also made Swedish sausage every year and that was my first experience with sausage making. I never really enjoyed it as a kid but today it is one of my favorite things to do. We also had a lot of wild game in the freezer that nobody really cared for. I would cook venison steaks as an afternoon snack when I got home from school. I would grill them or fry them in a pan with lots of butter and Lowry's seasoned salt.

 

The second part of the answer is an old friend named Chis Boni, Chris and I were stationed in Sasebo, Japan in the late 90's and shared a house with a couple other guys. Chris decided that he wanted to do some big Sunday meals the way his family did back home. That started a weekly event at our house and we all started doing a lot of cooking and drank a lot of red wine. Chris came from an Italian family and did a lot of Italian food while we were in Japan. Chris is really the one who got me into cooking and it stuck. When I got out of the Navy in 1998 the Food Network was really starting to get big. I would watch Emeril Live every night and try the recipes I saw on TV. I blame Emeril for my Cookbook addiction. The first cookbooks I bought were Emeril's TV Dinners and Louisiana Real and Rustic. That leads us into the third part of the answer, Cookbooks.

 

 

 

I have about 300 different cookbooks and I have used them all. But there are really five cookbooks that I use more than anything else. When I was about 16, I think, I was given the L.L. Bean game and fish cookbook. This is the book that really got me started with wild game. As my willingness to try new things expanded this was the book to go to. In its pages you will find recipes for everything from deer and ducks to woodchuck and badger. The first time I ate raccoon I used a recipe out of this book. It is also full of information on how to dress and clean wild animals and has been an invaluable part of my cooking repertoire.

 



 

 

 



As I said earlier I blame Emeril for my cookbook addiction, when I started watching his show in the late 90's he would recommend all these cookbooks and I would run out and buy them. Louisiana Real and Rustic, was my first introduction to Charcuterie. There is an entire chapter about curing meat and making sausages. Emeril's Duck pastrami was an instant hit and I was making 15-20 pounds of duck pastrami every year. Friends of mine would save all their duck and give it to me just so I could make pastrami out of it. Many of the recipes in this book call for wild game and the rest can be adapted to wild game very easily. There is also a great recipe for a sweet potato and pecan pie that every body should try.  



 

 

Before Nose to tail eating was trendy and popular, there was Fergus Henderson. An English chef who has done more for the Nose to Tail movement than any one else. When I first heard about this book I started shopping around trying to find a copy. When I finally found one the first recipe I tried was the Roasted bone marrow salad. I was an instant believer from that point on, when ever I get Offal and want to try something new this is the book I go to. The Deviled Kidneys were fantastic and I have yet to find a better recipe for Brawn (headcheese) than his.

 

Steve Rinella said it best when he said that Ruhlman and Polcyn's book Charcuterie is unintentionally, the best wild game cook book you can find. Every recipe in this book can be easily adapted to wild game. I have made almost every type of sausage in this book using wild boar, venison, antelope or duck and all of them have been fantastic. I like to make ten pound batches of all the sausages using a 70/30 ratio, 70% wild game to 30% pork fat. The Mexican style chorizo and the garlic and sage duck sausage are hands down my favorites. If you hunt and have extra wild game sitting in the freezer this is a must have book.

 

When I first started reading Hank Shaw's blog I was amazed at how wonderful all of his recipes were. His book Hunt, Gather, Cook has become my new go to book for wild game. The recipes are easy to understand and everything I have had out of this book has been incredible. The squirrel recipes alone are worth buying this book. Hank's book covers all aspects of cooking wild game from stews and soups to sausages and curing meat. It also has some great tips about hunting and caring for your meat.

 

I use a lot of different cookbooks and find new things to try all the time, when I am out to eat I am always thinking about how I can reproduce the dishes I eat, at home using wild game. I have been having a lot of fun over the past three years and I look forward to sharing future cooking and hunting adventures. 

 

Elk Liverwurst

It happened again, another strange phone call from a friend telling me that they had some strange ingredient that they thought I would want. This time it was one of the ladies I work with who had mentioned to me some time ago that her father raised elk and from time to time would butcher an elk. I had asked her  what he did with the offal and if he would be willing to part with it. Apparently he was willing to part with it because after our conversation I found an elk liver, heart and tongue in the freezer at work waiting for me. Needless to say I was beyond excited.  I love heart and tongue and to get one from an elk was a special treat. I have never been elk hunting and the only elk I have ever eaten was from the ones my uncle had shot. Elk is some of the best meat I have ever tasted and I could only imagine how good the offal was going to be.

When I got home I had to figure out what I was going to do with all of it. It took some time but after St. Patty's day I decided to corn the tongue, so it is sitting in a brine right now and will be ready in a few days. The heart and liver were a little harder to decide what to do with. I love grilled heart and was thinking about making a sausage of some sort with the liver. Unlike a the deer and antelope offal I am used to dealing with the elk heart and liver are much larger. A deer heart is about 8-10 ounces and very manageable for one person to enjoy grilled or fried. The elk heart on the other hand was 2 1/2 pounds and would be a little bit more than one person could handle. My wife is willing to try most things but probably wasn't going to eat a whole pound of heart. The liver was massive, it weighed in at 4 1/2 pounds and I know I wasn't going to be able to eat all that myself. 

I had recently picked up Michael Symon's new cookbook, Carnivore and as I was paging through it I saw a recipe for liverwurst. I had never made liverwurst before but had it on my list of things to try and make. In the book the recipe calls for pork liver, pork shoulder and back fat so I figured I could modify that to use elk liver and elk heart and I have a good supply of pork fat so I thought I'd give it a try. The process of making liverwurst isn't that different from making most sausages although Chef Symon's recipe called for grinding the meat three different times. I am not nearly that patient so my mixture was only ground twice, once through a medium grinding plate and once again through a fine grinding plate.

What I ended up with was a delicious sausage, I don't know that I have ever had Liverwurst before so I don't have anything to compare it to. I have had braunschweiger and that is apparently similar, and the biggest difference between mine and what I have had in the past was texture. My Liverwurst was good but didn't have that soft almost creamy texture that braunschweiger has and maybe its not supposed to. By itself it has a very mild and pleasant flavor but i think it needs more fat, because the heart is so lean I think I should have use more fat. I also boiled them all together and had a hard time controlling the temperature of the large pot of water I was using. The next time I make this I am going to use a smaller pot and only do a couple at a time. Over all I am extremely happy with the results but I can definitely see room for improvement. 

After eating a bunch of it plain I started thinking about what would go well with it, no surprise whole grain mustard and pickles seemed to work well. As did the pickled fennel and horseradish, but my favorite was on a piece of grilled bread with a slice of grilled apple and a smear of port and honey jelly with a little sage. I also grilled the Liverwurst just to give it a little warmth. 

Elk Liverwurst (inspired by Michael Symon's From his book Carnivore)

3 pounds elk liver

2 pounds elk heart

1 pound pork fat back

2 large white onions

3 tablespoons kosher salt

1/4 ounce instacure #1

1 tablespoon white pepper

3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground allspice

1 whole nutmeg ground 

1 tablespoon coriander (toasted and ground)

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1 tablespoon smoked paprika

1 tablespoon sweet paprika

1 tablespoon sugar

3/4 cup powdered milk

1. cut the heart, liver, fat and onion into 1 inch cubes and place in the freezer for on hour

2. grind the liver, heart, fat and onion through a medium grinding plate

3. thoroughly mix the rest of the ingredients into the meat mixture cover and refrigerate overnight. 

4. the next day grind the meat mixture through a fine grinding plate then stuff into whatever casing you want to use, I used 2 inch bologna casings.

5. bring a pot of salted water to a boil and place the sausages in the boiling water, bring the water back to a boil then turn down to a low simmer, I cooked mine for about an hour. 

6. let the sausages cool and hang them up to dry for a couple of hours. If you aren't going to use them right away they should be stored in the freezer.