Following the hamburger’s recent elevation in status, chefs now are giving inexpensive sausage, from bratwurst to bologna, the royal treatment.
On the streets of Los Angeles a vendor sells local, organic, grass-feed beef hot dogs, a celebrity chef makes his own bologna in a brand new Cleveland restaurant, and a fine-dining French chef in Manhattan offers 14 house-prepared sausages from around the world, including a $9 classic hot dog.
“People order four of them,” says Daniel Boulud of his dogs available at DBGB Kitchen in New York.
Boulud says that despite its reputation as a food that is simple, making sausage and even the lowly hot dog, is complex craft.
“They can be very difficult” to prepare correctly, he says. “It can be very simple and very good. And it can be very bad.”
To get it right, Boulud says, besides starting with fresh ingredients, you “have to have the right equipment.”
Simplicity is key, he says, adding that he doesn’t care for fancy ingredients, such as truffles, in his links.
Boulud started making sausage when he was five years old at his father’s side, but he still brought in Parisian charcuterie consultant, Gilles Verot, to get the dish right at DBGB. Verot even returns occasionally to New York to check quality.
“Iron Chef” Michael Symon also says that care is needed to make sausage and that the ratio of fat to meat and cooking times impact quality. To keep sausage juicy, he cooks them until the internal temperature reaches 150 degrees Fahrenheit, allowing for a ten-degree increase once removed from the heat.
A proportion of 25 percent fat is ideal for binding sausage and making it flavorful and moist. For the remaining 75 percent, he favors purchasing whole muscle cuts over preground meat to avoid E. coli contamination and excess oxidation.
“Once you start adding scraps, there are more risks involved,” he says, “and it is more exposed to air.”
He also works with cold meat and fat for the ideal texture. To do so he chills grinder parts and freezes some ingredients.
Seasoning the meat a day ahead is “absolutely essential,” he adds. “It deepens the flavor and gives the finished sausage a more pleasing, less grainy texture.”
Full of bologna At Symon’s newly opened BSpot Burgers, a 90-seat restaurant in Cleveland that specializes in “burgers, beer, bratwurst, bologna and bourbon,” he offers two bologna sandwiches priced at $6. The Old School version is comprised of house-made, pan-fried bologna with pickles, mustard and American cheese. The New School sandwich includes Russian dressing, pickled onions, sweet-hot pickles and a fried egg with the pan-fried bologna. For the bologna, he combines beef and pork in links about four inches in diameter. They are smoked and then poached in court-bouillon, Symon says. “It is a very American bologna,” he adds. There are no Italian style additions like pistachios or hunks of fat found in traditional mortadella, a not-too-distant cousin of bologna. At Bar Symon in Avon Lake, Ohio, Symon has an entire sausage section of the menu, and at his Cleveland restaurants, Lola and Lolita, and his Roast restaurant in Detroit, he sells sausage specials, such as Hungarian hot pepper stuffed with house-made sausage and foie gras bratwurst, prepared by emulsifying pieces of frozen milk with the fatty liver, pork jowl, veal shoulder, mace and nutmeg. He poaches those links in marjoram-scented chicken stock for about 15 minutes at 180 degrees Fahrenheit, or until internal temperatures reach 150 degrees. Still, the $5 bratwurst, made with pork and veal, is the overall best seller at Symon’s Cleveland restaurants. Bologna sales boomed in grocery stores sales this year, as it typically does in bad economic times. So it didn’t take long for chain restaurants to pick up on the trend. For example, Hardee’s rolled out a Fried Bologna Biscuit sandwich with American cheese and folded egg for $1.89 and for $3.59 as part of a combo meal with Hash Rounds. At Lucy’s Cantina Royale in New York City, “Chihuahuas in a poncho,” which sell for $10 are a play on pigs in the blanket. There they substitute mini dogs with small chorizo. Lucy’s is the latest from La Dolce Vita Hospitality company, a multi-concept company based in New York that is working with consulting chef Sam Hazen. During NRN’s Menu Trends & Directions conference held in Dallas this fall, food consultant Nancy Kruse called bologna “culinary catnip for anyone living below the Mason-Dixon line.” Hot dogs and “Not Dogs” In Los Angeles, which was the No. 1 dinner sausage-consuming city in the nation last year and No. 2 hot-dog-consuming city, according to The National Hot Dog and Sausage Council, the Let’s Be Frank truck sells a Frank Dog made with “100-percent local, grass-fed beef, with no nitrates” for $5. For the same price they offer a Not Dog comprised primarily of non-genetically modified soy. “We loved the idea of calling it a ‘Not Dog,’” says Let’s Be Frank co-founder, Sue Moore, a former “meat forager” at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif. “We tried to make a mélange of veggies and put it in a bun, but people didn’t want it. “They like the texture of a hot dog,” she adds. The nonmeat frank makes vegetarians “happy because we have something for them, and they are surprised about how it can be dressed.” Top dinner sausage-consuming cities 1. Los Angeles: $82,075,630 2. New York: $81,102,420 3. Chicago: $51,973,070 Top hot-dog-consuming cities 1. New York: $107,275,300 2. Los Angeles: $91,364,830 3. Baltimore/Washington: $51,557,600 2008 FIGURES, BASED ON TOTAL RETAIL SALES, EXCLUDING WAL-MART SOURCE: THE NATIONAL HOT DOG AND SAUSAGE COUNCIL Besides grilled onion, she also offers an Indian-inspired hot pickle relish which, “would make cardboard taste delicious,” she says. It’s become such a hit, she’s bottling it. The spread contains vinegar, hot pepper, fenugreek, cumin, mustard seed, fennel seed, fresh ginger and garlic. It has the “consistency of a smooth chutney.” Let’s Be Frank also makes bread and butter pickles for their truck business. They have a 10-seat location in Los Angeles, as well as vendors in San Francisco, where the company started. “A good thing” In Chicago, the country’s third-highest dinner sausage-consuming city, at Cibo Matto restaurant in the Wit Hotel, a fried mortadella panini comes with arugula, Havarti cheese and pickles. It is priced at $14. Upstairs at the Wit’s Roof restaurant, chef Todd Stein offers three fried-mortadella sliders with scrambled eggs and cheddar cheese for $12 at brunch. Comfort foods that remind diners of childhood “are a good thing,” Stein says. “This is my adult way of still being a child and having my fried-bologna sandwiches.”— [email protected]
