Making Braunschweiger

quote:

Braunschweiger

Welcome to the forum.

Sorry, Liver Pate isn't in my list of recipes so I can't really help. Maybe someone will jump in and help. Google is your friend.

But it's not really BBQ, are you going to smoke it or something?

What smoker do you have?

quote:

Originally posted by Char:
Anyone out there every tried to make Braunschweiger? Just wondering how it turns out. It looks like a fairly complicated procedure. I just started smoking and went ahead and got the seasoning, but haven't tried it yet. The weather needs to warm up again now.

Welcome Char.

Good braunschweiger is wonderful. Unfortunately, most of the commercial braunschweiger out there is lousy. To get the good stuff, you need to make it yourself, and it's really not difficult.

Basically, braunschweiger is nothing more than smoked liverwurst, which is an emulsion type sausage that first needs to be hot water cooked. Any type of liver can be used, but pork tends to be the dominant one. Also, most commercial producers don't smoke their product at all. They simply add liquid smoke and/or smoked bacon ends/jowels to the mix. A few shorten the water cooking process and apply a light smoke at the end.

When liverwurst is made correctly, it should have the smooth consistency of a pate and be spreadable. Most commonly, it's stuffed into casings and water cooked. It can also be water cooked in a mold, terrine, or loaf pan. I've done both, and the end result is the same. Once the liverwurst is finished, it should sit for a few hours to dry before applying smoke for the conversion to braunschweiger.

A good reference source for the home sausage maker is Len Poli's Sonoma Mountain Sausage website. Len's a very knowledgeable guy and his site has a ton of sausage recipes,or formulations. I would post the link to recipe, but I'm not sure if this forum allows it since it's copyrighted. Simply go the the site and click on the "Formulations" tab on the left side.

I've followed this recipe and process a number of times with very good results. Generally, I omit the beef liver and go with a 50/50 mix of pork and poultry (most often chicken, but goose if I can locate it). I also omit the liquid smoke, and play around with the spice mixture a bit. Note that, even though the liverwurst is fully cooked, the process calls for smoking it for 3 hours. Though unstated, I have assumed that means cold smoking, which is what I have done.

Another good source is Rytek Kutas's sausage making book, which I have around here somewhere but can't locate it at the moment. You may want to check it out.

Good luck and let us know how it turns out.

Thanks for replying. I was curious if it turns out OK. I have an Amerique smoker and I have looked in Rytek Kutas's sausage making book. It sounds like you smoke it at a very low temperature (115-120 degrees)after cooking it in 180 degree hot water (it cools down to 160 with sausage in it) and cooling it. I am anxious to try it. I figured out what temperature to have my oven to keep the water at 180. The water temperature might be the hardest part. I plan to use a big roaster for the water. I have tasted braunschweiger from a private smokehouse and it was much better than anything you can buy. I also like the idea of knowing what is in it. I planned to use pork butt (I can't get the pork snouts named in the recipe) and pork liver. I did get some seasoning from PS seasoning, but need the cure to make Braunschweiger instead of liverwurst. I will post after I make it.

I finally made the Braunschweiger this weekend using PS seasoning. I bought orange casings to use for this project. They were supposed to be fibrous, but seems like pure plastic. I used a mix of pork butt and pork liver (I could have used more pork butt and less liver). The process seemed to go OK until I poked a thermometer into the casing after it had been in the hot water for around 2 hours. It burst open a couple of inches at the spot(probably from the release of pressure). The temperature was also way higher than it should have been. I only needed to get it to 152 degrees and it was already 167. Next time I will try to have the thermometer probe in earlier (I didn't this time because I was afraid the stuff would run out the hole). I made 5 pounds and used 2.75 lbs. of liver to 1.25 lbs. of pork butt. I also will treak the spices and possibly add liquid smoke. The casings I had seemed like plastic bags and although they seemed to change color, didn't let any smoke into the meat at all. I had my smoker at 120 degrees for 3 hours. Not much smoke. It tastes really good, but probably got over done and could have used more fat to hold it together. My dogs think it is the best thing ever because of all the liver. I will look up the recipe you mentioned on Len Poli's website.

The casings probably kept smoke from penetrating or the product being over 140*.When smoking at so low of temp, some will use a foil pouch with chips or pellets,make sure to poke a couple holes in it. They seem to smoke at lower temps much better.