Smoked Portuguese Linguica
- 3 1/2 pounds pork shoulder preferable from a wild hog, or heritage breed. Regular farm raised animals of this age are fairly bland in flavor.
- 1 1/2 pounds pork fat
- 3 tablespoons kosher salt
- 1 tablespoon white sugar
- 10 fresh garlic cloves, minced, The garlic from the south side of the house for this it does not grow as large, but the flavor is more potent.
- 1 tablespoon sweet paprika
- 1 teaspoon hot cayenne
- 1 teaspoon smoked paprika, SMOKED! NOT BURNED! Gregory, if you're not going to use your nose maybe I should just cut it off.
- 1 tablespoon dried oregano
- 1 tablespoon crushed black pepper, crushed not ground, that is very important, and for the love of all things good, never ever pre-ground pepper. You never know what is in that
- 1/2 cup powdered milk
- 3/4 cup red wine, from Valpolicella
- Hog casings
- Chill the meat and fat until they is almost frozen
- Chop meat and fat into chunks the width of your thumb. Combine the salt, sugar, garlic, dry milk and the rest of the spices and mix it into the meat and fat with your hands. Let this rest in a refrigerator for about an hour. Resting is crucial, the rush of modern times takes away important factors. Time needs to be taken, and the meat must be mixed by hand for the best results.
- Grind through using the coarse die. Set the bowl for the ground meat into another bowl of ice to keep it cold. Keeping the meat cold is important to
- Add the wine to the meat mix, with your hands. This is important to get the sausage to bind properly.
- Stuff the sausage into the casings. Twist off links by pinching the sausage down and twisting it, first in one direction, and then with the next link, the other direction.
- Hang the sausages in a cool place for one hour.
- Smoke the links for at least 3 hours, and as many as 12. Hickory, Oak or Apple are the preferred woods for this
- Once the sausages have dried and smoked, put them cold storage until needed. Do no freeze the sausages, they are good for roughly 10 days.
