Meats and Sausages
Pieniska
This is a classical Lithuanian sausage, made with dry milk and eggs. "Pien" means in Lithuanian "milk".
| Materials | Metric | US |
|---|---|---|
| Lean beef | 350 g | 0.77 lb. |
| Lean pork | 600 g | 1.32 lb. |
| Non-fat dry milk | 30 g | 1.00 oz. |
| Eggs | 2 eggs | 2 eggs |
| Water | 150 ml | 1/4 pint |
Ingredients per 1000g (1 kg) of materials
| Salt | 20 g | 3-1/2 tsp. |
| Cure #1 | 2.5 g | 1/2 tsp. |
| Black pepper | 2.0 g | 1 tsp. |
| Allspice | 1.0 g | 1/2 tsp. |
| Sugar | 2.0 g | 1 tsp. |
| Nutmeg | 0.3 g | 1/3 tsp. |
Instructions
- Grind beef and pork through 2-3 mm plate (1/8").Refreeze ground meat for 30 minutes, dissolve salt, cure, pepper, and spices in 1/2 of water. Grind meats again, slowly adding water with dissolved spices.
- Mix ground beef with remaining 1/2 of water then add lean pork and mix again. Add dry milk and eggs and mix until the mixture feels sticky.
- Stuff into 60-65 mm beef or fibrous synthetic casings.
- Bake for 60-90 minutes at 100 C (212 F). Stop baking when internal meat temperature reaches 40 C (104 F). Don't overcook, you are baking the surface of the sausage only.
- Cook in 80 C (176 F) water until internal meat temperature reaches 72 C (160 F).
- Shower with cold water, then cool in the air to 15 C (59 F). The sausage is ready to eat but must be kept in refrigerator. It does not have the smoky flavor yet.
- The following step will make it a dry sausage. Smoke for 6-7 hours with medium hot smoke at 35-45 C (95-113 F).
- Keep at room temperature (< 18 C, 64 F) or refrigerate.
