Show All ItemsStep 1: Create the tang zhongShow All Items This water-roux starter is the secret ingredient to creating super soft bread that lasts for days without adding any unhealthy additives or conditioners.  To create this, do the following: 1/3 cup bread flour The ingredients will always have a weight ratio of 1:5. I like using the designated amounts above because it is easy to remember. Mix the ingredients in a pot and heat up. Keep mixing the lumps away. Once the mixture reaches 65 deg C, it will quickly get the the point where the mixture thickens up and you should be able to create indentations that will stay as shown in the image. You can eye-ball this or use a cooking thermometer to check.  Take the pot off the heat and let it cool.  Store it in the fridge overnight with a piece of saran wrap directly on top to avoid drying out. The tang zhong will be good for about 3 days, but make a new batch if it turns grey. This method was first published by Yvonne Chen's in Bread Doctor.

For more information, check out the book here. « PreviousNext »View All Steps DownloadWell, just look at that!  After all my anxiety and the lack of sausage stuffer before I started this adventure, on the third day I ate hot dogs.  They looked like hot dogs, smelled like hot dogs, and tasted like that perfect hot dog you always dream about (well, at least I dream about hot dogs).  Buy Goodyear Excellence TyresUnbelievably beefy and with a hard snap from the sheep intestine, this was a truly wonderful dog.Houses For Sale On Empress Road Derby Too bad it was such a pain to make them.Laminate Flooring Shenzhen The night before had been a train wreck.  Everything that I feared about making sausages turned out to be true. 

Casings were slippery and broke easily, stuffing was time consuming and messy, and the end product looked dull and gray and far from appetizing.  I had started the last part of the project at 9 p.m., and didn't get to bed until well after midnight.  By that time I never wanted to see another sausage again.  What was the problem? First of all, I figured out why people don't recommend the Kitchen Aid sausage stuffer attachment.  Though it was cheap (about 10 bucks), it is awful at stuffing sausage, especially when the meat is a paste.  The meat sticks to everything and won't go down the hole.  It took me nearly an hour and a half to stuff 10 hot dogs.  Never has anyone in humanity slaved over a hot dog more than I did.  I will never do this again until I get a nice, shiny sausage stuffer that can do the work.  That is a promise. It is also a little discouraging to have to wait three days to have a hot dog, but that's just the way Michael Ruhlman and his book Charcuterie likes to do it. 

I have no reason to question his judgment.  And, after tasting one of these incredible dogs, its hard to think about eating any other hot dog and feeling anywhere as satisfied. Hot Dogs Part 2 (click here for Part 1) Remove the ground meat from the fridge (catch up here), dump in the spices, and pour in the corn syrup.  The best way to mix everything together is with your hands. Spread the mixture on a baking tray until it is relatively flat and then place it in the freezer for 30 minutes. While that is cooling down, get out the sheep intestines.  I had mine stashed in a little plastic baggy.  Soak them in lukewarm water for 30 minutes, changing the water halfway through. Ruhlman talks about washing out the insides of the intestines after the 30 minute soak, and I tried my hardest, but I just couldn't figure out the best way to do it.  I got a little water in, but then letting that water flow through 10 feet of intestines turned out to be an enormous ordeal. 

Anyone have a better way to do it? Remove the meat from the freezer and regrind it through the small die. Puree the mixture in a food processor.  I probably put too much in at one time, as it had trouble starting at first, and then only really pureed at the bottom half of the mixture.  I had to keep scraping the sides.  Next time I'll do this in batches.  It should be a paste. Finally, the tricky part.  I wasn't sure exactly how to get this done, so I had to go back to some old River Cottage episodes to remember how to begin the stuffing process.  Slide the entire 10 feet It  sheep intestines onto the nozzle.  It should fit, thought it needs a lot of water to keep it from sticking to the nozzle. Now it is time to stuff.  Load the machine with the meat, and then wait for some meat to come out.  then slide the casing over the meat. As you can see by this really horrible looking photo, it's not as easy as it sounds.  I realized quickly that the casings needed to be completely stuffed, not just partially filled. 

To fix this, I clamped down one end and filled the casing until looked completely full, and then slid a little more of the casing out.  These looked a lot thicker than I thought they would be. But that wasn't even close to the biggest problem.  Like I mentioned above, the Kitchen Aid isn't very good at this, and it took me ages to stuff the meat down the hole.  I would recommend not doing this unless you have a real sausage stuffer.  If anyone has any other tricks or products to recommend, please let me know. Somehow, I managed to get most of the meat stuffed into casings.  I'm not sure why it called for 10 feet of casings, because I didn't come anywhere close to using it all.  Maybe it's because the casings were thicker than normal hot dogs. Portion them off into six inch pieces by twisting them.  I ended up with 10 hot dogs. Since it was about midnight, I stashed them in the fridge and waited to cook them the next day. Michael Ruhlman suggests hot smoking the dogs at this point, and I have no reason to fault his advice, especially since I was using his recipe.