Recipe - FAILED. Please help me talk it out.
Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2021 15:09
Okay, so earlier today I did a large batch that was supposed to emulate the flavour profile of Chinese and Taiwanese Lu Rou Fan, which is a simple pork with predominantly soy sauce and 5 spice as the standout flavours. I posited a question regarding salt vs. sodium with regards to working out how much salt to use since soy sauce is a major component and I didn't want a blisteringly salty end product. I thought I did the math properly and worked out how much salt was in the soy sauce I used, made the sausages, and even at the mixing stage I had doubts regarding the bind. Gave it a bit more time to mix but plunged ahead with stuffing. I just tasted it and the flavour is great but I'd say at best it reached about 70% bind. It had all the typical hallmarks you'd expect: kinda dry and a bit crumbly.
Here's the recipe:
2.100 kg pork
350g 5 spice
220g sugar
375ml soy sauce (each 15ml contains 1 gram sodium, which should equate to 2.5g total salt if my math is correct)
= additional 62.5g salt
215g salt
375ml rice wine (not rice wine vinegar)
60g ea. onion and garlic
30ml orange extract
45g dried orange rind
It certainly tasted salty as it normally would. With 277.5g of salt in 2.100kg meat = 13% salt.
So, one would think the culprit is the combined acidity of the soy sauce and rice wine, right? I'm happy to eliminate the wine since I don't really think it showed through very much and wasn't as much of a factor in the flavour profile as I would have thought/liked. I've read that soy sauce typically has an acidity of 1% lactic acid. I've seen people talk about using baking soda to neutralize acid before using ingredients in sausage. Any idea how I can do the math of how much to use to kill off the acid in the soy sauce?
I also need to figure out what to do with 45 lbs. of no sausage product that I can't sell. I thinking of breaking it all out of casing and repacking it as sausage crumble for stir fry and dumpling/gyoza? Any other ideas?
Here's the recipe:
2.100 kg pork
350g 5 spice
220g sugar
375ml soy sauce (each 15ml contains 1 gram sodium, which should equate to 2.5g total salt if my math is correct)
= additional 62.5g salt
215g salt
375ml rice wine (not rice wine vinegar)
60g ea. onion and garlic
30ml orange extract
45g dried orange rind
It certainly tasted salty as it normally would. With 277.5g of salt in 2.100kg meat = 13% salt.
So, one would think the culprit is the combined acidity of the soy sauce and rice wine, right? I'm happy to eliminate the wine since I don't really think it showed through very much and wasn't as much of a factor in the flavour profile as I would have thought/liked. I've read that soy sauce typically has an acidity of 1% lactic acid. I've seen people talk about using baking soda to neutralize acid before using ingredients in sausage. Any idea how I can do the math of how much to use to kill off the acid in the soy sauce?
I also need to figure out what to do with 45 lbs. of no sausage product that I can't sell. I thinking of breaking it all out of casing and repacking it as sausage crumble for stir fry and dumpling/gyoza? Any other ideas?