Home-made scrapple

[Guest guest]

I'm experimenting with making scrapple right now as another way to include

liver in our diet. My wife is not a very big liver fan; she likes some pate,

and she likes most of the " sneaky ways of preparing it that I've tried...like

blending pureed liver with ground meat prior to browning the meat.

I stumbled across some recipes for scrapple several months ago. Then, about

two months ago, I found some packaged scrapple in the meat case of one of my

local " up-scale " groceries. My wife and I both loved it! For those who aren't

familiar with scrapple, it's apparently a pennsylvania-dutch and east-coast

recipe.

This is basically what it is:

any ground meat (pork or chicken are most traditional)

ground liver

stock

corn meal

" breakfast type " sausage seasonings

The only things that I didn't really like about the store-bought scrapple were:

It wasn't organic, free-range or pastured, and it used corn meal. I'm not much

of a fan of corn -- whether it's fed to people or livestock.

I'd been wanting to incorporate more oats and less wheat into my diet for the

pre-formed Gamma Linolenic Acid in oats, so I decided to try using organic

old-fashioned rolled oats and oat bran in place of the corn meal. I used 1 lb

Bieler brand pork sausage and about 1.5 lbs local partially pastured " nearly

organic " lamb liver.

I have yet to master the time management necessary to make my own stock more

than about once every six months, so I instead used a little extra seasoning,

" Real Salt " brand salt, and a couple of packets of gelatin.

I then took about 2 cups each of rolled oats and oat bran and mixed it with 3.5

cups of water and 0.5 cup of kefir. I let that soak at room temp for about 30

hours. Wow, that smells good at the end!

When the grain was ready, I simmered the liver in a very small amount of water

until cooked. I sent it through the food processor until smooth, and then mixed

it with the raw pork sausage and 3-4 cups of water and 2 packets of gelatin

until I had a soupy smooth mixture. Then I brought the mixture up to a simmer.

After letting it simmer for about 5 minutes, I stirred in the oat mixture.

Over medium-low heat, I stirred the mixture until it became quite thick and hot

(I checked the temp when my arm finally got tired of stirring the by now very

thick mixture -- it was just over 160 deg F). At this point, you spoon the

mixture into a lightly greased loaf pan, cover it and let it set in the

refrigerator overnight. It's served by slicing slightly thinner than bread,

and frying until browned. Goes great with eggs for breakfast.

I'm still experimenting with the amounts and procedures for this. The result

was a little less firm than I think it should be. I didn't include an amount

for the salt for a couple of reasons. It will depend on the saltiness of other

ingredients: sausage vs ground meat, stock vs water. I also thought that my

finished product could have used more salt than I used (which was probably

about 1 tablespoon).

Has anyone else experimented with scrapple? I had found a number of recipes on

the Internet. A couple even used oatmeal. Unfortunately, none of them

soaked/cultured the grain component. Also, many of them were truly

old-fashioned recipes (ie. 1 hog's head, 1 hog's liver, water to cover, enough

cornmeal to thicken, etc.) Needless to say, my local organic co-op here in

Minneapolis doesn't carry any hogs' heads, and I wasn't sure how to convert

that into pounds of meat!

In the future, I'd like to use 100% pastured beef or lamb. I'd also like to

use real stock. I'll probably switch to using all oat bran instead of any

oatmeal, too. If and when I get this " perfected, " I'll post a more specific

recipe.

Kroyer

Minneapolis, MN

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