MINNESOTA-STYLE MAPLE SAUSAGE: A Celebration of the Maple Syrup Harvesting Season

Hi folks, Chef G here again, and I'm glad to be back with another one of my award-winning recipes--just as YOU are probably glad to HAVE me back.  I can't imagine what my tens of fans are eating without my expert guidance, though I'd be glad to hear about it.  Don't let the fact that I am "America's Top Satirical Celebrity Chef" intimidate you.  Go ahead and send a message.

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The dish I am creating today was inspired by something I experienced this morning while on my daily bicycle ride.  I was cruising along, looking at the landscape, when my eyes were diverted from a world of gray and brown by a bunch of bright blue objects down in the flood plain of the Vermillion River.  Of course I had to go down there to investigate.

  Spots of blue in a world of brown.

Big blue bags have sprouted on the trunks of maple trees.

Yes, the cold evenings and warm afternoons of March mean maple syrup season has come to the upper mid-west, and that's a pretty big deal for some folks.  I used to work with a guy whose family has been tapping maple trees for generations.  One time he gave me a pint bottle of homemade maple syrup and told me that it took something like 20-gallons of sap to produce it.  He said it took days of boiling to reduce the sap to syrup.  I was amazed at that information because I had always assumed the stuff was already maple syrup when it oozed out of the trees.  I accepted the gift as if it was a bottle of precious moonshine whiskey. 

I guess that's why REAL maple syrup costs about 10 times as much as Log Cabin or Mrs. Butterworth's.  In fact, I question whether those national brands are made from actual maple sap or from some kind of evil concoction of chemicals.

Long gone are the days when maple syrup-ers would 
hang a pail underneath a spike.  Blue bags seem to be 
all the rage now.  Look closely and you can see this blue
 bag is less than 10% full.  As I watched, though, I could
 see steady drip, drip, drips dripping into the bag.

The maple tree grove was not on private property, but knowing how valuable those bags of sap are, I had an eerie feeling that I was being watched.  You can be sure I kept a close eye out for booby traps and shotguns while hiking out of there.  I survived, and now I'm ready to get down to the business of cooking.

And there was no question in my mind that I'd somehow have to incorporate maple syrup into my creation.  That's when I when I rode my bike back to my laboratory-of-deliciousness (my kitchen) to fix up a nice batch of Minnesota-Style Maple Sausage Patties.

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THE INGREDIENTS:

A mixture of 1/2 lb. ground beef and 1/2 lb. ground pork
1/2 Cup Minced Onion
1 Clove Minced Garlic
1 Tsp. Minced Fresh Thyme
1 Tsp. Dried Sage
1/4 Tsp. Crushed Red Pepper Flakes
1 Tsp. Salt
1 Tsp. Fennel Seed
1/2 Tsp. Mustard Seed
1 Tablespoon Butter
One Tablespoon Vinegar
1/2 CUP Good Quality Maple Syrup 

BLENDING THE INGREDIENTS:

This is the fun part.  Too many professionals chefs and do-it-yourself cooks would pour all the ingredients together in a bowl and mix them together with electric mixers or slotted spoons or whisks or spatulas or any other contraption they can find to keep their delicate hands from getting all messy and greasy.  A master celebrity chef like me mixes it with his hands.

I give my food the tender loving care it deserves--as if I was holding a newborn baby for the first time.  I would never hold anybody's newborn baby with spoons, spatulas or mixer blades.  That would be WRONG.  That's one of the many things that sets me apart from run-of-the-mill chefs like the ones you see on TV.

Plus, your fingers still have some residual flavor on them from the onions and garlic you just minced.  Why wouldn't you want to work that flavor back into the sausage mixture?  There may be some other nice flavors on your hands as well.  Surely you've been petting your dog or cat, or wiping some grime off your bike chain.  Maybe there are even some tasty granules of dirt on your hands.  My grandparents often told me a person can safely eat a pound of dirt in his lifetime without dying from it.  They were very wise.

The way I see it, as long as you washed your hands this morning after going #2, you're probably not going to add anything too nasty to your sausage by hand-mixing it and then forming it into several patties.  (This recipe should yield about 10 of them.)

I would, however, recommend washing your hands AFTER the hand-mixing process.  Otherwise, everything you touch will be coated with a slimy mix of maple syrup and fatty meat, and that will result in your spouse yelling at you for getting the refrigerator handle, the faucets, and the silverware drawer all sticky and greasy.

FRYING THE SAUSAGE:

This phase of the recipe COULD be done on the stovetop, but I prefer to do it on a charcoal grill.  The grill imparts a little smoky flavor to the Minnesota-Style Maple Sausage.

When your charcoals are white-hot, place a cast iron pan on the grate directly above them.  Add olive oil.  When the oil is nice and hot, toss a few of the patties onto the pan.  Enjoy the sound of the sizzle.

Take a few seconds to admire the look of the sausage
 in anticipation of the sound of the sizzle. 

You can't hear the sound of the sizzle in a photo, so I
made an audio-visual aid, which is coming up next.

Frying is all about the sizzle, for shizzle.  I don't know what made me say that, but it's true.

When the sausages were cooked to "medium" I took them out of the pan.  Then, to complete the brunch, I cracked a couple of eggs right into the sausage grease.  I let them fry for a couple minutes and flipped them for over-easy perfection.

Chef G. shows off another one of his exceptional meals.
He highly approves of the deliciousness.

Thanks for reading.  I hope to see you next time.

-Chef G.