Breakfast Blend - ☺♥

This recipe is pure serendipity and it resulted from one of my experiments to perfect breakfast sausage. Here is what happened ... I kept changing the ratio of potato flour to pork, as well as doing herb and spice modifications with each experiment. What I wound up creating was a product that has characteristics and taste of both breakfast sausage and scrapple. Wow! I never ate anything like that before! It is really good and you sure do want to make some. I know you will be pleasantly surprised.

I am dedicating this recipe to my deceased best friend, Morrie Shaffer, as today is the anniversary of his death. Why Morrie? He would have eaten a ton of this stuff and loved it! And I would have really enjoyed making it for him.

I decided to call this stuff Breakfast Blend as I couldn't develop any meaningful combination of the words sausage and scrapple without creating something difficult to pronounce. Maybe I'll figure out a more appropriate name later ... Like "Cellulite Plus!" When fried it looks like scrapple but the composition and taste make it seem like a sausage/scrapple mixture.

Without further ado I will now proceed with providing this recipe to you, noting that I am experimenting further with this novel product and that means the recipe shown below has been changed already from my first attempt.

Ingredients: (makes about 6 pounds of Breakfast Blend ... [but a half recipe is much easier to make])

• 3 pounds of boneless skinless raw pork shoulder containing 10 percent fat (start with a four pound piece of pork shoulder containing bone and skin)
• 6 oz. of fresh beef liver
• 1 cup of stone ground cornmeal
• 1 1/4 cups of potato flour
• 1 1/2 quarts of water
• 1 tsp. of ground cardamom
• 1/4 cup of dried sage
• 3 tbsp. of dried marjoram
• 3/4 tsp. of ground mace
• 3/4 tsp. of ground thyme
• 3/4 tsp. of ground coriander
• 3 tbsp. of sea salt
• 2 tbsp. of ground black pepper
• 1 tbsp. of brown sugar
• 1/8 tsp. of cayenne pepper
• 3 tbsp. of agar agar (you can buy this versatile thickening agent inexpensively at www.bulkfoods.com)
• Crisco® shortening for pre-greasing baking dishes and for frying the completed Breakfast Blend

Directions:

Cut up and grind the pork and pork fat from the pork shoulder using a butcher knife on a wood cutting board and, of course, your meat grinder or meat grinder attachment for your electric mixer. While cutting the meat to fit into your meat grinder remove and set aside any large areas that are entirely fat, but keep the smaller areas of fat.

You want about 10 percent fat and 90 percent lean pork. You can weigh the lean meat with a kitchen scale and then add enough fat to increase the weight by roughly 10 percent. Discard any excess pork fat. Note also that the weighing allows you to know exactly what weight of meat and fat that you are processing, so you can make any necessary adjustments to the amounts of other ingredients based on that weight.

Process the cut up pork and fat through your meat grinder. I like to do two passes through the meat grinder, the first time with the large holes disk and the second time with the small holes disk. Process the liver through the meat grinder during the second grinding with the small holes disk.

Use your electric mixer and regular beater on medium speed to pulverize and blend the ground pork meat with the ground pork fat and the liver to create a uniform pasty mixture. Operate the mixer at medium speed for five minutes. But stop the mixer every minute or two and use a plastic or rubber spatula to force the meat away from the sides of the mixing bowl above the beater and away from the top of the beater.

Note that the volume of meat and other ingredients processed at any one time may have to be adjusted based on the capacity of the electric mixer bowl and the size of the beater. The idea is you want to assure good mixing by not exceeding the capacity of your mixer bowl to hold and then properly mix all of the ingredients. If you need to do the processing in two batches then split the ingredients and processing described into two batches to assure the final product is uniform.

Add the water to the mixer bowl gradually while mixing on low speed. Allow time for each water addition to mix with the other contents thoroughly.

Add the potato flour and the stone ground cornmeal to the mixer bowl gradually while continuing to mix.

Add the herbs/seasoning ingredients and the agar agar to the mixer bowl and mix on medium speed for five minutes, pausing after each minute or two to use the spatula to force any part of the mixture from the sides of the mixing bowl above the beater and also away from the top of the beater.

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees F, using the convection setting if you have that option.

Dispense the mixture into two to three glass baking dishes of the size used to bake bread. Fill each baking dish to within 3/4 of an inch of the top edge. Insert a spatula to find and eliminate any air pockets. Smooth the top of the mixture in each dish with the spatula, making it even and flat. Cover each dish tightly with aluminum foil.

Put the baking dishes into the oven and let the Breakfast Blend cook for two hours at 200 degrees F.

Remove the baking dishes from the oven and let them cool on a wooden cutting board to room temperature, covered.

At this point the Breakfast Blend is complete. Uncover the baking dishes and, if necessary, use a regular kitchen knife to separate the outer surface of the Breakfast Blend from the sides and ends of the baking dishes. Then invert each dish over a wood cutting board to cause the loaf of Breakfast Blend to come out of the baking dish. Tap the baking dish gently, if necessary, on the cutting board to make the loaf of Breakfast Blend come out. Cut each loaf of Breakfast Blend into slices anywhere from 1/2 of an inch thick to 3/4 of an inch thick.

Melt 1 tbsp. of Crisco® shortening (or rendered bacon fat) in a small skillet on medium high heat. Alternatively, you can use a larger skillet and two or three tbsp. of Crisco® or rendered bacon fat. Add a few slices of Breakfast Blend to the skillet, allowing at least one inch of room on all sides to make later flipping of each piece easy. Fry the pieces of Breakfast Blend. Three to four minutes per side (the required time depends on the thickness you chose for the slices) is enough time if you start with a hot skillet on medium high heat. I flip the pieces over only once during frying with a spatula, once I am sure the first side exposed to the heat is crisp. Note that you can adjust the heat lower to a medium or medium low setting during the frying of the second side. That will avoid having the shortening or bacon fat smoke due to excessive temperature level.

Now we get to the fun part! Put the slices on a plate and enjoy eating them. You earned this reward! Actually, you might make a few eggs and a piece of buttered toast first to accompany this delight. Remember also to have a nice fresh cup of hot coffee.

Now it is time to process the sliced loaves of Breakfast Blend for freezer storage.

I put the Breakfast Blend slices on waxed paper on cookie trays and freeze them in the deep freeze for a few hours.

I then vacuum seal the pieces of frozen Breakfast Blend, two slices per bag, and then immediately put the sealed bags back into the deep freeze for storage.

Use the Breakfast Blend within three months for optimal quality/taste. Take a bag of the frozen pieces, open it and place the frozen pieces into a skillet in which a tablespoon of Crisco® shortening has already been melted and the heat turned off. Allow fifteen to twenty minutes for the frozen pieces to partially thaw, and then turn on the heat to medium high and fry them as described above, allowing some extra time for the skillet to get hot.

I know you will really enjoy this unique breakfast food. It is very tasty, crisp on the outside and tender and moist on the inside.