Yorkshire Polony

[stuartcarter]

This is a recipe I have been hunting for way more years than I care to think about. I found lots of recipes for Bologna/Baloney, but Polony has been an exercise in frustration, because the recipes out there are all... OK. Just average. And usually somewhat incomplete.

Well, between a book and a load of random comments on various websites, I finally manged to put together a recipe that matches my memories of the Polony my mother would buy from a butcher in Petersgate, York, whenever we went there on family visits / holidays / why not....

The 2 drivers for the obsession with finding it were that it's a link to my mother, who I lost to cancer 3 days before I got my green card, and because Polony was hard to find outside Yorkshire (decent Polony is another matter!

So here we are. A recipe I managed to put together from lots of different sources, that matches my childhood and early adult memories of Polony: it's a very mild, slightly salty, smooth textured sausage. Enjoy it with black pudding, flat caps, and whippets!

[wheels]

Stuart,



Wot No Recipe!

Phil

[stuartcarter]

Yorkshire Polony
First things first: no, this is not a recipe for Baloney / Bologna / etc. This is for Yorkshire Polony, a mild cooked sausage from Yorkshire, NE England.

You will need some special equipment here: a meat grinder, a sausage stuffer, and inedible fibre sausage casings.

In this ingredient list I will give you percentages of ingredients rather than weight.

Lean Pork 100.00%
Pork fat 33.33%
Cold water 20.00%
Rice Flour 13.33%
Rusk 13.33%
Salt 3.32%
White Pepper 1.03%
Ground Mace 0.41%
Ground Coriander 0.21%
Ground Nutmeg 0.21%
Ground Cinnamon OR ginger 0.10%
All the ingredients are listed as a percentage of the weight of the pork. This makes sure that all the ingredients are in proportion, and you already have a set of digital kitchen scales, don’t you?

In the case of the mace, this is a difficult and expensive spice to find, so I just add its weight to the weight of the nutmeg and use previously ground nutmeg instead (the kind you buy in the spice aisle of your grocery store). The spice fade will allow the nutmeg to present in a more mace-ish way rather than pungent nutmeg.

TECHNIQUE
Blend the rusk, rice flour, and water, and place in the fridge for 1 hour before you progress to the next step. If you have made your own rusk, keep a couple of chunks of dry rusk back for the end of the grinding process. Place the meat grinder into your freezer at this time so it can get super cold.

Cut the pork according to directions on your meat grinder then grind the pork using the finest grinder setting into a very cold bowl.

Grind the fat into the pork, similarly cut according to instructions. If you kept some dry rusk back, run this through the grinder now as this will help clean out the remnants from the grinder – this just helps with cleanup.

Add all the salt and the ground spices to the ground meat and fat.

Add the soaked rusk and flour to the above.

Work the mix thoroughly with your hands until it all comes together in a sticky mess – this takes a while, probably 5 to 15 minutes to be decisively vague! You will know you have the right texture when it is a huge old sticky mess that won’t fall off your hands. If you’d like to see what this looks like, Scott Rea has a fantastic sausage making tutorial on Youtube.

Place the sausage mix into your fridge and thoroughly chill for an hour. While this is chilling, put your sausage stuffer into the fridge as well. In sausage making, “keep it frosty” is your motto. Place your fibre sausage casings into warm water at this time, according to the instructions with the casings.

While this is all cooling down, set up your largest stock pot or sous vide system with lots of water. You are looking for a temperature of 175f/80c.

Stuff the casings with a generous amount of stuffing. You want them full, but don’t stuff them rigid, you need to allow some room for expansion while cooking. If you leave a generous space at the end of the casing (a half inch to an inch?), you should be OK.

(Once all the casings are stuffed, you may have a little of the sausagemeat left over. If you have a frying pan this isn’t a problem…. yum.)

Tie off the casings and place in your stock pot / sous vide container. Cook for 90 minutes. Pull out the casings and place directly into a bowl full of ice water to crash cool the sausage. Once thoroughly cooled, place in your fridge. Allow the polony to sit at least overnight before you break into it.

HOW TO COOK
Cut off however many slices you want and gently fry in butter till golden brown and delicious. Serve as part of a full English breakfast, or make it into a sandwich, or just eat it with knife and fork. Or fingers. I won’t judge you

HOW TO MAKE LOW FAT POLONY
Don’t.

[stuartcarter]

link to recipe on my blog:



Recipe is on my food blog, http://www.addictedtocanning.com/blog/2018/09/10/yorkshire-polony/amp/ Addicted To Canning

[stuartcarter]

thank you, wheels, for sorting out posting the recipe here... (insert smiley here )

[wheels]

No problem.

The same (or very similar) recipe is here in its original measurements: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=12621

It's from Gerrard's 'Book of the Meat Trade' (p296).

Phil

[stuartcarter]

that was one of the recipes that gave me the final clue for the full recipe, along with Scott Rea showing the emulsification process for bangers...

[wheels]

It's generally not an emulsified sausage (That's a term used in the sausage world for hot dog consistency). But it is well ground/minced on a fine plate. I'm guessing that you're referring to the mixing process - it's described on here in most "My sausage is dry/texture not right" threads.

Nowadays, commercial versions generally have ascorbate and nitrite added - I quite like the colour that it gives. Personally, when I made this recipe my notes say that I thought that the Mace came through a little too strongly.

The problem is that there are so few recipes around for it. Those that are are generally either Finney's or Gerrard's re-hatched ( "The Complete Sausage Cookbook by Jack Sleight" for example where Gerrard's amounts are just halved and the salt reduced fractionally). They both have the spices you list. One of Finney's adds Ginger and Cayenne. Maynard Davies omits Mace, Nutmegs and Cinnamon in favour of Ginger, Cayenne, Cloves & Paprika - not the flavours I remember having - maybe it's the Red Pudding that some Staffs folk have referred to, rather than a Yorkshire Polony. The Wedlinydomowe site has one and there's another one is in Douglas's Encyclopedia.

Phil

[stuartcarter]

I am truly appreciating your feedback, wheels. This is how recipes are properly tested

I will say that this recipe matches my memories of the Polony from the butcher in Petersgate, York, which was a seriously old school butcher. I am, however, working entirely off memory... next time we visit the UK to visit family I will have to arrange some cross-border smuggling of Polony

[wheels]

Chance are that the butcher probably used Gerrard's recipe.

Phil

[stuartcarter]

that's not a cheap book....

[wheels]

No, these type of books seem to be getting more and more expensive. Maynard Davies's 'Manual of a Bacon Curer' is stupid money.

Phil

[denty632]

check out abebooks.co.uk. They are all US based but...

https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/Sear ... &kn=&isbn=

but 'Manual of a Bacon Curer, JESUS!!

[stuartcarter]

oh, nice and cheap

[Wal Footrot]

This is virtually identical to a saveloy recipe. The only thing different is the poaching method. So I'm wondering if polony is a Yorkshire term for saveloy (red sausage to some).