5 Things To Do With Porketta

5 Ways to Cook Smokehaus Porketta

So, you’ve got your beautiful hand-rolled slab of heaven – now what? There are many ways to cook Porketta, including a straightforward, roast til it’s hot approach. But for the creative-hearted and culinarily curious we have assembled a short list of preparations for your dining pleasure.

1. Low and Slow: Roast Porketta at 325, covered and doused with a cup or so of liquid (white wine, lager, chicken stock or even a mild fruit juice such as apple will do). Keep it covered for the first hour and a half, then uncover and continue to roast until fall-apart tender (maybe another 45-60 minutes). When ready, take the roast out, let it sit for 5 minutes, and then shred like your life depends on it. You can use forks, tongs, or even gloved hands (but be careful – it will be hot!). Eat the whole delicious mixture over mashed potatoes, with your favorite pasta, or on a hard roll.

2. Grill it: Because the Porketta is fully cooked, you need not worry about finessing your fire too much. You can reheat the Porketta in your oven at a higher temperature (say, 375) and when it because hot to the touch, transfer to a hot grill to crisp up the exterior crust. The results will be crunchy, smoky, and oh-so-meaty.

3. Cute it Up: Cube it up? Cube your Porketta by cutting it into ½ inch chunks. Sprinkle with paprika and gently fry on a medium-heat skillet until the sides are crispy. Skewer them with other bite-sized cubed items like potatoes, cocktail onions, fennel, or sweet peppers (or our favorite – all of the above!). Serve on your holiday menu, or as an appetizer for a dinner party, or as a very high class midnight snack.

4. Take it to the Club: Make an incredibly savory club sandwich by layering thin slices of Porketta, right out of the package (it’s fully cooked, you know) with shaved fennel, sundried tomatoes, and crispy pancetta, and lemon basil mayonnaise (you can just amp up your Hellman’s with a dusting of lemon zest and handful of shredded basil or you can make your own). You can serve it on stirato or focaccia, but if you’re feeling sinister might we recommend a triple-decker with slices of your local grocery store’s most pillowy version of Italian bread, toasted.

5.  Go Full Holiday Roast: Place your Porketta on a rack in a large roasting pan, uncovered. Begin roasting the Porketta at 375 while you prepare your other ingredients. Wash fingerling potatoes or quarter them, quarter fennel, rutabaga, and or sweet potatoes. Toss all with olive oil and light salt (the Porketta is going to help flavor them all) and arrange them in the now-hot roaster when they’re ready (make sure you take the roaster out of the oven to accomplish this – safety first!). Cook all until vegetables are soft – around 45 minutes to an hour. Serve with something green, like Swiss chard, Brussels sprouts, or green beans. Buon appetito!

Andouille Stuffing Recipe

Kick the heat just a notch up with adding some Andouille to your super secret family recipe or maybe try ours out this Holiday Season.

Andouille Stuffing Recipe

• 1 lb Andouille Sausage, diced

• 3/4 c (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter plus more for baking dish

• 1 lb of good-quality day-old white bread, rye bread, cornbread, or a mix, torn into 1" pieces (about 10 cups)

• 1 1/2 cups of fine-diced shallot

• 1 1/2 cups 1/4" medium-dice celery, with leaves

• 1/2 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley

• 2 T chopped fresh sage

• 1 T chopped fresh rosemary

• 1 T chopped fresh thyme

• 1 ts salt

• 1 ts freshly ground pepper

• 2 1/2 cups broth of your choice, divided

• 2 large eggs

 Preparation

1. Pre-heat oven to 250F. Butter a 13x9x2 inch baking fish and set aside. Scatter bread(s) in a single layer on a rimmed baking sheet. Bake, stirring occasionally, until dried out, about 1 hour. Let cool; transfer to a large bowl.

2. Meanwhile, melt 3/4 cup butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat; sauté Andouille until browned and crisped and remove from heat.

3. In the same pan, throw shallots and celery. Sauté until golden, about 10 minutes. Add to bowl with bread; stir in herbs, salt, and pepper.Pour in 1 1/4 cups broth and toss. Let cool.

4. Preheat oven to 350F. Whisk 1 1/4 cups broth and eggs in a small bowl. Add to bread mixture; fold gently until thoroughly combined. Transfer to prepared dish, cover with foil, and bake about 40 minutes.

5. Bake dressing, uncovered, until set and top is browned and crisp, 40-45 minutes longer (if chilled, add 10-15 minutes).

Top Five Boursin Recipe Ideas

Boursin is a versatile, flavorful, creamy addition to many meals. We started making Boursin at Northern Waters Smokehaus on a whim, and it has now become one of our most popular cheese case items. Over the years, we’ve learned to concoct some simple dishes with our Boursin, adding an herbal, lemony lift to veggies and meats alike. Our Mother’s Day Gift Box is a favorite - the combination of smoked Sockeye salmon, crispy crackers, and fluffy cheese is an elegant, binge-worthy snack. Here are the top 5 Boursin recipe ideas (so far) for you. For more exact recipes, email creative [@] nwsmokehaus.com and we’ll do our best to get you cooking with Boursin to mathematical perfection!

Five time-tested, Smokehaus-approved recipe ideas for our Boursin:

#5: Boursin and Endive Bites

Belgian endive is almost always available at the grocery store, even here in the Great White North. These delicate little torpedoes of green are crisp, sweet, and very slightly bitter - a perfect foil for creamy, citric, floral Boursin. Simply trim the endive ends and gently separate the leaves. You will find a delicate little shovel - a great conduit for many mediums, and excellent for a dollop of Boursin. Use a teaspoon to smear the Boursin or get fancy and pipe it (with a pastry bag or clipped plastic one - up to you). We garnish ours with jolly little Sweetie Drops, or pickled Peruvian peppers, but feel free to use your own favorite garnish - paprika, parsley, anything pickled - or go au naturale and let the bite speak for itself.

#4: Steak and Boursin

What can we say? Compound butter + grilled beef = heaven on earth. Useful on any cut, but especially the fatty, interesting ones, like New York strip, Boursin will be the equivalent of a Valentino gown on Sophia Loren: it will cling to it in all the right places. Salt and pepper your steak, let it get to room temperature, cook it over or under hot flame for your desired temperature, let it rest for 5 minutes, dollop with a Tablespoon of Boursin, and let rest for at least another 5 minutes. Devour, with or without starch to sop up the resulting incredible juices.

#3 Chicken and Boursin Surprise

The real surprise here is that this doesn’t exist at every fast-casual American eatery on the planet. This is a simple yet luxurious meal that is quick to construct, satisfying, and actually makes great leftovers for sandwiches. Pound chicken breasts to a ½ inch thickness, spread an even layer of Boursin approximately ¼ inch thick,  and add a layer of cured muscle meat, like prosciutto, jamon serrano, or copa (if you live near the Smokehaus deli or are a member of our Smokehaus of the Month Club, we recommend asking for our Speck or Lonzino). Roll the cutlets into wheels, secure with toothpicks, sprinkle with salt and pepper, dredge in flour, and fry in good oil until golden and cooked through (165 degrees). Great with buttered, Parmiganno’d pasta, roasted asparagus, or sliced after cooling and served on a leafy green salad.

#2 Boursin Toast

Inspired by a local business that boldly decided to exclusively offer coffee and toast (we miss you, JPH!), we salute the simplicity of a crusty, magnificent slab of Duluth sourdough stuffed into the nearest (and most accommodating) toaster, grilled to pedal-to-the-metal blackish-brownish, and smeared with enough Boursin that it qualifies as a “barge.” Extra points for those who first slather their toast with butter, but enough Boursin will certainly do the trick. Top with sun-ripened tomatoes, crumbled bacon or pancetta, a raisin smiley face (probably gross, but pretty kitschy, no?), or nothing at all.

#1 Boursin and Smoked Turkey Sandwiches

At the risk of redundancy, we here at the Smokehaus are really into sandwiches. We live sandwiches from the moment we flick on our meat case lights and start cutting cucumbers in the morning to the end of the day when Jerry ushers out the last stray customer with a flourish of his vest and stamp on their sandwich card. We fully realize that many would place a steak at #1 on this list, especially considering that a lowly turkey sandwich had secured the top ranking. But we are not many. We are sandwich people. Our original intent for Boursin was on a turkey sandwich, but we quickly realized the delicious nature of said sandwich would backfire and we would have to hire a whole separate person in the summers to exclusively make Boursin to keep up with demand. So here is the catalyst for the hundreds of cute little medicine jars of Boursin we sell, revealed at last, The Green Meanie: buy or make some naan (we use Stonefire, and it’s really good), and warm it in the oven. Slather liberally with Boursin. Aim the point of your naan to the left to orient the sandwich. In a vertical line down the center, place an even row of cucumber slices, basil leaves, pickled jalapenos, and as much smoked turkey as you like (but don’t get crazy, you need to roll this up). Starting at the wide end, roll the sandwich, tucking stray ingredients as you go. Slice in half and savor a Smokehaus secret.

Spring Pasta with Smoked Salmon Recipe

What could be more appropriate to the weather tug-of-war that is Springtime in Duluth, MN than an ample plate of pasta festooned with smoked salmon?  Recently, while filtering through an inbox of email nonsense (due Friday? How about next Monday?) a thrilling word was on a subject line: *( and Rosé) - and we knew a new smoked salmon recipe was in order.

Humans, we made it through another winter. There's something in the air -- maybe it's the sudden sunlight and early storms? Maybe it's the oomph in people's steps? Let's just say we are starting to dream about Rosé.

Whatever your reason might be, we are eager to sip, cook with friends and relax.

The cocktail recipe inspired us to make something light and citrusy. We paired our favorite Haus-smoked salmon with an affordable, fresh and fruity Rosé (we substituted  a bottle of sparkling Rosé for La Vieille Ferme 2015).

*If you don't have a bottle of St. Germain liqueur just laying around in your house, the chilled Rosé is still quite the treat. However, that liquor is like liquid gold. Use it today, use it tomorrow, use it forever. 

Ingredients

½ lb Smoked Alaskan sockeye salmon, cubed

1/2 Shallot, diced

4 Cloves of garlic, diced

1 T Cracked black pepper

1/2 Lemon, zested and juiced

1 C Fresh parsley, chopped

10 Asparagus stalks 228 g (two servings worth)

Dry angel hair pasta

Canola oil or olive oil for cooking

Salt to taste

3 T Butter  

4 T (¼ cup) of White wine (Sauvignon Blanc works great. It’s light, dry, herbal & floral, which will create a nice dimension).  

Directions -

After getting your mise en place all ready (aka prepping your ingredients), get  salted water boiling and cook pasta al dente, strain, toss in 1 T (or so - enough to prevent sticking) olive oil. Save 2 Tablespoons of pasta water -  the gluten will be useful for the sauce.

Heat 1 T of oil and 1 T of butter over medium-high heat. Lightly salt and cook the asparagus until they are nearly tender, 4-5 minutes. Remove the asparagus and set them aside for later. We want the asparagus to be a little undercooked here because we will be adding them back in later.

If the pan seems dry, add a little bit of olive oil to the same pan and sweat shallots over medium heat until they are nearly translucent. Add another 1 T of butter and add the garlic and salmon. Cook, stirring, for a few minutes to combine flavors.

Add  wine and the pasta water you saved. Add the rest of your ingredients (black pepper, lemon zest and juice). Toss in the asparagus and add another tablespoon of butter. Let your ingredients simmer for about 5-7 minutes until the sauce reduces and becomes slightly thickened and reduced.

Toss in the pasta and add the fresh parsley. Mix and serve!