Name: Pork Sausage Bao
Ingredients: ½ cup honey granules; ½ cup soy sauce or soy sauce powder if available (powder is ideal because when it comes to sausages you want less liquids); ½ cup hoisin sauce; ¼ rice wine (huangjiu if you can get it but any mijiu or shaoxing works); ¼ fermented soybeans (tương hột or salted fermented soy bean not the Japanese natto); 4 Tablespoons fermented red bean curd (2 T. liquid and 2 T. beancurd); 3 Tablespoons 5 spice powder; 2 Tablespoons red yeast sea salt (you can also use regular diamond coarse salt if you can’t find red yeast salt); 1 Tablespoon sesame oil; ½ teaspoon ginger powder; 10 lbs boned out or boneless pork shoulder; 2-2.5 lbs pork fatback; Pork casing 27 mm; Fresh made sausages; Steamed bao buns (the folded kind); Hoisin sauce; Green onions; Firm cucumber; Cilantro leaves

½ cup soy sauce or soy sauce powder if available (powder is ideal because when it comes to sausages you want less liquids)

¼ rice wine (huangjiu if you can get it but any mijiu or shaoxing works)

¼ fermented soybeans (tương hột or salted fermented soy bean not the Japanese natto)

4 Tablespoons fermented red bean curd (2 T. liquid and 2 T. beancurd)

2 Tablespoons red yeast sea salt (you can also use regular diamond coarse salt if you can’t find red yeast salt)

Seasoning

Mix seasoning ingredients together and blend with stick blender.

10 lbs boned out or boneless pork shoulder

Pork Sausage

Cut pork and pork fatback into 2 inch square pieces.

Pour marinade over pork and leave for at least 12-24 hours in the refrigerator.

Use meat grinder to coarse grind marinated pork. If you are using a lower powered grinder use a few ice cubes to keep the pork cool as you grind.

Use a sausage stuffer to stuff your sausages. Before you stuff the sausages, cook a little uncased sausage to make sure the flavor is right, should be a little sweet and taste similar to xá xíu or char su (red roast pork). Adjust salt to taste and add more honey granules if it needs to be sweeter. The flavor will intensify when cooked in the casing so don’t over salt it.

Once you are done casing the sausages, let them dry a bit in the fridge before linking.

Link the sausage in 3-inch long sausages by twisting every other sausage in the same direction.

Let the sausages dry in the fridge for a few hours. You want to give the links time to dry so they don’t come undone when you cut them.

Take the chilled now drier linked sausages and use the sausage poker to poke each sausage a few times and then cut the links.

To cook the sausages, vacuum seal the sausage in BPA free bag and sous vide for 45 min at 145°.

Remove the sausages from the bag and transfer to heavy pan, preferably cast iron on stovetop to finish off.

Alternatively, you can cook the sausages directly from raw but be sure to let the links come to close to room temp and put them into the pan without oil slow and low. Don’t put cold sausages in hot pan, they will immediately explode and leak out the ends.

Serve the sausages in steamed folded bao buns with sliced green onions sliced lengthwise in 2-3 inch pieces, thin slices of cucumber, also cut lengthwise in 2-3 inch pieces and top with a few sprigs of cilantro and a squeeze of hoisin.

Artist and activist, Erin O’Brien, grinds up some homemade sausages and chats about using food as performance art. She and Ingrid stuff up her Pork My Buns XXXX to honor her friend Chris’s progressive work as a trans filmmaker.