Pumpkin Spice Bologna

I don’t know whether to call this an early Christmas present for you, Tribunal readers. Perhaps it is the coal in your naughty stocking. Only you can decide, I suppose. But just a couple weeks ago, while we were still in “pumpkin spice season,” a random encounter with a meme on a friend’s Facebook page gave me the idea to make Pumpkin Spice Bologna.

First I want to say this: pumpkin spice bologna is delicious. It works way better than you think it should, way better than our calcified tastes want it to. It’s fatty meat, cured and spiced, and what’s so wrong about that?

Also let us firmly state the obvious: that pumpkin spice bologna is a stupid idea, it should not exist, and I was an idiot to make it, much less make this video about it.

To acknowledge that both these things are true, simultaneously, is to acknowledge the absurdity of our existence. Or at least the absurdity of my existence.

Here is my recipe for pumpkin spice bologna:

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Pumpkin Spice Bologna / Mortadella

Sliceable lunchmeats with warming fall spices

Course Meat

Cuisine American, Italian

Keyword bologna, charcuterie, mortadella, pumpkin spice

Prep Time 4 hours hours

Cook Time 1 hour hour

Servings 80 1 oz slices (approx)

Calories 92kcal

Author Jim Behymer

Ingredients

• 2 Kg fatty pork–I used a mixture of pork butt and belly
• 500 grams roasted pumpkin
• 5 g onion powder
• 5 g garlic powder
• 9 g white pepper
• 6 g coriander seed
• 2 g grated nutmeg
• 5 g mustard seed
• 7.5 g cinnamon
• 7.5 g powdered ginger
• 1.5 g mace
• 2.5 g allspice
• 1.5 g clove
• 20 g dextrose
• 40 g kosher salt
• 6.5 g Prague Powder #1
• 80 g powdered milk

Instructions

• Pumpkin Spice Bologna spices
• Grind all spices fine
• Cut the meat into small cubes
• mix meat, spices, salt, curing salt, and dextrose together and chill overnight
• 1-2 hours before grinding, put all grinder equipment into freezer. Spread meat out on a cookie sheet, cover with foil, and place in freezer. At grinding time, the meat should be stiff but not completely frozen
• Grind through the fine die of the meat grinder
• Mix in powdered milk
• Here’s where the preps diverge. The next steps are for bologna only.
• (bologna) In 4 batches, place 1/4 ground meat mixture, 1/4 roasted pumpkin, and ~50 g of ice chips into a blender. Blend until it achieves the smooth texture of the “pink slime” that people were mad about in 2012.
• (bologna) Stuff into beef bung casing that has been soaked to remove salt. Truss with butcher’s twine and hang in an unused refrigerator (or a wintry garage) for 1-2 days to develop pellicle.
• (bologna) Smoke over alder wood. Let sit refrigerated 2 days before slicing
• Here are the mortadella steps
• (mortadella) cut roasted pumpkin into 1cm cubes and freeze on a cookie sheet to retain cube shape.
• (mortadella) In 4 batches, place 1/4 ground meat mixture and ~50g of ice chips into a blender. Whip it. Whip it good.
• (mortadella) In a bowl, mix frozen pumpkin cubes into meat mixture.
• (mortadella) Overlap and crosshatch several long wide strips of plastic cling wrap on a flat surface. Place meat mixture onto plastic and use plastic to roll into a tight 5-6″ cylinder. Wrap tightly with additional cling wrap.
• Steam or wet-roast for around 90 minutes.

Video

Notes

The beef bung should be removed before eating. So, for that matter, should the plastic cling wrap.

Sandwiches

For the pumpkin spice bologna, I made a sandwich of simple sliced white bread, buttered on the bottom half, with fried bologna (I found that heating the bologna brings out its aromatic qualities nicely. However, the alder smoke is still the primary aroma), Kewpie mayo, and some of the picalilli I made for the bøfsandwich post a few months ago.

For the pumpkin spice mortadella, I went a little fancier. I recalled Jim Graziano’s advice a few years ago for how to make a sandwich featuring mortadella and looked for a mostarda recipe. This time an apple mostarda, to match the harvest theme of pumpkin spice. This is the recipe I used. However, to make it into the “apple pie” mostarda, I added 2 sticks of cinnamon, about a dozen allspice berries, 4-5 cloves, 3 blades of mace and a few grates of nutmeg. I also supplemented the mustard burn by adding a teaspoon of Colman’s English mustard powder. The recipe yielded 3 of these jars and change.

The mortadella sandwich included this condiment on the bottom half a hard roll, a sort of hoagie roll that I’d heated in the oven at 350° F for 7 or 8 minutes to reinvigorate its crust, along with 8 thin slices of pumpkin spice mortadella, lemon aioli (I’ll be honest, I used Martha’s recipe but went pretty hard with the garlic and pepper), and shredded romaine lettuce.

I am not very good at making these videos yet. Also there are many distractions at my house–a dog who demands to be let out and then back in every 30 seconds or so, family members who can be counted on to help with the camera work but who also make loud noises at random moments, trains that go by on the nearby tracks every few minutes, the demands of a full-time job working from home. It’s challenging, but I enjoy it. I hope that you all like the video as well. Please let me know!

Jim Behymer

I like sandwiches.

I like a lot of other things too but sandwiches are pretty great