Crusty Scrapple Food

SCRAPPLE

Steps:

• Trim the fat from around the top of the heart and remove the sinews. Cut the heart into 4 pieces and put it in a heavy stewing kettle with the meaty bones and liver. Add 3 quarts of water, cover and simmer gently for 3 hours until the meat falls from the bones.
• Strain the broth into a clean pot. Discard the bones and put the meat through a coarse grinder. Grind the heart and liver as fine as possible and combine the 2 meat mixtures.
• Bring the broth to a simmer. Combine the cornmeal and the seasonings and gradually add to the boiling broth, stirring constantly. Reduce heat to medium and add the meat mixture. Stir until everything is well mixed. Cook slowly for 30 minutes, stirring almost constantly so it does not stick to the bottom, as it will be quite thick.
• After 30 minutes it is ready to pour. Rinse 9 small breadpans with cold water or grease them and pour the scrapple to the top of the pans. Set the pans to cool and when cool refrigerate until the next day.
• When ready to eat, unmold the scrapple onto a cutting board and cut into 1/4-inch thick slices. Melt fat in a skillet and fry the slices until brown and crusty on both sides. Serve immediately with or without maple syrup.
• The loaves can be unmolded and frozen but will keep refrigerated for about 1 week.

SOUTHERN SCRAPPLE

Steps:

• In a large skillet, cook sausage over medium heat until no longer pink; drain and set aside. In a large saucepan, bring water to a boil. Gradually add the grits, salt, pepper and cayenne, stirring constantly until thickened. Stir in butter and cheese until melted. Stir in sausage. , Press into a greased 9x5-in. loaf pan. Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour or until cool., Remove scrapple from pan; cut into 1/2-in. slices. In a skillet, cook scrapple in butter until browned on both sides, adding more butter as needed. Serve warm with syrup.

SCRAPPLE

Steps:

• Place sausage in a large, deep skillet. Cook over medium high heat until evenly brown. Drain and rinse in colander under cold water, breaking sausage into pea sized pieces.
• Return to skillet along with the condensed milk, and heat over medium until just bubbling. Immediately stir in the cornmeal and pepper and reduce heat to simmer. Continue cooking, 5 minutes total; mush will be stiff.
• Pack into 8x4 loaf pan, cover and chill overnight. To serve, cut into 1/4 to 1/2 inch slices and saute until golden in nonstick skillet.

SCRAPPLE

Steps:

• To a large stockpot, add the pork butt, hocks, onion, celery, peppercorns and bay leaves. Barely cover with water and simmer over low heat until the pork is tender and the meat falls off the bones, about 2 hours.
• Drain and reserve the stock. Pour the solid contents onto a baking sheet so that you can easily discard the celery, onions, peppercorns, bay leaves and all of the bones. Make sure to pull the meat completely off the bones, being careful to remove all the small pieces of bone.
• Add the meat to a food processor with the blade attachment and pulse to coarsely chop. Don't over grind it.
• Measure 1 gallon of stock and return it to the pot along with the chopped meat and the salt, ground black pepper, cayenne, and sage. Bring to a simmer over low heat.
• Add the cornmeal and stir, stir, stir. Simmer until smooth and thick, about 15 minutes. Add a little stock or water, if needed, to ensure a smooth texture.
• Pour into 3 loaf pans and refrigerate until solid, preferably overnight.
• Unmold, slice and fry in clarified butter until golden brown. Serve with applesauce or maple syrup.

HOW TO COOK SCRAPPLE

Steps:

• Slice the scrapple into ¼ in (0.6 cm) thick slices. Use a sharp chef's knife to evenly slice the 1/2 loaf of scrapple. The thickness of the slices depends on your own preference, however thinner slices tend to cook more quickly. While 1/4 in (0.6 cm) slices are the most common, try ½ in (1.3 cm) thick slices if you prefer them to be a bit chunkier. For even thicker slices, try ¾ in (2 cm). Bear in mind that these will need to be cooked for longer though.
• Dip each scrapple slice into 1 cup (110 g) of instant flour. Pour the instant flour into a bowl and coat each slice fully in the flour. Dip each slice individually to make sure that every side is coated in instant flour.
• Season the slices with salt and pepper to taste. Use table salt and freshly ground black pepper to sprinkle over each slice. Make sure you season both sides of each slice.
• Heat 1 tbsp (14 g) of butter in a skillet or a deep frying pan. Using a medium heat for the frying pan is the key to making delicious, crispy scrapple. Make sure that the butter has melted before you put the scrapple in the pan. Don't add too much butter to the pan, as the contents of the scrapple has enough grease. Too much butter will make the scrapple too oily when it has finished cooking. Since the scrapple in the pan will be producing grease, this makes it less likely to burn.
• Pan-fry the scrapple slices for 3 minutes on the first side. Place each slice in the pan, and fry them until you can see the edges of the underside starting to look brown and crispy. Make sure that there is ½ in (1.3 cm) gap between each slice in the pan. The slices will stick together if they are cooked too close to each other in the pan.
• Flip over each slice and fry them for a further 3 minutes. Let this side cook until it is brown and crispy too. You may have to do several batches of pan-frying the scrapple, depending on how many slices you are cooking and how big your pan is. The length of time that it takes to pan-fry the scrapple depends on the thickness of the slices. Thin slices can cook in as quickly as 3 minutes, while thick slices may take up to 10 minutes on each side. Watching for the crispy edges and browning color is the best way to monitor how the scrapple is cooking.
• Remove the scrapple from the pan when it is brown and crispy. Once the scrapple slices are cooked, use a kitchen flipper to remove them from the heat. Place the scrapple on a plate, and make sure it is lined with a paper tower to absorb any extra grease. You could also use a frying fork to remove the slices from the pan if you prefer. Scrapple is best served when it has been left to sit for a few minutes on the plate first. Pan-fried scrapple slices are commonly served in sandwiches or with fried eggs, and leftovers can be refrigerated for up to 1 week.

MIDWEST SCRAPPLE

Steps:

• Combine all ingredients except corn meal in a saucepan.
• Bring to a boil; lower heat and simmer gently for 20 minutes, stirring frequently.
• Gradually stir in cornmeal, stirring constantly and cook until thickened.
• Rinse a loaf pan (5in x 9in) with cold water; pour in scrapple and chill completely.
• Cut into slices about 1/2 inch thick.
• Dust with flour and fry in oil until lightly browned.
• (Browning these slices until crusty around the edges takes several minutes on each side.) Serve with syrup, applesauce, or butter and salt and pepper.

REAL SCRAPPLE

Steps:

• NOTE: the meat involved is Pork head, meat, feet, heart and tongue, or other pork trimmings, if desired, including liver.
• Place them in a water in a covered container until the soft tissue separates readily from the bone. Separate tissue from bone and grind with a fine grinder. Return the ground meat to the strained soup container and boil. Cereal is then added. A common cereal mixture is seven parts cornmeal and three parts of either buckwheat, white, or rye flour.
• Approximately 4 lbs of the ground meat combined with 3 lbs of soup (liquid) plus 1 lb of cereal is sometimes used. Gradually moisten the cereal with a cool liquid (water or the cooled soup) to prevent lumping. Add this premoistened cereal to the ground meat-soup mixture slowly then boil for 30 minutes.
• Prior to finishing boiling, add seasoning.
• A suggested seasoning combination for 8 lbs of finished scrapple would include 3 oz salt, 1/4 oz black pepper, 1/4 oz sweetened marjoram, 1/4 oz nutmeg, 1/4 oz sage or thyme, and 2-1/2 oz onions. Some prefer to add a pinch of mace and a pinch of red pepper also.
• After the seasoning is mixed thoroughly and the onions cooked, pour the scrapple into pans (not bowls) and refrigerate to 30 - 32F degrees immediately.
• Note this is usually made in large batches and saved throughout the year until the next butchering. It uses every part of the pig so nothing is wasted. It wasn't a throwaway society. This is also NOT a city recipe. They didn't butcher as they did in the country.
• number of pans is a guess.
• Note: IF you want the instructions for cleaning the meat [from head and so forth] zaar me. I am not going to post it because more people are going to look at this that are NOT going to do it yourself than people who are. Some just don't wanna hear it and that isn't a problem. My brother always turned green.

CRUSTY SCRAPPLE

Steps:

• 1. Peel and dice one onion.
• 2. Simmer pork ribs with salt, bay leaf, thyme, cloves and onion in the water until the meat falls off the bones.
• 3. Remove the bones and gristle, rub the meat into fibers (with your fingers), and reduce this pork liquor to about 4 cups by further boiling.
• 4. Cool 1 cup of the pork liver and mix it with coarse corn meal and cayenne.
• 5. Add the sage, rubbing it between your fingers to crush it as you put it in.
• 6. In your food processor, using the steel blade, grind pork liver, the other onion, and the garlic cloves.
• 7. Fry the resulting slurry in butter.
• 8. Add the cornmeal mixture and the pork-liver mixture to the pork liquor and simmer the whole thing over a very low flame (or in the top of a double boiler) for half an hour.
• 9. Spread thin into two 9-inch square pans to cool. (The pans needn\'t be greased.)
• 10. To serve, cut and fry squares or fingers with sunny-side-up eggs on the side.