Chef Isaac Toups offers summer cooking ideas

With summer officially kicking off on June 21 and Independence Day cookouts shortly following, Chef Isaac Toups, owner of Toups Meatery in New Orleans, offers the following:

BRISKET
“I love a good pepper blend. I use a mixture of black pepper, smoked paprika and Aleppo pepper for several different kinds of meats. This is a great spice blend from everything to burgers and steaks to smoked brisket, said Toups. “Another great blend is a great all-purpose seasoning celebrating the Cajun trinity — onion powder, garlic powder, celery salt and cayenne pepper with a little bit of sugar to balance the heat. Goes great on seafood and popcorn.”
14 lb. brisket
¼ cup brown sugar
6 Tbsp. Isaac’s Heatwave spice (available online or at Toups Meatery) or chili de arbol
3 Tbsp. kosher salt
1 Tbsp. smoked paprika
1 Tbsp. Aleppo pepper
1 Tbsp. fine ground black pepper
Mix spices, salt and sugar together and rub into the brisket. Wrap and fridge for 24 hours.
Remove brisket from fridge an hour before cooking. Preheat oven to 350 F. Place brisket in a large roasted pan. Roast brisket for two and a half hours.
Cover the brisket with aluminum foil and cook for another 3 hours. Remove from oven. Let rest 10 minutes serve.
Serves: 15-20

SAUSAGES
“These are fresh sausages — I don’t cure any of my sausages — but I do like to let the sausage air-dry for 2 hours after it’s piped to dry up the casing some. That gives you the snap you want when you bite it,” Toups said. “The key to making sausage is keeping your ingredients really cold at all times when grinding.
“If you grind warm meat, it will get smeared instead of cut. You don’t want that. If you don’t have a grinder, you can get a butcher to grind the meat for you — and often even stuff it into casings — usually for a polite tip. I’ve had decent luck grinding the meat in a food processor, but honestly, it just doesn’t come out the same.

CHICKEN, BACON, and CILANTRO SAUSAGE
“Yes, this recipe calls for a lot of garlic. One trick to making good sausage: Add more garlic,” said Toups. “If you don’t want to stuff the sausage into casings, you can form the meat into patties, this makes a killer chicken burger, or even a meatloaf.
3 lbs. skinless boneless chicken legs and thighs
1 lb. smoked bacon
1 cup packed cilantro (about 1 bunch), finely chopped
1⁄3 cup minced garlic (about 22 cloves)
1 Tbsp. kosher salt
1 tsp. ground black pepper
1⁄3 cup wheat beer (I like Canebrake)
Natural hog casings, about 6 feet
Makes 9 or 10 (5-inch) sausages

PEPPER PASTE of PAIN PORK SAUSAGE
“My favorite sausages have an intense flavor that comes from just three or four ingredients,” Toups admits. “This hot garlic sausage is one of my all-time personal favorites. It’s simple, spicy, garlicky — a perfect ‘my first badass homemade sausage.”’
He continues, “Always double down on flavor. For me, intensity is everything. If you put it in there, really put it in there. If I want the flavor of licorice in a dish, I’ll put in Herbsaint and fennel seed and star anise. This sausage doubles down on the garlic because you’ve got it in the Pepper Paste of Pain and in the sausage itself.”
3 lbs, boneless pork butt
1⁄3 cup minced garlic (about 22 cloves)
¼ cup Isaac’s Pepper Paste of Pain (in his cookbook mentioned below), or to your taste
2 Tbsp. kosher salt
1 Tbsp. ground black pepper
1⁄8 teaspoon curing salt (optional)
1⁄3 cup dark beer, like stout
Natural hog casings, about 6 feet
Makes 9 or 10 (5-inch) sausages

For both sausage recipes, the following instructions are used.
EQUIPMENT
Meat grinder
Sausage stuffer
Put respective meats in freezer for 30 minutes before grinding. You need them to get really cold, almost frozen, but still pliable. Put chicken and bacon through a meat grinder set to medium. After grinding, put the meat back in the freezer for 30 minutes to get it cold again.
In a large nonreactive bowl, add chilled ground chicken and bacon, cilantro, garlic, salt, pepper and beer. Mix and fold by hand for about a minute to emulsify the beer liquid with the fat. Work quickly, so it doesn’t heat up again. When properly mixed, the meat mixture will have some spring to it — it will feel like a medium-rare steak to the touch — and have some chunks of fat still visible.
MAKE THE SAUSAGE
Cook and taste a sample of the sausage mixture and adjust seasonings as needed.
Wrap the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and put in the fridge for at least 1 hour (overnight is best). If your mixing bowl is too big for the fridge, transfer to a baking dish and wrap it tightly.
When you’re ready to stuff the sausage, rinse hog casings by sticking one end directly on the faucet (like a water balloon) and running water through. Don’t soak casings or they’ll get weak on you and end up busting. When they’re well rinsed they should look clean and a little bit like a really long condom.
Remove the meat from the fridge. Using the sausage stuffer, pipe and form the sausage mixture into links.
Put on a wire rack in the fridge to air-dry, uncovered, for 2 hours. This lets the sausage rest, but more importantly it lets the sausage casings dry.
At this point you can freeze the linked sausage for up to 6 weeks to cook later. (When you thaw it, let it defrost in fridge; don’t leave out at room temperature.) Or fire that meat up to eat now!
To cook: Preheat oven to 300 F. Place sausages on a wire baking rack set in a rimmed sheet pan and roast for about 15 minutes, until internal temperature reaches 150 F. (The FDA says cook it to 165°F, but screw that. That’s overcooked sausage.)
Serve immediately.
“I like my sausages with Double Dill Pickles or smeared with some grain mustard,” Toups said. “And a white bread sausage sandwich is the shit. Tuck the link in some soft white bread with mustard and kill it.”
Sausage recipes from “Chasing the Gator – Isaac Toups & the New Cajun Cooking” (October 23, 2018 Little, Brown and Company)