Fall in Portland is a bountiful time, when pumpkin everything adorns menus and the brisk breeze that graces the streets makes you want to stoke a wood fire and lay in front of it like a cat. If you are seeking to break outside of the realm of pumpkin in search of foods that make you feel warm inside, making your own sausage could be your next step towards fall contentment. Check out the interview below with Corey Pressman, who teaches sausage making classes at the Portland Homestead Supply, for tips that will help you to access the joy of sausage, and of cooking in general.
When did you start making sausage, and who did you learn from? I put myself through college and graduate school by cooking in restaurants. I got very technically proficient, but didn’t quite understand the magical value of food until after moving to Portland. Right after I first moved here, Wildwood opened up in NW. Corey Schreiber was the chef, and it was all local, sustainable, and fresh food, an Alice Waters sort of vibe. I still remember my first meal; it was trout wrapped in bacon on a bed of lentils that brought me to tears. I’d never experienced food to have that emotional content. I was blown away and realized that I had the same skills as the guys in the kitchen, which started my journey to access that food magic myself. I learned very quickly that it wasn’t hard at all. I started teaching kids how to cook at my childrens’ school, then got the teaching bug and wanted to share my food philosophy with others. I knew Doug and Kristl from another context and they encouraged me to teach classes at the Portland Homestead Supply. After that, I started a small teaching company called Ama Meats. Ama is Latin for love, and the tagline is Fat, Salt, Love. Those are the things you need to make sausage. I also just got a gig teaching at Sur La Table, over in the Brewery Blocks. All the classes I teach there are listed on my Ama Meats website. The Sur La Table classes are really challenging and fun because I teach more than sausage. Usually, I teach sausage in three hours, one thing in three hours. At Sur La Table, I am teaching four dishes with accompaniments in a two-hour time. It’s a denser teaching experience, which is teaching me a lot about teaching.
Why do you teach sausage-making classes in particular? I like to teach sausage because it’s one of those foods that is really magical. If made well, it will blow your mind. It can be intimidating to people, but as it turns out, it’s super simple to make. You don’t even need the machinery, the grinder and the stuffer, that I bring to classes.
Do you have any “pro-tips” to share from your experience? The big basic starting tip is just don’t be afraid. There are some knife skills that will take you a month to get into your muscle memory, but none of this is difficult. The easiest sausage I tell students they can make begins with going to the butcher and asking for a couple pounds of ground pork shoulder. They’ll grind it for you. Tell them medium ground, once through, and they will gladly do that for you. Then, buy a bunch of spices. You can buy spice mixes at Savory Spice Shop in Sellwood and follow the instructions. Or you can just put a little bit of garlic, salt, and whatever herbs you have laying around, throw the herbs and the meat together, make a little patty, cook it off and taste it, and if it tastes good, you’re done! Make a tube out of it, put it in your fridge for a night so the fat and flavors marinate. The next day, you could have the most amazing sausage. It’s as easy as that. In my classes, we make it a bit more complicated by going through the process of grinding sausage, stuffing the meat into casings, and discussing the spectrum of different flavors one can aim for.
What are common challenges people face when they are just starting to learn how to make sausage? It’s the same as people who are afraid to cook anything; it’s just fear of failure and some imaginary obstacle. The whole point is that food doesn’t belong to restaurants. Competition food shows drive me crazy. Food is the last thing that should be competitive. I want there to be food shows where it’s like, “Who can touch someone’s heart the most with this dish?” I’m trying to connect people to food in a pre-restaurant kind of way. Chefs are professionals, and they have their own prerogative: everything has to be made the same every time and done in four minutes stat, which you don’t have to do at home. Exposing home cooks, which is the rest of the human population, to restaurant cooking is creating anxieties that don’t need to be there. It’s kind of like saying, “I’ll never drive because I can’t drive like a Nascar driver.” Completely different things. Food belongs to people before it belongs to restaurants. Take back your kitchen from the tattooed arms of the chef. It’s a fun, joyous thing! There’s nothing more central to our physical and emotional experience at the same time. Yet we outsource it all the time. Cooking supplies a certain kind of yummy that you can’t get anywhere else.
Where do you get your meat? Where would you suggest getting good meat? For easy to source pork fat that I feel is ethically raised, a good choice is Carlton Farms. You can get Carlton Farms meat at many stores. There are all these barriers to entry to joy, and to cooking, which are the same thing. As soon as the barrier to entry comes up, there’s a way over it. You think, “Oh, I can’t get to Zupan’s to get the best meat.” That’s fine, just go to Safeway and get it there! Open the door and go through the barrier to entry. Get it to Safeway; it will taste fine. No one’s going to put down their breakfast sausage and be like, “Is this from Safeway?” So just do it.
Are there any resources about making sausage, online or printed, that you would suggest? I would say just watch videos online. That’s what I do when I’m teaching myself something. There’s also a book called Home Sausage Making that has some really good sausage recipes. They sell that book at the Portland Homestead Supply. I use it in my class, and that’s the book I started with.
What would you say is a good fall sausage? Turkey Cranberry sausage is a great holiday sausage. I would also recommend a garlic sausage or a spicy Italian, which will warm you up during these cold months.
How do you see your work fitting into the larger homesteading movement? I think the larger homesteading movement is already a group of people who benefit from not becoming overwhelmed by the barriers to entry. If you are already making your own soap, your own cheese, or your own pear juice from the pears in your backyard, then you should be having the same attitude towards your protein. Sausage is a great way to do that. If you buy a pig with a bunch of friends, then you should know what to be doing with the shoulders and with the cuts that you’re not going to do anything with. Sausage is that thing, traditionally.
What is your next step in your sausage-making endeavors? What is your vision for your business ten years down the road? I want to buy up some land and start a farm-based cooking school to help others get over the barriers of entry to all of these things that bring so much joy to life, which need to be reclaimed and not outsourced anymore. It would offer gardening classes, cooking classes, and camps for kids. We would host dinners and classes for adults. That’d be cool, right?