Summer Sausage And Swiss Spread Recipes

Steps:

• In a large bowl, mix beef, curing mixture, mustard seed, garlic powder, cayenne, red pepper flakes, salt, and liquid smoke. Cover with plastic, and refrigerate for three days, mixing well once a day.
• On the fourth day, preheat oven to 200 degrees F (100 degrees C).
• Shape the mixture into five logs, and place on a wire rack over a large drip pan. Bake for eight hours, then remove to cool on paper towels. Let cool, then wrap logs individually in plastic wrap. Chill completely before slicing. They also freeze well.

Steps:

• In food processor, pulse the meat chunks until finely ground with an s blade. Do not over process, just pulse until it resembles ground beef. Place beef in medium mixing bowl, scrape processor and return to base.
• Add Swiss cheese cubes to processor and pulse until pieces are small split pea size. (It helps to have the Swiss cold from the fridge to chop it rather than mush it up.) Scrape chopped Swiss into mixing bowl. Here it is your choice whether to hand chop the celery into fine dice or to use processor to chop. (I chop the celery and finely mince the onion by hand as I think you can hand chop more uniform pieces. And it is very difficult to get a finely minced onion with such a small amount in the processor.)Add chopped celery, onion, sweet relish, and mayo to mixing bowl and combine well. If the meat mixture is too dry, add a little more mayo until desired consistency.
• You can serve the meat mixture by itself, or you can mix in the softened cream cheese and serve at room temperature. This makes a very tasty spread for crackers or crostini, and a good filling for celery sticks, cherry tomatoes or other "Fill-able veggies"

Steps:

• In a small pot, bring the vinegar, honey, salt, bay leaf and 1/2 cup water to a simmer. Turn off the heat, transfer to a medium bowl and stir in the fennel. Let come to room temperature, about 15 to 20 minutes.
• Heat a grill or grill pan over medium heat. Grill the summer sausage until crisp, 5 minutes. Flip the sausage, and make stacks of 3 to 4 slices on the grill. Top each stack with a couple of pieces of cheese, cover the grill and let cook until melted. Remove from the heat and drain on paper towels.
• Spread the slider buns with butter and grill until lightly toasted. Place some pickled fennel on the bottom piece of a slider bun. Top with a stack of the cheese-grilled summer sausage, a crisp piece of lettuce and a dollop of Sriracha Lime Mayo. Repeat with the remaining ingredients. The sweet and sour balance takes it to another level.
• Mix together the mayonnaise, Sriracha, honey and lime juice in a small bowl.