Som Moo (Naem or Sour Pork Sausage)

I called my mom on Christmas Day.  I was on my way to the Asian grocery store.  She's coming to Denver in a few days and usually brings me goodies.  She was just in town over the Thanksgiving weekend and brought rambutans, guavas, seaweed, mangosteen, and other goodies.  When J* was in San Diego a few weeks ago she sent him back with a large bag of guavas for me and a bag of snickers for his plane ride.  While we were talking, my mom said that our Lao sausage guy passed away a few days ago.

He's the guy that we always got our sai krok and som moo from.  I didn't eat beef or pork for a long time.  I started eating pork but only in certain forms (when the flavor is hidden enough that it no longer tastes like pork).  I always brought back a few packages of sai krok and som moo.  The sai krok is the best I've ever had.  It's sour, garlicky, and lemongrass-y.  (Maybe I'll attempt making sai krok and lap cheong when I feel like dealing with the casings.) I never eat som moo by itself but I keep it around for nam khao.

One of my favorite Laotian dishes is nam khao.  A few years ago I was looking for a recipe on the net and I couldn't find one so I came up with something based solely on my memory of eating it. I've been told that my recipe is missing the red curry paste.  I think it tastes fine without.  One of the key ingredients for nam khao is som moo.  Now that my sausage guy has passed away, I must come up with a way to make my own or else settle for American ham doused with lime juice.

I looked at a few recipes.  I love the directions on the Lao Cook website so I followed the instructions but went with the seasoning recipe from Thai Food Master because he included sugar and MSG.  I made two batches -- one using just sticky rice and another using the nam powder I thought I used nam powder but I guess I threw away the actual sodium nitrite packet mistaking it for one of those oxygen absorber packets.

Please visit the Lao Cook and Thai Food Master websites for a recipe.

I started off with some pork. I bought these from the Asian store.  In hindsight I should I have bought a leaner pork loin and the frozen pork skin instead.

I trimmed the meat, saving the ski.  I boiled the skin and sliced them up.

I ground the meat user the grinder attachment on my Kitchenaid.  While I don't feel that it's the best meat grinder, it works for occasional meat grinding.  I had to cut the meat into small pieces to get it to fit the chute.  I bought my mom a stand alone meat grinder and took it with me to San Diego. It was surprisingly difficult to find a meat grinder in San Diego but almost every store in Denver carries it.  (Excuse the mess.  I was working on a few different cooking projects.)

I kneaded the meat using the dough hook of my Kitchenaid.  This can be done by hand but it takes a long time.

After kneading, I divided the meat into two batches.  The one below has the sticky rice.  (I didn't think I had enough pork skin but it was perfectly fine.  I should have trimmed off more of the fat.) I finished the kneading by hand after I mixed in the ingredients and the pork skin.

I wrapped the batches differently.  The one without the rice were wrapped smaller and has the chili on the outside.  The one with the rice were wrapped larger (I was a little tired by this time) and had chili in the middle (like how Lao Cook does it).

I ate the sausages (even the batch without the rice or the sodium nitrite) and I survived.