For the improvement of your weekend times!

A recipe from the Romanian delegate:

Mici/Mititei (Romanian Meat Sticks)

6 lb. ground beef
2 lb. ground pork
1.5 tbs salt
2 tbs baking soda (dissolved in 1 tbs of vinegar or lemon juice)
1 tbs ground pepper
1 tbs sweet chili powder
2 tbs thyme
8-10 cloves of garlic – minced
42 fl oz club soda


It takes 2 days to get the best flavor.


Day 1:

• Mix the meat with salt and baking soda (dissolved in 1 tbs of vinegar or lemon juice) – use clean hands to mix it
• Add about 8 oz of club soda
• Knead the mixture for about 15 min., cover it and leave it in the fridge for 24 hr. so baking soda will do its wonder (12hr works if in hurry)

Day 2:

• Use the blender to mix 8 oz of club soda with all the herbs and condiments until it foams
• Add the mixture to the meat, mix well using your clean hands
• Add the remaining club soda and knead it for 15 min.
• Form little sausages with wet hands, about 3 inches long and 1 ½ to 2 inches in diameter and place them on a wet cutting board or a pan that was previously sprayed with non-stick cooking spray or oil
• Leave in the fridge overnight and grill next day

• Grill on high with close supervision

Serve with yellow mustard, sourdough bread and cold beer

Enjoy!

Oh baking soda, you are so full of wonder.

In addition to providing a handy recipe for 8 pounds of sausage, this recipe leaves us with several questions. Namely, why all the club soda? And why in a blender? If you were not as inquisitive a youngster as the PRL delegate, you might not know that soda in a blender is a very good way to evenly coat the entire kitchen with sugar syrup. Perhaps this is not only a recipe for meat sticks, but also a Romanian housekeeping shortcut--the club soda cleans all exposed surfaces at once, and the herbs help freshen up the place to allow the scent of cooking meat to permeate.

And the baking soda-lemon juice/vinegar combination? Is this really a 3rd grade science experiment? Do they make meat volcanoes in Romanian elementary schools? Perhaps that's why it requires close supervision--giving very hot meat volcanoes to 8-year-olds with cold beer seems like something I'd want to keep an eye on, myself.