How to Make Homemade Cold Cuts

Admin/ August 17, 2024/ Meals/ 0 comments

If you want to know how to make your own cold cuts (like Bologna), you have come to the right place. In a world where prices keep going up, it helps to know how to make one or two things at home – especially when those things get eaten most days of the week. 

Luckily, making your own cold cuts is a lot easier than it might seem, and it comes with a lot of freedom and none of the preservatives. This recipe is inspired by Leaf & Bean Farm over on TikTok, and we would definitely recommend checking them out for their amazing recipes, tips, and tricks. 

To find out how to make homemade cold cuts, just keep reading. 

What You Will Need to Make Homemade Cold Cuts

Equipment and Tools:

  • Blender
  • Bowls
  • Large cylindrical mould (or a 2 litre bottle cleaned out and cut to size)

Ingredients:

  • Chicken broth
  • Onion
  • Garlic
  • Chicken (thigh and dark meats are best)
  • Peppers
  • Carrots
  • Your favourite herbs and seasonings
  • Gelatin powder
  • Beetroot powder or red food dye

How to Make Your Own Cold Cuts

The process for making homemade cold cuts is a lot easier than you might think, and it doesn’t take long at all. If you want to create this recipe, just follow these simple steps:

  1. Prepare vegetables by peeling and chopping them up roughly, roughly chop the garlic, and choose your seasoning
  2. Boil the chicken in the broth, along with the onion, garlic, peppers, carrots, and seasoning of choice until properly cooked
  3. Leave to cool for a few minutes until you can handle the chicken 
  4. Remove the chicken meat and skin from the bone
  5. Bloom the gelatin powder in the warm chicken broth
  6. Put all the ingredients together in a blender (any blender will do)
  7. If you want to get the classic pink colouring, you can either use food colouring or a natural substitute like beetroot powder 
  8. Once blended into a paste, transfer the liquid into your chosen cylinder for it to set. This can be a recycled 2 litre bottle, or a designated mould
  9. Place the mould in the fridge for at least three hours until it has set. Depending on how much you made, this number could vary. 

The quantities for this recipe can vary depending on your preferences. You could go for a more chicken-heavy flavour, or a more vegetable-heavy alternative. Luckily, you don’t need to be very exact with your measurements here, so you can have some fun playing around with balances.

You can alter quantities based on how much you would like to make, too. We recommend using the quantities you want for the chicken broth, chicken, and vegetables. Once you separate some of the broth from the rest of the ingredients, measure out your total. 

Use this number to them determine how much gelatin powder you need to add in order to get the right consistency. As a general rule, you can add around 7g of powdered gelatin for every 2 cups of liquid you have (this liquid being the broth and blended meat mixture combined). 

Remember that 1 (UK) cup – 250ml. 

There is a slight difference in UK and US cups (approx 10ml), but this is small enough that it shouldn’t be an issue in this kind of recipe.

Storing Homemade Cold Cuts

Since we aren’t really adding preservatives to our homemade cold cuts, it won’t last for very long in the fridge. Overall, you should aim to use it within four days if your fridge is at the correct temperature. 

Because of this, we would recommend not going overboard if you want to enjoy it fresh. However, you can freeze your homemade cold cuts since jelly can freeze, and so can everything else that is included in the recipe, so you can make larger batches and thaw as needed – but we recommend only freezing and thawing it once, so bear this in mind moving forward.  

To freeze, you can wrap your cold cuts in plastic wrap after removing it from the mould. Make sure to secure both ends by twisting the plastic, and put it somewhere it won’t be disturbed too much.   

Final Thoughts

If you want to try your hand at other recipes, why not make your own homemade peanut butter, dandelion honey, or flavoured salts? You can also learn about the correct way to store fresh ginger and eggs, and everything you need to know about kitchen hygiene to keep yourself and others safe in your kitchen. 

We also have a range of gardening articles to check out, like if you can water plants with coffee, the best fruit and vegetables for hot climates, which fruit plants have the greatest yield, and much more. 

Here at Showing You the Whey, we want to help you become more self-sufficient bit by bit, and howling how to make homemade cold cuts is a great start. 

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