This year, consider giving your dad something to grill, a project to work on and an upgrade for his bar cart.
Chicken sausage
Your father might be looking for something different to grill, like the chicken sausage from Andrew Lawton and Devore Irick of Lawton’s Sausage Co., a company in Stonecrest that they started in 2021. Lawton had been experimenting with sausage making for a while when a health scare prompted him to decide to forgo pork and beef and start working with chicken. When he met Irick, the two decided to turn what had been a hobby into a business. They offer the original recipe and a spicy version in links, as well as breakfast patties. There are five links stuffed into nonpork casings per pound. The original version has just a bit of heat, while the spicy version adds more hot peppers. Recipes on the website include jollof rice, a West African staple made healthier with chicken sausage, chicken stock and lots of vegetables.
$7.99 per pound. Available at the East Point and Castleberry farmers markets, Smyrna Handmade Market, Grayson Farmacy and lawtonsausagecompany.com.
Credit: Dennis McDaniel Photography
Credit: Dennis McDaniel Photography
Bresaola home-cure charcuterie kit
If your dad wants to make his own charcuterie, Laura Jensen of Loganville-based Jensen Reserve has just the kit to make that possible. There are two kits available — biltong-style bresaola and lonzina. We tried the bresaola kit, since it was the 2023 winner in the meats and seafood category of the University of Georgia’s Flavor of Georgia competition. The kit comes with a bag of enough spice mixture to cure the teres major (a petite beef tenderloin or shoulder tender weighing about a pound) that comes with the kit. There’s also an 8-by-10½-inch stainless steel pan with a wire rack (just the right size for curing the meat), butcher paper, netting, an s-hook for hanging the beef, and very thorough instructions. First step for your dad will be to spice the meat, refrigerate it and massage it every day for four days, then wrap it in the netting, put it on the curing rack and cure in the refrigerator for 24 hours. Next step is to hang the meat, again in the refrigerator. The bresaola will be done 14 days after the process started. Then, your dad proudly can slice that bresaola very thin and wow everyone with his charcuterie skills.
$74.99 per kit. Available at the farm, located at 4091 Bullock Bridge Road, Loganville, where you also can shop for frozen chicken, beef and pork raised there, as well as spice mixes and other cured meats. Also available at jensenreserve.com.
Credit: Cameron Wilder
Credit: Cameron Wilder
Double-spiced falernum syrup
If your dad’s bar cart has only the usual spirits, like rum, vodka and bourbon, he might be interested in something that will take his cocktails from ordinary to stellar. Try a bottle of double-spiced falernum syrup from Tippleman’s Cocktail Syrups in North Charleston, South Carolina. This is exactly what’s needed for rum-based tiki drinks, but we also loved it in a mocktail mixed with ginger beer, lime juice and seltzer. Our guests raved over the syrup’s tropical flavors provided by lime zest, ginger juice, allspice, nutmeg and cloves. Spicy, outdoorsy and intriguing were some of the adjectives we heard. Recipes on the website mix the syrup with mezcal, chartreuse, pear brandy or gin, and include a bourbon-based spice island swizzle, as well as a lagniappe cocktail made with cognac and rye whiskey.
$17 per 13-ounce bottle. Available at Fresh Harvest, Branded Barrel, Homegrown Decatur, tipplemans.com and Amazon.
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