Olive Loaf - "Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes the blues get a hold of you..."

Olive loaf has always been one of my favorite sandwich meats. While I was growing up, it was an expensive treat, only to be had once in a great while.

Finding olive loaf at the grocery was never difficult, until recently. It might disappear from the lunch meat cooler for a few days, but it would always be back before long. Lately, however, that hasn't been the case – at least at the grocery stores near my home. Even the little blister packs of pre-sliced stuff seem to be scarce, and don't even ask at the deli counter! The most frequent reply I got was “We don't even special-order that any more! Nobody wants it!”

I beg to differ. I am somebody, and I want it!

Recently, however, some of the local deli customers must have come to like it, because now, after several years of denial, it sometimes shows up in the deli.

Now the olive loaf at the deli is pretty good stuff, but I need to acquire a more reliable supply, so while pondering how to achieve that, I had an epiphany: I make my own sausage, and olive loaf is just a special kind of sausage – maybe I should try to make my own!

So begins this story.

Following several months of research, which confirmed my suspicions that no one outside the doors of the major meat packers really knows how olive loaf is made, I combined elements of several recipes from different sources, to form what I hoped would be a winning formula.

The first item of business, once I had an ingredients list, was to acquire the necessary equipment. Only one item is odd enough that you won't likely find it in an ordinary kitchen: a “Pullman” loaf pan. To get an idea how a “Pullman” loaf pan is different from an ordinary loaf pan, go to your local grocery store and look at the commercial bread rack. You'll see at least a couple of variants on loaf size and shape. The “round-top” loaves were baked in something close to your ordinary loaf pan, while the “sandwich style” loaves have a nearly square cross-section, and were baked in something similar to a Pullman pan. I felt that I needed that square cross-section in order to carve a decent sandwich slice from my finished product.

If you don't buy your meat already ground, you'll need a food chopper (meat grinder) of some sort, with a variety of size plates. If you want to emulsify your meat mix (recommended by most DIY makers), you'll also need a large-capacity food processor.

You'll also need several bowls – preferably with covers – large enough to contain about six pounds of meat mix, and (if you don't happen to have a handy-dandy sausage mixer) at least one bowl large enough to allow you to hand-knead the meat mix.

Finally, you'll need an oven with a temperature control that allows you to achieve and maintain a steady 180° F cooking temperature, and of course, a good refrigerator.

If you have all of that, you might be ready to start making olive loaf, so assemble the following ingredients:

			(gram equivalent)
Pork Loin	3	lb	1362
Beef Chuck	2	lb	908
Lard	3½	oz	100
Morton® TenderQuick	2½	Tbs	66
Kosher or Canning Salt	2	tsp	17.6
Olives (pimento stuffed)	2	cup (drained)	360
Onion Powder	2½	Tbs	20
Sugar	1	tsp	4.3
Paprika	1½	Tbs	10
Black Pepper (ground)	1	Tbs	7
Garlic Powder	2	tsp	6
Celery Salt	1½	tsp	13
Nutmeg	½	tsp	1
Total	6¹/₃	Lb	2874	(2.874 kg)

Directions:

If you have purchased your meat as cuts, rather than ground, you will need to cut the meat into 1” (approximate size) cubes, and place them in one of your covered bowls. Add the TQ (TenderQuick), salt, sugar and spices, and thoroughly mix. Refrigerate, preferably overnight. Chop the meat mix using a ¼” size plate in your food chopper, then chop it twice more using successively smaller size plates (³/₁₆”, and ¹/₈” sizes), mixing in ½ cup chilled water before performing the last grind. 

Hint: remove any “silver skin” from the meat before cutting into cubes. It makes the subsequent grinding a lot easier and faster!  Otherwise, be prepared to stop frequently and clean the tough fibers out of your chopper!

If you purchased your meat as ground meat, and add the TQ, salt, sugar and spices. Mix as thoroughly as possible. You will most likely have to “knead” your meat mix in order to properly distribute the ingredients. It would be best to let the meat mix “rest” in the refrigerator for at least one hour (up to four would be better), before putting it through the chopper. Yes, you need to put the ground meat through the chopper. You might be able to skip one or two stages of chopping, depending on how finely divided your ground meat already is, but you will need to mix in ½ cup chilled water and at least chop it using the ¹/₈” size plate.

If you intend to emulsify your meat mix, now is the time to bring out the food processor. Most food processors won't be able to handle the amount of meat required for this recipe, so you will most likely have to do it in smaller batches. You may need to add more chilled water in order to achieve the desired consistency, but a minute in the processor at liquefaction speed should produce a fine emulsion.  I chose to skip this portion of the process, accepting that the final product would have a texture different from that of commercial olive loaf.

If you do not emulsify, don't expect your product to bear any resemblance to commercial olive loaf. The texture difference is too great. In fact, given that you don't have a meat processing factory at your disposal, nor all of the chemical "helpers" that the big packers use, you probably shouldn't expect that anyway, but you may find you have a product that you like just as much, or even better.

When you have produced a mix or “paste” that meets your own requirements, it's time to add the olives. In the largest bowl you can find, flatten out the meat mix into a round loaf no more than 1” or 2” thick. Spread a quarter of the olives over half the upper surface of the meat, and fold other half over it; then spread more olives over the folded loaf, and fold again. Repeat the process until all of the olives are incorporated into the meat mix.

Line a loaf pan of sufficient size with a sheet of plastic cling wrap large enough to completely encase the entire mass of meat mix, and place the mix into the lined pan, covering and closing with cling wrap. Bake at 180° F until the internal temperature of the loaf reaches 150° F (for me, this took about 4½ hours). Remove finished loaf from heat, and allow to cool, then refrigerate.

Thoughts, Observations, and Conclusions:

The articles I found in my research gave no specific reason for the low (180° F) cooking temperature, but it follows that you can't cook at more common baking temperatures if the food you are cooking is wrapped in lightweight plastic cling wrap. Not to worry though, if you keep the oven at any temperature above 150 °F, the internal temperature of the loaf will eventually get there; at higher temperatures, it just gets there faster, with more browning.

The Pullman loaf pan I used has a trapezoidal cross-section of 4" (top width) ⨯ 3¾" (bottom width) ⨯ 4" depth. This appears (on the surface) to be an ideal size and shape for sandwich meat. That, however, fails to take into account meat shrinkage during cooking.

 Granted, there is likely less shrinkage when cooking at 180° F than when using normal baking temperatures, but at least with the mix of cuts shown in this recipe, shrinkage was significant: possibly as much as a loss of 5% of the volume.  This means that cold cuts from this loaf will also be significantly smaller than is ideal.  As a result I would not recommend the typical Pullman pan for cooking the loaf.  Instead, I would use a more conventional loaf pan, and accept the less aesthetically pleasing oblong slices that result..

Another option that might yield more acceptable results would be to stuff the final meat mix into waterproof 4½" sausage casing, seal appropriately, and cook the resulting "chub" in simmering water until the end point temperature of 150° F is achieved.

To do the actual cooking, I used a Rival® model #R0180BR-C roaster oven that we've had for years. It was originally purchased in order to augment our regular oven at Thanksgiving, allowing us to cook multiple turkeys at one time. The roaster oven has a couple of significant advantages over the regular oven: first, it allows finer control of the cooking temperature, having a continuous thermostat that operates from 150° F to 450° F, so achieving and maintaining a steady 180° F is not difficult. The regular oven can't make this boast. Second, since this experiment was conducted in August, the roaster oven has another advantage over using the regular oven: you don't have to heat up the entire house in order to do the cooking. One could even do the cooking outside, provided there was an available outdoor electric outlet; or if it is raining, the oven could be set up in a garage.

Internal temperature of the cooking loaf was monitored continuously with a digital probe oven thermometer. The peak internal temperature of the loaf reached 154° F after 4½ hours of cooking at the prescribed oven temperature. One hour after removing the loaf from the oven, the internal temperature was still above 145 °F.

If you do your own research, you'll find that the amounts of salt and sugar in this recipe differ substantially from those specified elswhere. This is due principally to the fact that most other recipes include either saltpeter or Pink Salt (Prague Powder #1) to provide the required nitrates. Substituting TQ (Tender Quick) alters the balance because nitrates are a smaller component in TQ. Saltpeter (if undiluted) is pure sodium nitrate, and Pink Salt is 6.25% sodium nitrate (the remainder being common salt - sodium chloride). TQ, on the other hand is only ½ % sodium nitrate and ½ % sodium nitrite, so obviously more TQ would be needed to provide the same amount of nitrate. TQ also, however is about 70% common salt and 29% sugar, so adjustment of the salt and sugar amounts is also required.

Most recipes for olive loaf also specify white pepper, whereas this one uses black pepper. Black pepper results in a spicier loaf than is usual for deli olive loaf. Others sometimes also include cardamom, coriander, and occasionally allspice.

The final product bears only a superficial resemblance to deli olive loaf; texture and flavor differences were too obvious.

Using fattier cuts of meat, or adding pork fat-back (unsalted); and including some quantity of nonfat dry milk, in the meat mix, might moderate the texture issues, as would (perhaps) emulsifying the meat mix. Further experiments may yield more satisfactory results, but in the meantime, I have about six pounds of not-quite-olive loaf to consume before I try again. When I do try again, I will probably use fattier cuts of meat, and may perhaps even eliminate the beef cuts from the recipe.

 If you count my time, at the hourly rate I last enjoyed before retirement, this is already probably the most expensive lunch meat ever made in the history of the world.