Preservatives and Other Chemical Additives
The only preservatives in this recipe are those contained in the Morton® Tender Quick Home Meat Cure. Literature research shows that Tender Quick is about 70% salt (NaCl), 29% sugar, ½% sodium nitrate (NaNO3), and ½% sodium Nitrite (NaNO2). Nitrates and nitrites apparently help suppress the growth of Clostridium botulinum, the organism that causes botulism, and for that reason you will find it in most "cured" meat products. While all of these components contribute significantly to preserving the final product, it is only prudent to properly refrigerate it while awaiting its use; and common wisdom holds that any unused portion remaining after three days (following the cooking step) should be frozen. Unless specifically labeled as "un-cured" most commercially-avaliable cold cuts will contain nitrates/nitrites.
One might hold that the Liquid Smoke is also a foreign additive. This substance has been identified as the water-soluble fraction of condensed wood smoke - in most cases, hardwood smoke - and is referenced in some quarters as "pyroligneous acid" or "wood vinegar". Water soluble or not, it likely contains quite a few of the nasty chemicals that smoke is known for; however, the risks seem rather low, and the flavor profiles are much sought-after.
Ground Beef - Buy or Grind Your Own?
Some "purists" (myself often among them) would maintain that if you want to achieve the best reasonable quality, you have to grind your own meat. I often do, especially with pork - not so much with beef. If you do decide to grind your own meat, remember to remove any silverskin before grinding, and make at least two passes through the grinder, the first time with a ¼" (6 mm) plate, then a second time with a ³⁄₁₆" (4.5 mm) plate.
Frankly, since I was able to buy 90/10 ground beef at $2.98 USD per pound, and pretty much any beef roast was going for at least another $1.00 more per pound, I was more than happy to avoid both the additional cost and the additional work!
If you simply must grind meat for yourself, you have a few, limited options. You can:
accept whatever ratio of lean to fat is present in the cuts you are grinding (which is what most of us, myself included, would do);
trim the fat from your cuts as best you can, and try (or don't!) to come up with a reliable way to measure the amount of fat remaining;
use a mix of cuts with generally accepted values of fat content.
Using data from "Nutrition Facts", it appears that a mix of 2.1 lb (954 g) of beef round with 0.9 lb (408 g) of beef chuck, ground together would result in a meat mix with about 10% fat. As odd as these numbers may seem, if one were making a 10 lb batch instead of a 3 lb batch, the same ratios would require 7 lb ( about 3.2 kg) of round and 3 lb (about 1.4 kg) of chuck.
Regrinding
Since I had a sufficient number of loaf molds available, I opted to regrind only 2 lb out of the 3 lb of the meat mix, just to see what difference it made in the final product.
Loaf Molds
There are only a few real requirements for loaf molds:
They need to be oven-safe (at least up to 200° F, or 93.3° C);
They need to be food-grade (meaning that using them won't contaminate food); and
They need to be the right size and shape (which is the cook's decision).
Now it happens that, among other things, we also frequently make home made hummus, which means that, periodically, we buy sesame tahini. This is relevant because the tahini we buy comes in metal cans, labelled as containing 15 oz of product. For the math-challenged, that is only 1 oz short of a full pound, and tahini (being a slurry containing a lot of oil) weighs significantly less than an equal volume of meat. Empirical testing showed that the 15 oz tahini can easily holds a full pound of meat, and then some. It also happens that the diameter of these cans, while smaller than is ideal for sandwich meats, is still within acceptable parameters.
So here we have a food-grade, metal container (it came with food in it, after all) of acceptable size and shape, that will hold the right amount of our meat mix (a little more than 1 lb), and that was processed in a cannery of some sort (obviously safe up to food processing temperatures). And best of all, it didn't cost anything more than the effort required to wash and dry it! All of this means that I (or you!) don't have to break the bank for the"right" mould at some fancy kitchen shop or foreign online store - just find something you already have, that fits the requirements.
The Love of My Life, being a pack-rat of sorts, just happened to have several of these tahini containers, already cleaned, dried, available; so I was set.
Cooking
To do the actual cooking, I used our Rival® model #R0180BR-C roaster oven, as described in my Olive Loaf post, and I continuously monitored the cooking temperature with a digital probe oven thermometer. The roaster oven easily achieved and maintained the target baking temperature of 190° F (88° C); and I observed that the internal temperature of the meat reached the targeted 160° F (71° C) after about 2½ hours of cook time. I held the loaf at that temperature for about 15 minutes before removing the moulds from heat and chilling them in an ice water bath.
Product Evaluation
When the bologna had chilled sufficiently, I sliced about 1 oz each from the un-reground loaf, and one of the reground loaves. Both loaves sliced easily and cleanly, so I would expect that making sandwich slices would not be difficult. We taste-tested both types of loaf (a) solo, (b) with a very small dollop of horseradish sauce, and (c) with horseradish sauce and a cracker.
Both loaves have a flavor reminiscent of a really good all-beef frank. The un-reground loaf, as expected had a somewhat coarser texture, and with a different seasoning mix could probably pass for a very lean salami; but surprisingly, it had a much milder flavor than the reground loaf. We found that we preferred the reground loaf, but that the un-reground version was perfectly acceptable in terms of texture and flavor.
The milder flavor of the un-reground loaf might be due to slightly less-than-optimal distribution of the spices and Tender Quick. Simply allowing the coarser product to "age" somewhat longer under refrigeration may cause this to self-correct.