- Jun 8, 2014
- 12
- 10
So this past weekend we had a strong itch to do some more smoking. We gathered the necessary meats, prepp'd the smoker, had a ice bath ready and the vacuum sealer ready.
How did we do you may be thinking after such a short opening sentence? Well let me show you
Here is the first batch of wood I used. Hickory and Cherry were the 2 I decided to try out.
I keep thinking about ordering from Fruita but haven't broken down just yet as its a heftier upfront cost than the other wood we get
Eye of round going in the Smoker. I had made a generic rub of Garlic powder, black pepper and onion powder the night before. I feel my rub was too light when it was all said and done and I might inject it next time for a deeper flavor penetration.
Everything plugged in ready to. I took it to 130 than let it coast to between 135 and 139. One piece was heftier than the other
Always looks darker than I am expecting
After letting it sit for an hour in foil had to cut and try some. Quite tasty. Need a thicker rub for sure. It was a 8 pound eye of round. I pulled a little over 6pounds of lunch meat out of it.
I don't seem to have a picture of the might stack of sliced meat I got made out of this.
This is my spices for my pork Andouille sausages I was shooting to make.
I followed the Nola Andouille Sausage recipe, and was not horrible impressed with the level of spice.
10 pounds of pork beat ready to be fed to the machine
This is after I smoked it. If you notice, as its quite clear, I don't have a lot of "proper" links. There was issue with my intestines while I was stuffing where it started to dry some so it packed the meat too heavy. I had blow outs, 6 of em, and turning em to make proper links was causing more problems.
Almost forgot my bacon picture! Half was sliced thick, half thin
Things I learned!!
1)Keep the skins lubricated while stuffing. Even if you gotta pause real quick and force water through the casing. It SHOULD feed itself basically while stuffing the sausage.
2)Do not be afraid of spices when making sausages. I followed the recipe I linked and had none of heat go through
3)When getting pork belly I need to expect loosing a good chunk of it in the sense that I'm not getting bacon from it.
13 pound block from Cash and Carry yielded 7 pounds bacon. We got the pig skin, which we will either broil down or make pork rinds out of, and we got plenty of trimmings. The trimmings are incredibly handy when/if you make chicken sausage or baked beans
4) Need to inject the eye of round while making the roast beef. The smoke flavour is really good but I'm not getting the other spices really. Smoke seems to overpower most else
What I do it all again? Hell yes
I plan to make English Bangers, breakfast sausage, that my brother made. He did NOT smoke em and my god they were damn tasty.
Also my buddy threw 6 Chili Piquin into his 5 pound batch of sausages and jimminy cricket it was good. Plenty of heat but not overpowering. Need to add those to mine next time
Enough bacon for 24 servings, I eat 6 every morning for breakfast, so got time to pick some up and start the process over again
Enough sausage made for something like 56 servings.......all for 2 bucks a pound.
How much meat was made total?
25 pounds of sausage
We pulled 8 pounds of Bacon and another 3 1/2 pounds of trimming/skin to use
8 pounds of Roast Beef
Not bad
How did we do you may be thinking after such a short opening sentence? Well let me show you
Here is the first batch of wood I used. Hickory and Cherry were the 2 I decided to try out.
I keep thinking about ordering from Fruita but haven't broken down just yet as its a heftier upfront cost than the other wood we get
Eye of round going in the Smoker. I had made a generic rub of Garlic powder, black pepper and onion powder the night before. I feel my rub was too light when it was all said and done and I might inject it next time for a deeper flavor penetration.
Everything plugged in ready to. I took it to 130 than let it coast to between 135 and 139. One piece was heftier than the other
Always looks darker than I am expecting
After letting it sit for an hour in foil had to cut and try some. Quite tasty. Need a thicker rub for sure. It was a 8 pound eye of round. I pulled a little over 6pounds of lunch meat out of it.
I don't seem to have a picture of the might stack of sliced meat I got made out of this.
This is my spices for my pork Andouille sausages I was shooting to make.
I followed the Nola Andouille Sausage recipe, and was not horrible impressed with the level of spice.
10 pounds of pork beat ready to be fed to the machine
This is after I smoked it. If you notice, as its quite clear, I don't have a lot of "proper" links. There was issue with my intestines while I was stuffing where it started to dry some so it packed the meat too heavy. I had blow outs, 6 of em, and turning em to make proper links was causing more problems.
Almost forgot my bacon picture! Half was sliced thick, half thin
Things I learned!!
1)Keep the skins lubricated while stuffing. Even if you gotta pause real quick and force water through the casing. It SHOULD feed itself basically while stuffing the sausage.
2)Do not be afraid of spices when making sausages. I followed the recipe I linked and had none of heat go through
3)When getting pork belly I need to expect loosing a good chunk of it in the sense that I'm not getting bacon from it.
13 pound block from Cash and Carry yielded 7 pounds bacon. We got the pig skin, which we will either broil down or make pork rinds out of, and we got plenty of trimmings. The trimmings are incredibly handy when/if you make chicken sausage or baked beans
4) Need to inject the eye of round while making the roast beef. The smoke flavour is really good but I'm not getting the other spices really. Smoke seems to overpower most else
What I do it all again? Hell yes
I plan to make English Bangers, breakfast sausage, that my brother made. He did NOT smoke em and my god they were damn tasty.
Also my buddy threw 6 Chili Piquin into his 5 pound batch of sausages and jimminy cricket it was good. Plenty of heat but not overpowering. Need to add those to mine next time
Enough bacon for 24 servings, I eat 6 every morning for breakfast, so got time to pick some up and start the process over again
Enough sausage made for something like 56 servings.......all for 2 bucks a pound.
How much meat was made total?
25 pounds of sausage
We pulled 8 pounds of Bacon and another 3 1/2 pounds of trimming/skin to use
8 pounds of Roast Beef
Not bad
