Folks here is what happened with my reverse snack stick project. Recall that my goal was to pre-smoke and cook geese and then grind and stuff, only using the oven to finish off the sticks by shrinking them down somewhat. I got a lot of advice, and it was all right on. Specifically, with Dave's thoughts on safety in mind, I figured I would need to bring the sticks up to full cooking temp to be on the safe side. Then Szynka suggested the stiks would end up dry and they may not bind. He also suggested that goose and duck fat have very low melt point and will render out. That's exactly what happened. Here's the trail:
I start with the brined goose drying before it hits the smoker.
Here we are around 4 hours out of the MES; its as good as it looks!
Looks perfect for sausage; like a fatty pork butt but its goose and way tastier.
By the way, I cut my MES smoking pan down so it would rest directly on the coil. Checked with MasterB before doing this.
Still, my primary smoke is A-MAZE-N, although the pan does contribute now
Well, I ground up the goose, added the cure, spices, etc.
And all I had to do now is bring it up to temp in the oven and bask in the glory! Here we are going into the oven:
And here is where the goose fat melt point clobbered me! I started at 140 degrees to see how things would set up. Damn lucky I checked back in a few minutes because I had goose fat oozing out of the casings like an oil well blowout. Damn!
Here's what pieces of sausage looked like in a pan after heating for a short while; check out the fat:
Of course the smoked goose fat was the key ingredient all along, but if I brought the sticks up to 145 internal, there would be none left. It would be running out of the smoker or oven. Plus, the sausage was, as predicted, somewhat crumbly. And would have been a lot more so had I cooked up to the 145IT.
A total loss! No! I'm just treating it as fresh sausage, which needs to be cooked, and I don't need to add anything to the pan to cook it. Fat quickly oozes out and I still have smoked goose sausage. Not what I had intended, but ended up close to Dave's suggestion of just going with a regular fresh sausage approach. I think with duck and goose fat involved, the regular sausage approach will be necessary. For stix, I can still use goose, but will mix with pork. Here's how I packed them: I put 'Cook' on to make it clear that though in snack stix form they need to be cooked.
Thanks for everyone's input; I learned a lot on this one!
