Made a 10 lb. batch on Sunday.
I used 8 lbs. of 90/10 Ground Beef & 2 lbs. Pork Butt.
I thought for my first time I would rely on a premixed kit & went with PS Seasonings Garlic Summer Sausage.
I did add about 3 T. of freshly ground Peppercorns in the entire meat mixture and about 3 T. of chopped Jalepenos in half
of it. I also added 1 C. of NFDM to the 10 lb. mixture.
I soaked the casings (LEM Fibrous) for an hour or so in hot water and Vinegar. I read that will help keep the casing from sticking to the meat and whether that was it or not it works perfectly. Casing peels off nicely after slicing sausage.
This was also the first time using my Weston Realtree 7lb. Stuffer and it worked tremendously.
Overall I'm very happy with how it turned out. I do prefer the Hi Mountain Garlic/Black Pepper mix that a friend of mine used a couple of months ago, but this still resulted in a better tasting sausage than many I've bought in stores.
Put sausages in the smoker at 120* for about an hour with no wood chips.
Then I added Hickory chips & bumped it up to 140* for an hour.
Then 160* for an hour with smoke followed by 175* for the remainder which took longer than I had expected.
Into an ice bath for an hour, then hung them in the garage to bloom for a couple of hours.
Very little shrinkage. No Fat Out. It exceeded my expectations for my first attempt & now I think I'm hooked.
Looking forward to trying out flavors & methods. My wonderful wife helped throughout the entire project & it was really neat.
I have to thank a lot of you people on this Forum because without me having read many, many posts of successes & failures I couldn't have had this turn out this well the first time and I really appreciate this website & the people that are on here.
Here are a few pics:
I used 8 lbs. of 90/10 Ground Beef & 2 lbs. Pork Butt.
I thought for my first time I would rely on a premixed kit & went with PS Seasonings Garlic Summer Sausage.
I did add about 3 T. of freshly ground Peppercorns in the entire meat mixture and about 3 T. of chopped Jalepenos in half
of it. I also added 1 C. of NFDM to the 10 lb. mixture.
I soaked the casings (LEM Fibrous) for an hour or so in hot water and Vinegar. I read that will help keep the casing from sticking to the meat and whether that was it or not it works perfectly. Casing peels off nicely after slicing sausage.
This was also the first time using my Weston Realtree 7lb. Stuffer and it worked tremendously.
Overall I'm very happy with how it turned out. I do prefer the Hi Mountain Garlic/Black Pepper mix that a friend of mine used a couple of months ago, but this still resulted in a better tasting sausage than many I've bought in stores.
Put sausages in the smoker at 120* for about an hour with no wood chips.
Then I added Hickory chips & bumped it up to 140* for an hour.
Then 160* for an hour with smoke followed by 175* for the remainder which took longer than I had expected.
Into an ice bath for an hour, then hung them in the garage to bloom for a couple of hours.
Very little shrinkage. No Fat Out. It exceeded my expectations for my first attempt & now I think I'm hooked.
Looking forward to trying out flavors & methods. My wonderful wife helped throughout the entire project & it was really neat.
I have to thank a lot of you people on this Forum because without me having read many, many posts of successes & failures I couldn't have had this turn out this well the first time and I really appreciate this website & the people that are on here.
Here are a few pics:
