Got bitten by sausage making bug again. Actually it was triggered by two events – firstly, I got my paws on small bag of high quality, authentic Spanish pimenton (smoked red paprika). Secondly, my spanking new AMNPS arrived along with 20 pound bag of oak pellets. Even though I still have some supply of my csabai sausage, the temptation to test both items was unbearable.
And so decision was to make a small batch of what I think can call a chorizo. As far as ingredients are concerned, I’ve used my very basic Hungarian style Csabai recipe, but substituted sweet red paprika with pimenton. The meat was again pork butt, slightly leaner than last time, because I’ve got lucky and sourced a very nice piece of pig backfat (Tazino Ahumado).
Another deviation from my last attempt was to use 12mm (~1/2inch) hole grinder plate for chunkier texture.
Butt was trimmed and cubed, ingredients mixed in, put in the covered pot and into fridge to cure for 5 days. Backfat wasn’t used at this stage; it was just sitting in the freezer. After curing was done, I ground almost frozen fat separately, half of it I chopped with knife. After that I ground roughly two thirds of seasoned meat with 12mm plate, the rest with 8mm plate and finally a handful on 8mm again. I wasn’t following any particular advice here, just thinking that I’d need some binder for chunky bits. Mixed everything well with fat bits, trying not to overdo the mix and break these nice fatty bits.
Stuffed the mixture into thick hog casings (that didn’t take very long, the batch was around 4 pounds). Let it dry for couple of hours and into smoker.
My first time with pellet AMNS – no problems to get it going. I have good torch and within 6 minutes I had both ends smoking like a charm. When both ends were lit, the smoke lasted 4.5 hours. One ended fire lasted over 10 hours. The quality of smoke is awesome – just bloody right. I’m very happy with the results. The good ol’ dusty AMNS was awesome too, but this model gives me amount of smoke than I’m a lot happier with. The drawback is the AMNPS is running considerably hotter – it raised smoker temperature by 10-12 deg Celsius (~20F), so I have to re-think my cold smoking adventures. Also down here we are in spring and its going to get hotter and hotter outside.
In this project I went with 3 double ended smokes and one overnighter single ended. No problems in keeping smoke going – set and forget indeed.
And as promised couple of Bear-Views:
I still regret one thing – should’ve made more of it. They turned out very, very tasty. There's always next time…
And so decision was to make a small batch of what I think can call a chorizo. As far as ingredients are concerned, I’ve used my very basic Hungarian style Csabai recipe, but substituted sweet red paprika with pimenton. The meat was again pork butt, slightly leaner than last time, because I’ve got lucky and sourced a very nice piece of pig backfat (Tazino Ahumado).
Another deviation from my last attempt was to use 12mm (~1/2inch) hole grinder plate for chunkier texture.
Butt was trimmed and cubed, ingredients mixed in, put in the covered pot and into fridge to cure for 5 days. Backfat wasn’t used at this stage; it was just sitting in the freezer. After curing was done, I ground almost frozen fat separately, half of it I chopped with knife. After that I ground roughly two thirds of seasoned meat with 12mm plate, the rest with 8mm plate and finally a handful on 8mm again. I wasn’t following any particular advice here, just thinking that I’d need some binder for chunky bits. Mixed everything well with fat bits, trying not to overdo the mix and break these nice fatty bits.
Stuffed the mixture into thick hog casings (that didn’t take very long, the batch was around 4 pounds). Let it dry for couple of hours and into smoker.
My first time with pellet AMNS – no problems to get it going. I have good torch and within 6 minutes I had both ends smoking like a charm. When both ends were lit, the smoke lasted 4.5 hours. One ended fire lasted over 10 hours. The quality of smoke is awesome – just bloody right. I’m very happy with the results. The good ol’ dusty AMNS was awesome too, but this model gives me amount of smoke than I’m a lot happier with. The drawback is the AMNPS is running considerably hotter – it raised smoker temperature by 10-12 deg Celsius (~20F), so I have to re-think my cold smoking adventures. Also down here we are in spring and its going to get hotter and hotter outside.
In this project I went with 3 double ended smokes and one overnighter single ended. No problems in keeping smoke going – set and forget indeed.
And as promised couple of Bear-Views:
I still regret one thing – should’ve made more of it. They turned out very, very tasty. There's always next time…