Hello

[armin]

Hello everyone,

I am Armin from South Western Ontario and glad to find this forum. I have a Cusinart smoker (and very happy with it) for my hot and cold smoking projects. 

My whole family loves summer sausage, ham and many other types of smoked cold cuts. 

I inherited the recipes I use from my grandfather (he passed away last year, God bless his soul) and for over 70 years now he was making ham and sausage without curing salt, just plain salt which I learned it can be a risk for clostridium  botulinum and I just made a batch yesterday in the same way (my last one tho), I will not take any chances from now on.

Why I joined this forum? To be honest because I had a batch of summer sausage in my smoker last night and the IT was 122F for 4h despite the temperature of the smoke house set to 160F so I was curious if I should keep the sausage giving the long time at 122F in the smoke house. I finally brought the sausage to 156F and I'll have a taste (and then wait to see if I die or not). I heard about people smoking the summer sausage for 8-10h so I am interested in ALL methods and special ways of making amazing sausage. Also I was wondering how is everyone adjusting the summer sausage temperature in the smokehouse when smoking in the evening/night and outdoor temperatures are changing drastically from one hour to the other?

Well, I think even with World Old recipes there is still room for learning and improving. 

Thanks for having me here

Cheers,

Armin

 

[gary s]

Hello Armin, welcome to the site. Sorry about your Grand Father, Nothing like teaching and passing down recipes and how too's Looking forward to seeing future post and pics 

Gary S

 

[armin]

Thank you for the warm welcome Gary. I'm not sure how to insert images on this forum yet but I will give it a try.

Here is the summer sausage raw in the natural casing after curing for 3 days. I didn't use cure #1 or cure #2, I did however notice my old recipe was calling for a tad bit more salt than usual recipes, more bacteria inhibiting spices and so... but I will really start to use the curing salts just to take the risk out, especially for my kids.

DSC07167.JPG

• armin
• May 16, 2014

The next step was to make a small sausage bun from the scraps we had after filling the casings and mix it with a bit of liquid smoke to get a quick preview an how the sausage is gonna be... (I bake that in the oven for couple hours)

DSC07166.JPG

• armin
• May 16, 2014

The sausage was done after I think 10 hours... it was my mistake not paying attention to outdoor temperature drop so I had to adjust my smokhouse accordingly, add water to the pan for a bit of moisture in the 3rd smoking phase and regulating the damper to let humidity to escape and prevent condensation, but all in one turned really good! Here the results:

DSC07169.JPG

• armin
• May 16, 2014

And the taste was fabulous! Just amazingly good and I think it's another safe batch since we are still alive hahaha

DSC07172.JPG

• armin
• May 16, 2014

Well, I guess the picture uploading was a breeze and I do apologize for the quality of my images I was really tired after a night of caring about outdoor temperatures going crazy.

Cheers and happy smoking!

Armin

 

[gary s]

Hey, quality is great  Man those thing look fantastic, (I wonder if you can mail me some???? )    Great job !!!!!

Gary S