I am making potato sausage for the first time

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rbranstner

Smoking Guru
Original poster
OTBS Member
Oct 18, 2007
5,698
39
West Fargo, ND / Northern MN
I am going to be making potato sausage for the first time this weekend. I have been making various flavors of my venison sausage for the past several years and I always put them in the smoker for at 200 degrees for 40 minutes to an hour to give them a nice little smoke flavor. I have looked at a few potato sausage receipes and none of them say anything about smoking them it just looks like you freeze them and cook them when you are going to eat them. I have only had potato sausage one time and from what I remember it wasn't smoked at all it just looked like a raw sausage when I cooked it. So what do you guys say should I just freeze them after I stuff them or throw a little smoke on them? Any potato sausage experts out there?
 
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I never made them but I have eaten a couple. I don't think a little smoke would heart as long as you followed the freezing and cooking directions .
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rbranstner
If you decide to smoke the potato sausage, make sure to add cure to your mix before stuffing. Might not hurt to let the mix sit in cure overnight refridgerated bofore stuffing either.

I am interested to hear how this works out for you, if you can post pics of your finished product.
 
I used to make it when I worked in the meat dept., many years ago. It was always a "fresh" sausage. If I recall, about a 50/50 mix of meat to potatoes, then onions and seasoning. Pretty basic, just allspice and nutmeg, I think. I was just looking at my old recipe book, and thinking I might try using some venison/Elk, and make a batch. Didn't think about smoking it, but i don't think it would hurt. Also, I don't think adding cure to it, would be a good idea. IMHO. I think a potatoe sausage would look "funny", if you added cure.

Cure is added to help keep the meat a reddish/pink color. More for aesthetics than anything. Without it, a sausage would turn tan/brown. like a cooked pork chop. I doesn't really do anything for the taste, except maybe add some saltyness to it.
 
bomb......i think the pinkish color you are talking bout is from prague #1....its a reddish color.......but i think if you use tender quick, which i white i believe(?)........shouldn't be pinkish then........
 
Cure kills and helps prevent clostridrium botulinum (Botulism). If potato sausage includes meat, you have to be careful. As long as you are very clean and keep the meat cold while you make the sausage, you should be OK. But if you keep meat between 40 and 140 degrees for very long, you are asking for trouble.
 
I believe HomeBrewu said it best at the end of his post "But if you keep meat between 40 and 140 degrees for very long, you are asking for trouble." I would just like to add "without cure" to his sentence.
 
I have never made potato sausage but I have heard for the work involve with peeling potaoes and draining the starch from them that using tator tots or hashbrowns is just as good and much easier?
 
Yes I will definately post some pictures of our sausage making weekend up in Blackduck (that is where my brother lives) We call it sausage fest thats kind of lame but we have fun with it. This will be Sausage Fest III as it is the third year my brother three buddies and I decided to make venison sausage together each year. We do add cure to our sausage just because when I go and buy my spices the butcher usually throws a package in but we have done several batches without any cure but we keep our meat cold and when it is done we freeze it right away. Thats not to hard up in in North Dakota just set it out in the garage and it will be frozen in no time this time of year. And yes Mossy we are taking your advice I went to Sams Club today and bought 36 lbs of hashbrowns. I wasn't going to mess around with cooking, cutting and draining all of those potatoes. I will let you guys know how it turns out. I just wish I had my big smoker built so I could smoke a couple hundred pounds of sausage at once instead of 30 small loads. Please check out my post on the open decussion as I am looking for some suggestions on my smoke house from you guys.
 
This potato sausage is sounding beter with every post. We could always shread em with the ole knuckle buster box! How about tater pancakes and cornedbeef hash sausage?
 
hash browns, or we even used bags of french fries too.

when we did use "real" potatoes, we just washed them and ground then through a coarse plate first, with the onions too. Then ground the meat, coarse too, mixed the two together, and ground them a second time through a finer plate, added the seasoning, and stuffed them. We packed them up and froze them, since there was no cure in the sausage.

Deb .... yes, it's kind of like hash in a tube. LOL
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Well our potato sausage turned out awesome this weekend. All in all I think we ended up with around 300lbs of meat. That is with four different flavors. We had alot of fun but the weekend finally caught up with me yesterday I came down with a nasty bit of the flu. I guess walking in and out of the garage smoking sausage all weekend into -8 degree weather wasn't such a good idea with just a sweatshirt on. Hopefully you can see the pictures this is my first time posting them.
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rbranstner
Congrats on your success !!!
I am interested in hearing on smoked potao sausage vs. not smoked?
Also, did you decide to use cure in it?
 
Well we ended up smoking all of the sausage but the potato was only smoked for about 20 minutes at 200 degrees just for a light flavor. We could have done it longer but we decided against it because normally it doesn't really have a big smoke flavor. We didn't end up putting cure on the potato sausage just because we ended up being one bag short on cure. Next year we will put cure on them all for sure as I took a mental note and the meat was sitting out in the garage for quite a while and I don't want to take the chance of getting sick. I guess in past year I never really knew what the cure was totally all about but now I have a better idea why you need cure I will always use it in the future. I now have a very full freezer so full I had to take a bunch of stuff out to make room for all of my sausage/fish/venison.
 
goat
I have smoked at -20º in the snow, up here in God's country (he vacations down south in the winter !!!) we have to do that.
 
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