I took a beginners sausage making class about a month ago. The instructor is a professional sausage maker with over 350 world-wide awards, his own store and restaurant. He had impressive credentials and a helluva setup. I especially liked when he opened a programmable smoker with about $7,000 of bacon hanging in slabs (smelled amazing!!!) FWIW - they chill the bacon to 28F and then slice it (I asked).
Pretty much everything went as I expected with a few exceptions:
They used very, VERY little salt in their seasoning packets/ingredients as compared to anything I ever received from TSM, or anywhere else for that matter. I weighed 3 seasoning packets that I purchased to do 10 lbs of sausage each (30 total pounds) and the total, including packaging was only 277 gms. I mean it is, visually, mostly spices. None of these packets contain any cure...which brings me to the next item:
They recommended Morton Tender Quick for curing salt to use exclusively for smoked/cooked sausage and cold-smoked hard salami sausage
www.mortonsalt.com
Anyone use this cure exclusively for hard salami and also for cooked sausage? Thoughts? I personally use Cure #1 and #2 accordingly.
For their hard salami's they like to used beef-middle casings. These were hard to manage with one person - but we all helped each other. They were very elastic and no-one had a blow-out. They allowed us into a room where they were drying the hard salami...and it smelled amazing in there!
For jalapeno's - they always used dried jalapeno's and they like to rehydrate them with various germen beers. I liked this. I need to find dried jalapeno's.
Tasting their products was the most fun...they were pretty darned good.
Of the 25 that were signed up for the 4 hour class...21 showed. 3 of us had sausage making experience. We all made sausage as part of the class. I made jalapeno/cheddar, cold/smoked hard salami with 50/50 venison/pork. Surprisingly, I won the test-patty taste off. Everyone had a great time.
Some pics are attached of my hard salami from this class. Freshly stuffed. Cold smoked and maybe 12 days of drying. Today at 3.5 weeks of drying and down just over 40% in weight (smells amazing and I think the color is good). I had to hang this in a wine cellar area (coolest part of my basement). I have it sealed in a Ziploc bag and will let it mellow in the fridge for another week or so to even up the drying (I hope).
Pretty much everything went as I expected with a few exceptions:
They used very, VERY little salt in their seasoning packets/ingredients as compared to anything I ever received from TSM, or anywhere else for that matter. I weighed 3 seasoning packets that I purchased to do 10 lbs of sausage each (30 total pounds) and the total, including packaging was only 277 gms. I mean it is, visually, mostly spices. None of these packets contain any cure...which brings me to the next item:
They recommended Morton Tender Quick for curing salt to use exclusively for smoked/cooked sausage and cold-smoked hard salami sausage
MORTON® TENDER QUICK® - Morton Salt
www.mortonsalt.com
For their hard salami's they like to used beef-middle casings. These were hard to manage with one person - but we all helped each other. They were very elastic and no-one had a blow-out. They allowed us into a room where they were drying the hard salami...and it smelled amazing in there!
For jalapeno's - they always used dried jalapeno's and they like to rehydrate them with various germen beers. I liked this. I need to find dried jalapeno's.
Tasting their products was the most fun...they were pretty darned good.
Of the 25 that were signed up for the 4 hour class...21 showed. 3 of us had sausage making experience. We all made sausage as part of the class. I made jalapeno/cheddar, cold/smoked hard salami with 50/50 venison/pork. Surprisingly, I won the test-patty taste off. Everyone had a great time.
Some pics are attached of my hard salami from this class. Freshly stuffed. Cold smoked and maybe 12 days of drying. Today at 3.5 weeks of drying and down just over 40% in weight (smells amazing and I think the color is good). I had to hang this in a wine cellar area (coolest part of my basement). I have it sealed in a Ziploc bag and will let it mellow in the fridge for another week or so to even up the drying (I hope).
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