Beef Summer Sausage

[fitchy]

Looking for advice on beef summer sausage smoke times. I recently smoked a second batch of summer sausage and my lord it took 24 hours to get to 154 before i pulled it and said close enough. I followed smoking directions by another post on here and i am familiar with the "dead zone" that hits around 125. Just wondering has anyone had this issue with it taking forever as my first batch only took 14 hours.

 

[SmokinAl]

Yes I have had that happen before, and I just poached it to finish it up.

Al

 

[scottma]

I agree with Al.....I've started taking them out after 6-8 hours in the smoke and finishing them in a pot of water held around 160 degrees.  It usually takes only 30 minutes or so to get to the 152. 

 

[BGKYSmoker]

If you finish in the hot water you will need to keep the water moving with a wooden spoon or if you have a sous vide. Keep the water 160-165, larger sausage like bologna, summer sausage will take longer than sticks to IT. If you reach an IT (meat) of 149-150 you can hang or wire rack them, they will IT at 152 on their own (its good to skip the cold ice doing this way)

Your results may vary from mine.

GL

 

[dward51]

I had that happen.

My answer was sous vide.  The meat was set and stuck around 140*, so I vacuumed it with the food saver (going to do this to all but one of the chubs anyway) and then popped them in a sous vide bath set at 154*.  Came back 4 hours later and they were perfect at 154* internal (and probably had been for at least 3 of the 4 hours).  That is the beauty of sous vide.  If you set 154* you cannot over cook it and no danger of fat out.  I could have left it longer without consequence.   Just dry the vacuum packed bags off and pop the ones you are not going to use in the next few days into the freezer as they are already vacuum packed.

So sous vide is now my go to finish instead of a more traditional water bath.  Still leave the chubs on the smoker to around 140'ish to set the meat so the vacuum packing will not squish the chubs flat and to put on some smoke flavor.  About the only difference in the end is you don't hang them to dry.  I don't know that it matters to the flavor or texture as the casings are pretty thick anyway.