With sausage the wife and I made Sunday, I finally finished smoking the cured part (made 25 pounds fresh spicy bratwurst, 25 pounds breakfast sausage, 25 pounds cured salami, and 25 pounds cured jalapeño cheddar).
I've made plenty of fresh sausage before, they turned out great, are vacuum packed and in the deep freeze.
As of last night, I finished smoking the rest of the cured meats with my new MES 40 with mailbox mod. I have definitely found that smoking them to the proper internal temperature takes way longer than I'd expect. Both batches took 12+ hours each total to get to 152 degrees Fahrenheit.
I haven't tried the salami yet, they are vacuum sealed and in the refrigerator. It seems from other postings, that a couple of days in the fridge really helps their flavor. I'll leave two of them unfrozen, give some to friends (if it turned out any good), and freeze the rest. I used the recipe from Rytek Kutas's book (4th edition, page 215).
First batch was the salami. I ended up not putting enough seasoning in it, because I did it per 25 pounds, and ended up miscounting, and actually mixing it with 30 lbs of meat.
Last night's batch was the Jalapeno Cheese batch, which I modeled based on liking CrankyBuzzard's post.
I did an initial grind with a 1/4" plate because I was trying to mix venison, pork butt, and some pork trim I got from the butcher (in 60/40 pork/deer). I mixed the ingredients, and let it sit in the fridge overnight before grinding again through a 5/16" plate (again, all I have), and stuffing. They remained in my fridge covered with plastic wrap until yesterday.
One thing that I won't do again for smoked sausage, is to braid them. We have always braided our fresh sausage, as it made it easy to do links. In retrospect, this made it impossible to get smoke all the way around them. As you can see below, there are grey areas that smoke didn't penetrate. Does this make the sausage less safe to eat at this point?
The taste isn't precisely what I was expecting. I fried up some of it before stuffing, and the taste was great. I sampled some from two of the links that were uniformly smoked (one was collagen, and one was hog casings), and found that the consistency wasn't precisely what I was expecting. I was expecting the inside to be a bit harder, but it was all things considered, fairly soft.
I have some of it hanging to dry the casings back out after their cold water bath. After that, I'll refrigerate it overnight, and try it again.
My brother in law makes great smoked sausage, and it seems when it comes off the smoke it has a better consistency than this. I wonder if I need to set up a case fan to circulate air in the smoker.
Also, I think I need to cover one of the holes I made on the top of the mailbox. The second time I used it, the pellets lit themselves back on fire in the mailbox! My first time, it did just perfect.
I've made plenty of fresh sausage before, they turned out great, are vacuum packed and in the deep freeze.
As of last night, I finished smoking the rest of the cured meats with my new MES 40 with mailbox mod. I have definitely found that smoking them to the proper internal temperature takes way longer than I'd expect. Both batches took 12+ hours each total to get to 152 degrees Fahrenheit.
I haven't tried the salami yet, they are vacuum sealed and in the refrigerator. It seems from other postings, that a couple of days in the fridge really helps their flavor. I'll leave two of them unfrozen, give some to friends (if it turned out any good), and freeze the rest. I used the recipe from Rytek Kutas's book (4th edition, page 215).
First batch was the salami. I ended up not putting enough seasoning in it, because I did it per 25 pounds, and ended up miscounting, and actually mixing it with 30 lbs of meat.
Last night's batch was the Jalapeno Cheese batch, which I modeled based on liking CrankyBuzzard's post.
I did an initial grind with a 1/4" plate because I was trying to mix venison, pork butt, and some pork trim I got from the butcher (in 60/40 pork/deer). I mixed the ingredients, and let it sit in the fridge overnight before grinding again through a 5/16" plate (again, all I have), and stuffing. They remained in my fridge covered with plastic wrap until yesterday.
One thing that I won't do again for smoked sausage, is to braid them. We have always braided our fresh sausage, as it made it easy to do links. In retrospect, this made it impossible to get smoke all the way around them. As you can see below, there are grey areas that smoke didn't penetrate. Does this make the sausage less safe to eat at this point?
The taste isn't precisely what I was expecting. I fried up some of it before stuffing, and the taste was great. I sampled some from two of the links that were uniformly smoked (one was collagen, and one was hog casings), and found that the consistency wasn't precisely what I was expecting. I was expecting the inside to be a bit harder, but it was all things considered, fairly soft.
I have some of it hanging to dry the casings back out after their cold water bath. After that, I'll refrigerate it overnight, and try it again.
My brother in law makes great smoked sausage, and it seems when it comes off the smoke it has a better consistency than this. I wonder if I need to set up a case fan to circulate air in the smoker.
Also, I think I need to cover one of the holes I made on the top of the mailbox. The second time I used it, the pellets lit themselves back on fire in the mailbox! My first time, it did just perfect.
