First time making Kielbasa

[bneufelder]

Hello everyone. Living in Indianapolis, we have been blessed with Claus' German Sausage & Meats. I decided to try and make a Kielbasa, which is our families favorite.

After a lot of research this is what I came up with for my first batch and can't describe in words how excited I am to be doing something i've thought about for years and years.

Pork Shoulder 5lb
Salt 45g
Marjoram 1.25g
Pepper 3g
Fresh Garlic 6 cloves
Cure 6g (1 tsp per 5lbs)


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Found an old Enterprise Sausage Stuffer. For some reason, I wanted to do everything the old fashioned way.

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Then acquired an Enterprise #12 Meat Grinder.

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Big learning curve on this. Trying to grind raw meat is a horrible experience. Grinding slightly frozen... meat not bad at all.

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I missed a bunch of pictures during the stuffing part because I was too busy. This went better than I thought but didn't know to twist every other link in opposite direction to keep them from unraveling.

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I would like to make a brick/mortar smokehouse but found the MES cold smoking setup a cheap/fast way to see if I could actually pull this off. Tangent - I've had a MES for nearly 10 years and it was my introduction to smoking. I tried to smoke on a weber gas grill previous to it to mixed results. Graduated to a charcoal weber kettle and now a big green egg.

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I was so very happy when I opened the door and saw this. I wanted to go all the way up to an IT of 160 but ran out of time.

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Still marveling at the color and can't believe this is happening!

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This is my second biggest mistake. I took them to temp too quickly and split a few of the casings. They didn't look as pretty but still eat.

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I wanted to throw them on the snow outside. My wife insisted birds would crap on them. After a long argument... ice bath.

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This part was great. I felt victorious, not just because I avoided the bird crap thanks to my wife, but I did something with my own hands that I didn't think I could do.

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Final product.

 

[SmokinAl]

Great job on your first try!
That sammie looks delicious!
Love the grinder & the stuffer!
Al

 

[ab canuck]

Sounds like it was a good experience.... Would love to see some pics. The first time I tried making kielbasa was a disaster.... We used to much fat in it and smoked to high a temp which ended up rendering the fat through the sausage.... The dogs ate well on that occasion....

 

[bneufelder]

Sounds like it was a good experience.... Would love to see some pics. The first time I tried making kielbasa was a disaster.... We used to much fat in it and smoked to high a temp which ended up rendering the fat through the sausage.... The dogs ate well on that occasion....

You can't see the pictures? I embedded them, could of made a mistake.

 

[ab canuck]

No sorry I don't see them

 

[crazymoon]

BNF,Fine job on your sausage ,you have found a new and really fun hobby! like

 

[ab canuck]

I can now see the pics. Love the old equipment..... Sausage looks great, Nice job on everything.... Points for sure

 

[whistech]

The sausage looks outstanding and congratulations on your first batch. It only gets better from here on out.

 

[indaswamp]

Congratulations! Great start for your first links! Making smoked sausage for the first time can seem a daunting task. First batch I made 20 years ago I smoked @ 200* and had fat out. The links were dry, dry, dry.

One tip-I suggest not letting the links hang so low. Try and keep them in the top 1/3 of the smoke house where the heat is the most even, you'll get much better uniform cooking.

Oh- and points!