Help! Can I salvage my summer sausage?

[applin6719]

Help please! We made our first batch of jalapeño cheddar summer sausage. We use high temp cheese, used pork fat, and had a good fill in all of our casings. When we initially smoked, the temp didn’t get as high as we wanted, it was only about 140. We upped the temp to 200 (that’s the temp we used on another non cheese batch that turned out great) and let it to. We know we overcooked it, it was in there 5 hours. We kept poking it to try and temp the meat, but we couldnt get it above the 140 mark. Once we put it in the ice bath, the casings got filled with water. We tried it last night and the outside of the sausage is brown, and felt damp. Today it’s no longer damp, but has a wet meat taste/texture on the outside. There is also no evidence of cheese or jalapeño flavor. There are some obvious things we did wrong, but any other suggestions? Can it be salvaged? We had hoped to give some as Christmas gifts and made 12lbs. Thank you in advance

 

[DanMcG]

Do you own dogs? they will love it. Ours get the not so good stuff.

 

[R Blum]

I just made a 15 lbs batch of venison Summer Sausage with cheese the other day. Took me almost 11 hours to get to 152 degrees where I wanted it. I started out at 120 degrees for 1/2 hour to dry out the casing then upped it to 140 then upped it to 170 and smoked about 3 hours with hickory. Usually once it hits the internal temperature I soak it in ice water or if there is snow I stick it in the snow. It was nearing midnight so I just hung them in the garage overnight. Next day I cut them up. They were perfect. Great taste, nice texture. I did get a stall at about 140 degrees but just road it out. This was the first time it took this long to reach my internal temp that I wanted, but it was worth the wait.