Kabanosy-forgot kosher salt

[frussell]

Hello, first post here. We have done a lot of whole muscle cures but are diving into curing sausages. I made summer sausage with a kit and it turned out wonderfully. I made kielbasa and kabanosy last week. The kielbasa turned out well but I'm pretty sure I forgot to put the kosher salt in the kabanosy. They have a faint saltiness from the cure #1. So my question is: are they a total loss or can I still eat them? Thank you!

Here is a link to the recipe I used

Smoked Kabanos Sausage - Taste of Artisan

Recipe for homemade kabanos, the finest meat stick in the world. Kabanos is made of pork, finely ground, stuffed in sheep casings, smoked and dried.

tasteofartisan.com

 

[indaswamp]

Well, that will depend on how you dried them and whether you cooked the sticks. Tell us how you did this.

 

[frussell]

I smoked them in the electric smoker for about 2 hours and they were 145ish when I took them out. I finished by poaching in 160water till they were 154 then put in cool water bath to chill a bit.
I then hung to dry around 60 degrees with 75% humidity for 6 days.

 

[indaswamp]

Did you ferment the sticks to drop the pH?

I then hung to dry around 60 degrees with 75% humidity for 6 days.

This would be a problem for me unless you fermented the sticks. Salt is one of the hurdles used in dry sausages to slow/inhibit bacterial growth. Though you did use cure, that will only prevent some pathogenic bacteria from growing/producing toxins. There are others spoilage bacteria that are not affected by cure. Ecoli, Staph Aureus, Lysteria to name a few....
The hurdles work together to create an inhospitable environment which severely restricts bad bacterial growth. Only smoking for 2 hours, then water bath cooked to 154*F, you MIGHT be ok....but; the salt helps to pull water out of the sausage. It dries much faster with salt. When I smoke fermented snack sticks with 2.25% salt, they will lose 20-25% moisture when I finish the smoke session and this lowers the water activity strengthening the hurdles. I have no idea how much water you lost when you cooked them. Then you put them back in water to poach them...they likely reabsorbed the water lost during smoking.

I do not recommend water bath cooking for a sausage you plan on drying. It defeats the purpose. If you want to water bath a sausage you intend to dry, you need to vac seal the sausages in a bag to prevent re absorbtion of water.

I would toss the sausages and start over....if you had not water bathed, I might would say they could be ok....just too risky IMO.....

 

[frussell]

There was no sort of culture or fermentation step. Yeah it makes a lot of sense not to water bath something you are going to dry. I didn't think about it that way. Well I guess I will try again, probably with a smaller batch. What a waste. Thank you .

 

[chopsaw]

The kabanosy I make following Marianski's formula doesn't call for fermentation .
I use around 2% salt , smoke to 152 then dry for 5 days at 60 degrees .
I'm not sure I would throw yours out , but that's me .

 

[BGKYSmoker]

The kabanosy I make following Marianski's formula doesn't call for fermentation .
I use around 2% salt , smoke to 152 then dry for 5 days at 60 degrees .
I'm not sure I would throw yours out , but that's me .

Yeah I dont normally ferment mine either.

 

[BGKYSmoker]

Keep them, cut short and serve with some sort of dipping sauce.

 

[indaswamp]

It's the lack of salt that would be the concern....he forgot to add any......just the salt that was in with the cure. Not enough IMO.