Hi all. I'm not sure where this falls under. I have been kicking around the idea
of trying my hand at lunch meat. Salami , bologna , pepperoni . I see that LEM
sells trail bologna kits and salami kits and I can get 4" x 20" non-edible casings.
My problem is what type of meat or meat combination/mixture do you use. I
want to be able to slice it for sammies that's why I thought I would use the
larger casings . also do you smoke these in a smoker or do they cure on there
own. Thanks in advance for any advice
All of those meats you mention are basically sausage. Sausage has some guidelines for meat to fat ratios. I always follow the 80/20 meat/fat ratio because it works well and the math is quite simple at 80/20 (4 pounds meat + 1 pound fat = 5 pounds sausage at 80/20; 8 pounds meat 2 pounds fat = 10 pounds sausage at 80/20; make increments of 5 from there and it is easy).
Now you can make any of the sausages you mention in a smoker or in an oven.
As for curing, the process of curing means adding cure #1 for meats you will cook in the smoker or oven.
If making dry cured sausages you use cure #2 and follow practices of using a curing chamber or UMAI bags, etc. I would avoid doing this for a while if you are just getting into cured sausage making. You can work up to this after a while with the proper knowledge, setup, equipment, and cure #2.
I think your best bet for now would to be to make something like a summer sausage.
Go 80/20 meat to fat.
Heck you can buy 80/20 beef for a first attempt before you venture into grinding your own meat and fat.
Mix up your first batch of summer sausage with seasoning and cure and stuff into the big inedible casings. Let it sit overnight so the cure #1 can travel throughout the sausage to do does it's job and then smoke the next day.
A seasoning kit is a good place to start before you venture into making your own seasoning mix the kit will have the binders in it already. I just recommend you do a fry test to ensure the seasoning kit isn't making the sausage too salty or too bland... adjust by adding more meat or more seasoning.
When you smoke your first test batch of summer sausage you can see how your smoker setup behaves at sausage smoking temps (100-180F). This is important. For example, people with electric smokers find that their heating element doesn't get hot enough to burn wood chips and produce smoke at 100-180F. People with stick burners or charcoal smokers find they may have a challenge keeping within the 100-180F range, etc. etc.
Get a test batch or two under your belt and then you can go balls to the wall.
Let me know if this helps out :)
