Question?

[daddyzaring]

After making, and eating my fist JD sausage fattie over the 4th of July weekend, I was thinking how good sausage patties and sausage gravy would taste with smoked sausage.  Anyway I was thinking, why not take a whole tube of JD sausage and smoke it right out of the tube?  I got 5 of the big long tubes of JD sausage from Sam's Club, and was wanting to smoke a couple of them like that, and slice half like patties, and chop up the rest for gravy.  My question is How long should it take for a solid log of sausage to cook all the way through in the smoker?

Thanks,

Jeff Z

 

[justpassingthru]

Jeff,

I'm certainly not an expert, but I read somewhere here to take sausage to 140° internal and that's what I've been doing with the JD that I make, ....I hope that's right.

Gene

 

[richoso1]

It is safer to cook/smoke by internal temperature rather than time. As far as a FATTY is concerned, you should cook it to the same internal temperature if it is solid or stuffed. There are too many variables when trying to cook by time, such as grate temperature. I will say that with experience, you can guess close to when it will be done, but with internal temp, there is no guessing.

Regarding safe temperatures;

For safety, the USDA recommends cooking ground pork patties and ground pork mixtures such as meat loaf to 160°F (70°C).

 

[flash]

Rich is right 160º

 

[matts]

I made some smoked sausage gravy a couple weeks ago and it definitely had a different flavor.  I cooked the sausage in a pan and got it all crumbled up.  Then spread out in foil pan and put in smoker for an hour.  It soaked up that smoke quick.  Then mixed it up in the gravy. It might have soaked up too much smoke because I wasn't super thrilled with it.  It was good, but a little strong.

 

[flash]

I made some smoked sausage gravy a couple weeks ago and it definitely had a different flavor.  I cooked the sausage in a pan and got it all crumbled up.  Then spread out in foil pan and put in smoker for an hour.  It soaked up that smoke quick.  Then mixed it up in the gravy. It might have soaked up too much smoke because I wasn't super thrilled with it.  It was good, but a little strong.

What type of wood did you use Matt?

 

[matts]

I was using a mix of hickory and oak.  This was done while I smoking a few butts and other things.  That was probably too strong of a smoke for that ground sausage.

 

[justpassingthru]

Thanks Rich, I stand corrected, while I don't want to start a debate, the info I was going on was posted by someone that has left SMF and considered himself to be a sausage expert, he explained that after 140° the fat cooked out and the sausage became crumbly, .....soooo, is that USDA info posted somewhere here so that I can read it and have the correct information, is it a chart or what?

Thanks,

Gene

 

[meateater]

Thanks Rich, I stand corrected, while I don't want to start a debate, the info I was going on was posted by someone that has left SMF and considered himself to be a sausage expert, he explained that after 140° the fat cooked out and the sausage became crumbly, .....soooo, is that USDA info posted somewhere here so that I can read it and have the correct information, is it a chart or what?

Thanks,

Gene

Sausage expert...thats left wide open. LOL
 

 

[richoso1]

Thanks Rich, I stand corrected, while I don't want to start a debate, the info I was going on was posted by someone that has left SMF and considered himself to be a sausage expert, he explained that after 140° the fat cooked out and the sausage became crumbly, .....soooo, is that USDA info posted somewhere here so that I can read it and have the correct information, is it a chart or what?

Thanks,

Gene

Hopefully this Wiki will get you into the ballpark http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/wiki/usda-safe-food-handling  

Good luck my friend.

 

[justpassingthru]

Thanks Rich, that's good info, I hope I'm not stepping on toes here, but I for one am glad the point (reputation) system is gone for this very reason, I passed on information I read as a newbie based on the gadzillion points the poster had that is evidently wrong and quite possibly put my family in danger.

Because my time is limited to about 30-45 minutes a day on SMF I tend to search for the info I'm looking for on that particular day and ended up taking advice based on their "reputation," sure wish we had sticky's at each subject in the sub forum about how to handle, cook to temp, i.e. "food safety,"  posted by a "trusted authority" following USDA guidelines and then locked to eliminate opinions, it would serve as a quick reference for the newbies and  those of us that don't have the time to read through hundreds of post on a particular subject.

Jeff, sorry man for steering ya wrong, I hope it turned out ok for you.

Gene