Well, last week's andouille and kielbasa are now a memory, so had to make some more. I considered last week to be cutting my teeth, so decided to push my poor little Brinkman to the, uh, brink, man.
Kielbasa was the popular sausage last week, so made a 6# batch this week. Added a little extra marjoram (+1/4 teaspoon to 5#) to the mix to bump it up a tiny bit. Started with the sausage mix from my "Fatty Butt" post:
Mixed yesterday, fridge overnight. Ground it up this morning and stuck it back in to chill before stuffing:
Did the same for a hot variation of the andouille (2 T Hot paprika instead of 1 1/2 T Regular, everything else the same):
As I originally mentioned in my first post, my Brinkman has racks, not hooks, so I added picture hooks to hang the sausages from to smoke. I knew that this time around I wouldn't have anywhere near the necessary space to smoke all of this (6# kielbasa, 4.8# andouille), so I linked and hung the kielbasa like I did last time, but left the andouille in the long casings and simply wound them onto the rack to smoke:
A full smoker's a happy smoker, right?
I think I've found the limit of what I can put in a Brinkman.
I ran into a bit of an issue, however. If you'd read my first post, you'd have seen that i used 2x2 lumber to prop the top open and control temp. There was so much sausage on the top rack tonight that there was no way to use the wood to hold the top up. Luckily, I do some woodworking so have a lot of clamps, and a few spring clamps solved the problem:
Dried at 140 for an hour, put under pecan smoke for two more, then pulled and into the ice water.
Apparently I made a lot of sausage (kielbasa on the bottom, hot andouille on top):
Cut the links, racked and put it all under a fan to dry for 30-45 minutes.
There's a couple of full coils of the andouille on that bottom rack.
Portioned them for freezing - wound up with 6 three packs of kielbasa and 7 pairs of 8" andouille sections
I think I'm done for this week, and now I know I need a bigger smoker...
Kielbasa tasted better with that little extra bit or marjoram. The hot andouille was pretty darn good - the hot paprika, and a little more of it, seems to have hit the spot on flavor, but will need to wait for my son's verdict - he's the andouille afficionado, but I personally think that I've got good mild and spicy variations now.
Kielbasa was the popular sausage last week, so made a 6# batch this week. Added a little extra marjoram (+1/4 teaspoon to 5#) to the mix to bump it up a tiny bit. Started with the sausage mix from my "Fatty Butt" post:
Mixed yesterday, fridge overnight. Ground it up this morning and stuck it back in to chill before stuffing:
Did the same for a hot variation of the andouille (2 T Hot paprika instead of 1 1/2 T Regular, everything else the same):
As I originally mentioned in my first post, my Brinkman has racks, not hooks, so I added picture hooks to hang the sausages from to smoke. I knew that this time around I wouldn't have anywhere near the necessary space to smoke all of this (6# kielbasa, 4.8# andouille), so I linked and hung the kielbasa like I did last time, but left the andouille in the long casings and simply wound them onto the rack to smoke:
A full smoker's a happy smoker, right?
I think I've found the limit of what I can put in a Brinkman.
I ran into a bit of an issue, however. If you'd read my first post, you'd have seen that i used 2x2 lumber to prop the top open and control temp. There was so much sausage on the top rack tonight that there was no way to use the wood to hold the top up. Luckily, I do some woodworking so have a lot of clamps, and a few spring clamps solved the problem:
Dried at 140 for an hour, put under pecan smoke for two more, then pulled and into the ice water.
Apparently I made a lot of sausage (kielbasa on the bottom, hot andouille on top):
Cut the links, racked and put it all under a fan to dry for 30-45 minutes.
There's a couple of full coils of the andouille on that bottom rack.
Portioned them for freezing - wound up with 6 three packs of kielbasa and 7 pairs of 8" andouille sections
I think I'm done for this week, and now I know I need a bigger smoker...
Kielbasa tasted better with that little extra bit or marjoram. The hot andouille was pretty darn good - the hot paprika, and a little more of it, seems to have hit the spot on flavor, but will need to wait for my son's verdict - he's the andouille afficionado, but I personally think that I've got good mild and spicy variations now.
