smoked chorrizzo no colour ??

[goliath]

hello
i have ben smoking sausage for quite a few years now and ALWAYS get great advice from this group..
SOOOO my question is WTF happened to my Chorrizzo. i made a Portugese recipe from a friend that uses alot of citrus juice. smoked with hickory for 8 hrs and all looked good. when i gave it a water shower in my meat tub to cool it down quickly all the beautiful mahogany colour seemed to wash off. i have never had this happen before.
i hung the sausage in the smoker and let it stand at 100 degrees for an hour to dry the casings, might have been a bit damp then i started the smoke and stepped the temp up every hour, 130, 150, and finished at 170. there was no creosote on the casings just a nice colour. THEN POOF IT WAS GONE and all in the tub....
it still tastes good but doesnt look as appealing as usual, also still quite moist compared to others like smokies, and kielbasa i have made in the past.

thanks for any help !!

 

[daveomak]

Don't know for sure... but the citrus juice does weird stuff to meat....

 

[normanaj]

I live very close to Fall River Mass and I do consume a lot of chourico.I don't make my own but I do love it smoked!

Had you ever used that recipe before?Maybe all the citrus?

 

[goliath]

1st time for me ....
the weird thing is he uses a much smaller casing, also cubes the meat, not grind like i did, and seems to get colour. he wipes his sausage down ...not spray and bath to cool !!!!
its that i had good colour and it washed off ... LOL
maybe im onto something here ...

 

[foamheart]

Just a thought, new casings? Does he add cure to his mixture?

 

[normanaj]

Chourico and chorizo are different.Even though its essentially the same,Portuguese and Spanish do make it differently.

 

[crazymoon]

G, I would guess the sausage needed to be dried longer if the smoke didn't adhere?

 

[goliath]

live and learn ... o_O
it will still roast good on the fire or bbq .. but just doesnt look as nice !

 

[indaswamp]

did you use collegen casing or natural? Sometimes with a bad batch of collegen casing, the smoke will not penetrate properly and will just coat the outside. I've never had color wash off natural casings.