HELP ! under smoked/ under cooked summer sausage!

[starrider1961]

Help !  We did 25lbs of venison summer sausage this weekend and I left it to my partner to smoke it.I pick half of it this morning and tonight I cut one in half and its mostly raw in middle !!!!!    Please help can I save this Sausage !!!  It was a package mix that did have a package of quick cure it and it was used in the sausage making. They are 3lb sausages and he did smoke,water bath,dry refrigerate

Please help I don,t want to get anyone sick

[carnie1]

Can you put up a picture of a piece of it cut? It will also help if you can tell us the method  used to cook/smoke, etc

[starrider1961]

Mixed it per package with the quick cure packet that came with it, mixed it for about 5 min and we filled casings (8@3lb) wiped them down. it went on his smoker for about 3.5 to 4 hrs in 2 levels took it off and did a 20 min cold water bath dried them and then in fridge. It looks like the ones on top may be the problem ones. It is pink and mushy in the middle.   

[ragweed]

What internal temp did he take them to before going in the cold water bath?  Sounds like they didn't get to temp so I would be afraid to try and save them.  That said, I'm sure the experts will be along soon with a definitive answer.

[starrider1961]

No temp probe .......

Thanks

[watchdog56]

I am no expert but I would think you have had to get the IT to 149-155 when in the smoker,even with the cure in it if you did not hit the temp they may not be good. Usually in a smoker that will take about 10 hours. Putting them in cold water is only supposed the be done after they hit an IT of 149-155.
My guess is you should throw away,better than anybody getting sick. Take it as a lesson learned.

You may want to wait for others to respond but that is my guess. I have only been making sausage for 3 years so you may want to wait for  people with more expertise.

[starrider1961]

Thanks all the input helps !

[starrider1961]

No one has said anything about what would happen now if i took the sausage to 165/170  oven/smoker?????

[Saber 4]

No one has said anything about what would happen now if i took the sausage to 165/170  oven/smoker?????

Even with the cure I personally wouldn't chance it, you don't know how long it was in the danger zone and food poisoning is no fun at all. Some of the sausage experts may have a way to save it but I always say err on the side of caution when it's food safety.

[Sailor]

Mixed it per package with the quick cure packet that came with it, mixed it for about 5 min and we filled casings (8@3lb) wiped them down. it went on his smoker for about 3.5 to 4 hrs in 2 levels took it off and did a 20 min cold water bath dried them and then in fridge. It looks like the ones on top may be the problem ones. It is pink and mushy in the middle.

1.  You never said what temp the smoker was for the 3.5 to 4 hrs.  You said you had 2 levels.  Were they at 100, 110, 120, 130 etc?  Normally if you start smoking at 140 for 2 hrs and bump to 150 for 2 hours a 3 pound chub will be around 120 to 130 degrees internal temp.  It will take around 8 to 10 hours to get a 3 pound chubs up to 152 IT let alone doing 25 pounds.  What type of smoker are you using?  That is one heck of a load in a Bradley and not sure how you crammed 25 pounds in it.  :o

2.  Then you say you gave them a 20 min "cold" water bath.  A cold water bath is to be used to cool sausage down to 100 degrees after it comes up to IT of 152.  So you have chubs that most likely never got over 130 degrees then plunged into a cold water bath that cooled them down to the 70 degree area.  Then put in the fridge bringing them down to around 40 degrees.

3.  So you had cure in them which was a good thing.  Bad thing is that you never got the meat up to temp and then cooled them down.  You have 24 to 25 pounds of venison that should be thrown away.  No way in the world would I even think about re-smoking them or eating them.

You say you do not have a temp probe.  If you are going to do sausage you need to get a temp probe.  You need to know what your cabinet temp is and how to keep it steady.  You need to monitor the internal temp of the sausage.  If you can't monitor the temps your are asking for trouble.

If you decide to try another batch I would suggest that you bring your smoker up to 130 and hang the chubs to dry the casings for 1 hour.  Bump the cabinet temp up to 140 for 2 hrs and apply smoke.  Then bump to 150 for 2 hrs.  Then 160 for 2 hrs then to 170 until the IT is at 152.  Then into a cold water bath until the IT is around 100 degrees and then hang for a few hours to bloom then into the fridge. 

[watchdog56]

X2 what Sailor said.

Also I would invest in a PID if you do not already have one. You need to control the temp accurately as using your smoker will have 15-20 +/- degree swings which could cause a fat out. Using a PID you will get a +/- 2 degree swing.

[pikeman_95]

Thank you for this thread. My wife gets on me because she thinks I am too demanding when I have one of our sausage making sessions with different friends. To me it is obvious that your friend did not have much experience in smoking sausage. When we make sausage it is in generally in much larger batches. Most on the times several hundreds of pounds. I often do it with guys that don't have much experience and also don't always take their task seriously. I often have to remind them to stay on task, and a little less bulls...ing. When you are working on large batches of sausage it really hurts when something like you had happen ruins a batch of sausage. Your post helped me make a point with my wife. When you get a bunch of hunters together to make sausage the stories start to fly and the attention to detail sometimes suffers. I hope you don't get discouraged and try again. You might want to be involved in the smoking process from start to finish next time
kc