Summer Sausage Seasoning

[capt.mike]

I picked a pack of Summer Sausage Seasoning from Cabela's. I was wondering if anyone has used this prouduct and should I add anything to it, I will only be doing about 12 lbs.
Thanks, Mike

[Rem Man]

I have not used the Cabela's summer sausage kit, but I have had excellent results with the high mountain summer sausage kit they sell.  A friend made a batch of cabelas hot snak sticks and I found them kind of bland. Also the cabelas kit says to add suet and the high mountain kit says to use lean pork. I used pork ribs for the pork when I made it and I liked it better than the snak stick made with suet. The suet left a greasy film in my mouth. I like pepper, so I add about 1/4 cup of coarse ground pepper to the a 15 lb batch. Everyone says it is the best they have ever tasted.

Mike

Smoke 'em if you got 'em

[jaeger]

Mike,
I have not tried Cabella seasoning. Cold Smoke recently posted that he was not impressed with their beef stick seasoning.
I would try to mix as small a batch as possible and take a small piece and warm slowly in a pan. You should then have a pretty good idea what it will taste like and can than add pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, mustard seed etc....
  If it is unacceptable you may have a little bit of clean up to do but you won't be out a full batch of sausage.
  I would suggest using as lean a meat block as you can for Summer Sausage. Don't add any unneccasary fat or suet.

Let us know what you do!!!

Doug

[capt.mike]

Thanks for the feedback. I did a small batch (10 lbs) yesterday and added a little garlic. It turned out pretty good. The next time I will cut back a little on the pork butt, I used 6 lbs bottom round and 3 lbs of fresh pork but. My next mission will be fresh Italian sausage and some Polish sausage. I think that I will be staying away from the sausage kits. I am going to just use a few recipes from Rytex Kutas's book and see what happens.
Thanks again, Mike