First Smoked Sausage

[BuyLowSellHigh]

Been working up to this for a coupe of months and today was the culmination of my first ever attempt at smoked sausage.  Be kind please - I'm a total rookie at stuffing and smoking sausage.

I was shooting for someting very close to the Original Smoked Sausage made by an area smokeshouse (Holmes Smokehouse).  It's a good bit like the pretty common American version of Kielbasa, dominated by pork with some beef as well, but pretty heavily smoked with Pecan.

Spent yesterday morning (Saturday) cutting, grinding, mixing and stuffing a 70:30 mix of pork butt and beef chuck into hog casings.  Put them into the refrigerator for about 16 hours.  This morning they came out and tempered at room temperature for about two hours.  At that point they looked like this -six rings, 6 lbs 4 oz as stuffed and tied and ready for the next step.



Into the six rack with the Auber dual probe set for control using both time and IT where they dried for 1 hour at 130 °F, then up to 145 °F for 4 hours of Pecan smoke, then up to 170 °F to an IT=140 °, then back down to 160 °F to an IT=150 °, then 150 °F to finish out, shooting for an IT=152 °.  It took right at 3 hours after the smoking (8 hours total) to get to an IT of 152 °.  From the six rack they were dumped into a waiting ice water bath for 10-minutes.  Here they are out of the quench bath after a quick blot with paper towels, final weight = 5lbs 3oz, or ~84% of their original weight.



I learned a bunch about the fine art of stuffing and tying in the first venture, had one blowout late in the first casing, and made it through one casing that had a tear abut 2/3 rd's into stuffing it.  Handling and tying 35-38 mm hog casings is about the limit for my fat fingers and weak eyes.  But it was all great fun.

The critical taste test will probably come tonight.

[Mr Walleye]

You're off to a hell of a start BLSH!  ;)

Looks fantastic!

Mike

[deb415611]

Very nice BLSH!!

[Sailor]

They look good to me.  Nice job!

[SouthernSmoked]

Looks fantastic to me!!

I can't wait until my stuffer gets here next week.

[Tenpoint5]

You cant complain about them sausages they look great!! I could use some right now.

[Drac]

I wish my first in the Bradley let alone first period looked that good.

Jim

[lumpy]

Does it taste like you expect?

They look great!

[NePaSmoKer]

There ya go.....Looks good  ;D

[KyNola]

Way to go BLSH.  My first stuffing experience has yet to happen.  My LEM stuffer is "still in the box". D'OH!

[classicrockgriller]

The Sausage LOOKS great!

But I know you and you will be more of a critic on yourself than anybody.

Waiting to hear the final Verdict!

Congrats!

[GusRobin]

Great Job BLSH

[BuyLowSellHigh]

Thanks guys.  This turned out way better than I thought possible.  One of those rings vaporized at dinner tonight. Sorry, no money shot --  SWMBO, ruler of the camera, had it lashed to the other machine with an order to keep my smokey paws off.

This was very, very close to what I was shooting for.  I think just a small adjustment in the seasoning mix (amount of sage) and it's there.  Wife loved it, kids inhaled it.  I was amazed that the first attempt turned out as well as it did.  The really good news is that the Holmes Original Smoked sausage is wife's favorite sausage of all, and she felt this was clearly better in quality (and she doesn't pull her punches when it comes to commenting on food).

Many, many thanks to NePaS, Tenpoint5, Habanero Smoker and all the great sausage masters on this forum.  The lessons I learned from your posts made this effort a success far better than I had expected.  A special thanks to NePaS for the many great "lessons" on sausage making and smoking techniques.  Seeing how a master does it is so helpful.

For anyone who might be interested, here is the adjusted master formulation I put together for this first attempt.  It was created by blending recipes from Charcuterie, Len Poli's site and Kutas's book (FYI -- I believe the Kielbasa recipe in Charcuterie has a major typo in the amount of meat), adjusted based upon the target I had in mind, and made following the technique in Charcuterie except I mix by hand.  Here's the formulation - I use metric weights (grams) as much as possible in the kitchen, the volume measurements should be very close:

Pork butt,  3.5 lbs
Beef chuck, 1.5 lbs
Cure #1,  5.7 g (1 tsp)
Pickling salt,  33.3 g, (~ 1 Tbls + 2 tsp)
Powdered dextrose, 12.5 g (~1 Tbl +1 tsp)
Black pepper, regular grind,  5.0 g (~2 tsp)
Dry mustard, 5.0 g (~ 2 tsp)
Paprika, 4.7 g (~ 2 tsp)
Sage, rubbed, 2.0 g (~ 1 Tbl)
Granulated garlic, 0.7 g (1/4 tsp)
Cayenne pepper, 0.6 g (1/4 tsp)
Ice water, 236 g (1 cup)
Nonfat dry milk powder, high heat, 45 g (4 Tbl + 2 tsp)

[FLBentRider]

Great job Eric.

Get yourself a dedicated "food porn" camera.  ;D ::)

[3rensho]

Those look pretty tasty BLSH and thanks for the recipe.  I'm definitely gonna give those a shot.  Beautiful job.