Chicken sausage idea anyone?

[Northern_Smoke]

I had an idea for chicken sausage and wanted to see what others thought. I am going to make a cured sausage for my kids to be sliced and eaten with crackers and cheese like "Lunchables". I was thinking "why couldn't a guy cube the chicken meat and cure it like you do with OU812's ham sticks?" Then you could grind it, add your spices, stuff and bring to 165* with or without smoke.

I know you would have to reduce or even eliminate the salt in your chicken sausage recipe because of using the Mortens Tender Quick while curing the chicken cubes but does anyone see a problem with trying it this way?

My reasoning was if I cure them as cubes I can hold back about 15-20% and add them whole as cubes to the ground mixture for texture and looks. Almost like ham sausage with the big cubes of ham throughout.

[Tenpoint5]

Not sure if you have your heart set on chicken or not. Here is a recipe that I posted awhile back. This recipe gives you the same result that you have described only you use pork butt.

http://forum.bradleysmoker.com/index.php?topic=11689.0

[Northern_Smoke]

Thanks for the info. I am actually making chicken and ham sausage today and might try one of the batches of ham like that. I do think I will try the chicken one though with cured cubes and then grind some unless anyone sees a problem with doing it this way.

[tskeeter]

NS, if you can borrow a copy of Bruce Aidells' Complete Sausage Book from your local library, I think you'll find a number of chicken sausage recipes.  Aidells' company produces and markets a fairly wide variety of chicken sausage down here, south of the border.

[Northern_Smoke]

Thanks. I will check with the library on that book. I did however make about 6 pounds of chicken sausage for sandwich/crackers. I went with the OU812's Ham Stick method. I had about a 50/50 mix of white and dark meat. I cubed it up and cured it with Morton's tender quick based on the original ham stick recipe. The difference here was that I cut the sugar down in half and used white instead of brown. I didn't want the chicken to be sweet like ham but wanted it balanced. Then for spices I kept it simple with sage, basil and garlic. We fried up a test patty and it was so good we decided to validate our findings by frying up one more. Even my youngest daughter ate it and she ONLY eats ham.

Once they are done steaming I will get some shots of the finished product. I would have taken pics as we went but I had 2 kids "rushing" the whole process.

[Northern_Smoke]

Well here is the chicken with all the spices mixed in and ground twice


And here it is finished with a few slices taken off for testing purposes

[Tenpoint5]

For chicken that finished product looks really good! If you wouldn't mind could you write up your recipe with all of your tweeks. In case someone would like to duplicate your results.

[Saber 4]

For chicken that finished product looks really good! If you wouldn't mind could you write up your recipe with all of your tweeks. In case someone would like to duplicate your results.

X2, that does look good and I can know someone who eats a lot of poultry and would love it.

[ragweed]

X3 !!  Looks great!

[Northern_Smoke]

I am already on it  :D. I unfortunately did not do my spices by weight which I will convert. I am actually making an excel file like I do for all the sausages I make to do the auto calculations for you. Just enter in the weight of meat and it calculates all of the other ingredients. I should have it ready in a few hours.

[Northern_Smoke]

OK, here is what I did for the chicken sausage:

2880g Chicken meat
95ml Morton's Tender Quick
50ml White Sugar
1 teaspoon Sage
1 teaspoon Basil
2 tablespoons Garlic
125ml NFDM
250ml Ice

I cubed up about 6.5lbs of both dark and white meat into 3/4in chunks. Next mix in 95ml of Morton's Tender Quick along with 50ml of white sugar. Let this stand for 6-8 hours mixing occasionally. Once it is fully cured, rinse well and let sit in a colander for about 15-20 minutes to drip. I test fried one piece of chicken and it had a very "hammy" flavor and texture. Mix all the spices including the NFDM into the cubes and run through the grinder on the smallest plate. Regrind through the smallest plate again but add 1 cup of ice to help cool it down and add moisture to the mix. I stuffed mine into synthetic casings about 2 inch in diameter.

I did not smoke these but did them in the Bradley until I had an IT of 165*. I think I will try smoking them next time with a few hours of alternating alder and maple.

I will apologize for 2 things right from the start here, one is that I didn't get more pictures of the whole process but my 2 kids were in "giver" mode and it was all I could do to keep up with them and make sure neither one of them ended up in the grinder lol. And number two, it is not based on weights. Again this was due to my kids :). I usually measure my spices out that I want to use and weigh them so that I know exactly how much I have which also makes it easier to tweak in very small increments.

If anyone does try this recipe I wouldn't mind knowing what your weights are if you measure the spices out. I have an excel file for this recipe which i would like to convert for weights.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/26929856/Chicken%20Sausage.xlsx

[cobra6223]

that looks very good and thanks for sharing the recipe.

[Tenpoint5]

Thanks for the recipe N Smoke.

[fuzzy1]

Thanks for the post. It looks really awesome. I have a few wild turkeys in the freezer that have been waiting for some attention and I think this is just the ticket.