Smoked Chicken and Roasted Garlic Sausage (Low Fat)

[Habanero Smoker]

Smoked Chicken and Roasted Garlic Sausage (Low Fat)

For those looking for a decent low fat sausage, you may want to give this a try. I got this recipe out of "Charcuterie" by Ruhlman & Polcyn, and converted it into a low fat sausage. The rice helps retain moisture, and acts as a flavor carrier. To make the original version, remove the rice from the recipe, reduce the chicken to 3.5 pounds, and add 1.5 pounds of pork shoulder butt. By the way, if you have this book, you really need to try their Spicy Roasted Poblano Sausage. Click on thumbnail to enlarge the picture.



1 C. Rice; Carolina
2 C. Water

4 lbs. Skinless chicken or turkey thighs, trimmed of all fat and diced
1.5 ounces/40 grams Kosher, or pickling salt (or 3 Tbs. Morton's kosher salt)
3 Tbs./ 18 grams Fresh Thyme leaves
3 Tbs./60 grams Roasted Garlic Paste (see below)
1 Tbs. / 10 grams coarsely ground black pepper
1 tsp./ 6 grams Insta Cure #1

1/4 C. /60 milliliters Chicken Stock chilled, (you can substitute chilled wine or water)
1/4 C. /60 milliliters Dry red wine, chilled

10 feet/ 3 meters of prepared hog casings for stuffing the sausage
Make about 18 six inch sausages, or about 22 five inch sausages.

Preheat oven to 375°F. In an oven proof pot, combine rice and water. On a stove top bring water to a simmer. Cover, place pot in oven, and bake for 20 minutes. Spread cooked rice on a cookie sheet let cool, and chill in the refrigerator.

Combine rice with the rest of the ingredients, except the stock and wine. Toss and mix thoroughly. Place in the refrigerator to chill (do not semi-freeze, it will ruin the texture of the rice).

Grind the mixture through a small die, into a bowl set in ice.
Notice how the rice looks similiar to fat.

Add the stock and wine to the ground chicken mixture, and mix with a sturdy spoon, or if you have a Kitchen Aid stand mixer, mix with the paddle attachment, until the mixture develops a uniform, sticky appearance, and all the liquid is absorbed. Sauté a small portion of the sausage, or you can tightly wrap a small portion in plastic wrap and cook it in simmering water.  Taste, and adjust the seasoning if necessary.


Refrigerate, and let the mixture cure for at least 24 hours, and then stuff into hog casings, and twist into 5" or 6" links.



Smoking:   I used Jaeger's method for hot smoking sausage, though I slightly reduced the temperatures and adjusted the times. To get the required low temperatures you may have to use the cold smoking set up (off set the smoke generator from the cabinet), so that you are only heating the cabinet with the heating element.

Preheat the smoker to 140°F. Place sausage in smoker, with vent wide open; dry the sausage for 30 minutes.

Close vent to 1/8 opening and apply smoke at this temperature for 2 hours. I used 1 hour of apple followed by 1 hour of maple. Next increase the cabinet temperature to 180°F, and if possible rotate sausage.  (I rotated the sausage one more time when the sausage reached 150°F.

Continue to cook until an internal temperature of 160°F is obtained. Be careful not over cook.
As you can see, I didn't secure the sausage good enough, and one end came loose, but my home made rack, which needs some refinements made it easy for me to rotate the sausage.

Remove sausage for smoker, and either shower with cold water or submerge the sausage in an ice bath and thoroughly chill. Air dry, then refrigerate. 


Hope you enjoy!

Steam Roasted Garlic Paste
6 whole heads of garlic

Preheat oven to 325°F. Place the garlic root side down in a baking dish just large enough to hold garlic. Add water to come to a depth of 1/4 inch and cover with foil. Bake until the garlic is completely soft, about 1 hour. Let cool.

Cut heads of garlic horizontally in half and squeeze the soft pulp into a sieve set over a bowl. Push the garlic through the sieve with a rubber spatula. Store in the refrigerator, covered, for up to a week.

[manxman]

Great recipe HS, the Charcuterie book is excellent and making a few modifications to their recipes is fun in itself.   ;)

[LilSmoker]

Looks really great Habs, home sausage making is something i'd like to get into given the time.

My experience with sausage making was purely commercial, as a schoolboy i had a saturday job in a butchers shop, i used to make truckloads of sausage in those days, mind you if i remember right the sausages had more rusk in them than meat ::)

Definately a project for the future, they do look lovely ;)

LilSmoker

[hillbillysmoker]

Way to go Habs.  Looks absolutely fantastic.  I hope to expand into this area one day soon.

[Habanero Smoker]

Thanks.

My doctor has been getting on my case to loose some weight, so I thought I would try to make a low fat sausage. I've only been making sausage since last October. This is the first time I've smoked any. If you have the equipment and time it is fairly easy.

Manxman;
If you haven't done so already, you should really try the Spicy Roasted Poblano Sausage recipe. I made it once and took it to a family get together, now everyone want me to make it for them. This sausage is so good I don't have any inclination to smoke it.

[manxman]

Manxman;
If you haven't done so already, you should really try the Spicy Roasted Poblano Sausage recipe. I made it once and took it to a family get together, now everyone want me to make it for them. This sausage is so good I don't have any inclination to smoke it.

Thanks for the tip HS, no I haven't tried it as yet but I certainly will be after your thumbs up. I have tended to play it quite safe with my sausage making to date and as yet have not smoked any.

[Habanero Smoker]

Thanks for the tip HS, no I haven't tried it as yet but I certainly will be after your thumbs up. I have tended to play it quite safe with my sausage making to date and as yet have not smoked any.

I know what you mean. It took me awhile before I decided to smoke some sausage.

[manxman]

Part of the problem is that my two young lads loved the very first batch of fresh sausage I did and demand that I do them again (and again) leaving little scope to try different ones.  :D