Pepperoni

Here’s a 12 pound batch of pepperoni, stuffed yesterday and resting for a couple days before going to the oven to heat to 160 degrees. This is a pork/beef mix done with a commercial pepperoni spice blend. I’ve packed these into 1 7/8″ casings and finished at about 19″. The heating is done over a cooking sheet with the sticks on jerky screens so the rendered fat can drip into the pan below. This makes for a really good finished product. After cooling down naturally they’ll get hung in the garage [unheated] to dry for at least a week, maybe two if the weather and temps cooperate. The drier sausage makes for better pizza slices but a lot of this will just get sliced as snack food. Good stuff.

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looks pretty good, please post the end results when you slice into it.

I will. I cooked up the grinder and stuffer plugs while I cleaned things up yesterday and had a taste test. Good stuff. Its hard to judge the final product though by frying it. Much of a sausage’s character comes with time and aging. Still good chews though.

Tom could you share what commercial spices you used, and where you found your casings? Thinking about making a 40% venison 60% pork mixture. Any more info would be greatly appreciated. Would pork butt be good enough to use?

man that looks good bud!!!!!!!

Here’s a link to Sausagemaker for the seasoning you’ll want Jeff.

https://www.sausagemaker.com/Smoked-Pepperoni-Seasoning-2-lbs-p/12-1030.htm

I have tried this and the one used in this thread originally and this one is far better than the first, which was a seasoning blend for DRIED sausage that called for a different cure. I used the pink cure in the dried recipe because I brought the meat to a higher temperature in the oven and that requires the pink cure [prague powder #1]. This product in this link is way better flavor-wise. And while the product in the link indicates its for a smoked sausage, I did not smoke mine and finished it in the oven set at 195 degrees and checked the sticks often until they reached an internal temp of 162 degrees. They were pulled out of the oven at that temp and hung in the garage [un-heated] on stainless steel nails for almost 4 weeks to dry down to where I wanted them. I do not care for any pepperoni that has been smoked but that’s just my taste preference since I want this meat for dressing up pizza, not as a snack type stick.

You can find casings in the menu on the left of the page you get using the link. Click on that category and go to page two. I have used 47mm X 24″ clear and the 47mm X 24 mahogany casings. It doesn’t matter what color they are as the taste is not affected with using one or the other.

Pork butt is all I use in my sausage making as it has the best fat to lean ration and distribution. Just bone and chop the meat into 1″ to 1 1/4″ chunks and you’re good to go. When I use red meat in sausage such as venison or beef I cut it to the same size, mix in my pork and seasonings and cure then cover it and let it set for a day in a cold to cool garage before grind thru the coarse plate. For my pepperoni I grind it the second time right thru the same plate, then stuff. Or you can toss the funnel on the grinder and stuff as the sausage is run out of the second grind. I like my pepperoni a little rougher in the grind, not mostly chewed already like a fine plate offers.

http://www.Waltons.com has un-real summer sausage, hot dog and ring bologna seasonings but I haven’t tried the pepperoni from them yet. On the list though. Dig thru their site and check on casing prices under collagen in the size I mentioned as they may be cheaper. You’ll fine the pepperoni seasoning you might want under the “cured sausage seasonings” area. The ring bologna and the hot dog/bologna are listed in the same area. The summer sausage seasoning I mentioned is in the summer sausage specific seasoning area and is the “H” seasoning.

Tom thank you so much. Exactly what I needed and quick I must say. I will let you know how it turns out.

That venison pepperoni should be a decent product Jeff. I used some beef brisket for the beef or red meat portion of my fist batch’s make-up. I use a chunk of round for my second batch. Didn’t seem to matter much. The beauty of pepperoni is that it will stand up to even some gamey tasting meats.

I ground some Italian sausage this morning I think would cover the taste of used cat litter. No idea how “bold” this pure pork sausage is going to be but it had lots of garlic and a ton of fennel in it. WOW, the aroma when I opened the seasoning package. I only wanted 5 pound for pasta meat and did it up in 1 pound chubs. The neighborhood will know we’re doing Italian when that stuff browns.

I did 15 pounds of breakfast sausage today too, also packed in pound chubs.I ground 25 pounds of pork and did bratwurst seasonings only to find out when I went to stuff the damn things the casings are the small pork gut and won’t slide in the funnel to the stuffer. Waining on Ma so I can go grab some collagen if there are any in town. If not I’ll bag and freeze the meat and order some. If that’s the case I’ll do Waltons and get my next batch of pepperoni fixings from there at the same time so I have something to compare the other two batches with. This sausage making is an illness and just seems to keep snowballing into other company’s products to try. No wonder I am needing to lose weight. lol

I feel you. I just started sausage making a few years ago. I’m still a novice. My in-laws have been doing it for years and have there own recipes they follow, but I like to try new things. This year my dad and I did well in the deer department so we have 75 pounds of scrap meat to play with. I’m thinking of buying the maple and bbq blends for sticks in the collagen casings from Waltons. Have you had any experience with those? I also want to do a breakfast sausage in links. Either the best seller pork sausage or maple blend. Do you have a preference? Should I use the lamb casings for breakfast links? I want to do pepperoni like we talked about, and brats that I already have a recipe for. Any thoughts?

I just use Backwoods Breakfast sausage blend since neither of us care much for the maple flavored stuff. I haven’t done much with sticks using anything but a traditional or pepper style stick.

Whatever you do when getting your stick casings, get the 19mm edible collagen. I prefer the mahogany color casings over clear but they’re the same thing just different colors. These are made specific to sticks and are way tougher than the other sizes, both larger and smaller. Doesn’t matter who you get them from as this is a standard for the industry and you’ll have way fewer blow-outs and the stick strings handle hanging during smoking like a champ.

Sheep casings are notoriously fragile and will blow-out [rupture] very easily when stuffing. The collagen casings in 17 to 21 mm can work for breakfast sausages but I just use a jerky canon and shoot the sausage out on cookie sheets with waxed paper on the bottoms in long strings, then jockey the strings around so they’re straight and thrown the pan and all in the freezer. After an hour I check to see how firm they are and if firm enough I use a sharp knife to cut them to length then put them back to freeze hard. I put a dozen links in a vacuum pouch and vacuum seal it and right back in the freezer. Way, way easier than casing the things up and a whole heck of a lot cheaper….plus you cut down on how much cow hide you ingest when chowing on collagen stuffed sausages. lol Either way, they’re goooood!

Jeff….as you get to doing more and more of this sausage stuff you’ll settle on pet seasoning blends and will start adding stuff you sort of have a liking for. My sausage storing cupboard looks like the spice aisle at Hy Vee for all the stuff I add. Coarse ground pepper and mustard seed are a couple that come to mind as I type. Think BIG, quart sizes containers of these, for summer sausage. Pepper in sticks. Sage in breakfast sausage. lol I make my own jerky seasonings/cure and have used it in sticks where its just as tasty. The hobby is addicting and the only ones I know of who have quit it are those who have died and none from eating their wares.

Great info Tom thanks for sharing you wisdom. The breakfast link idea is great. I’m going to give walton’s and sausage maker a try though. I have gone to von Hanson’s in the past and they will give you their recipe and seasonings for whatever you want to make. It’s convient for the wife and I to try it before make it.

Ye Olde Butcher Shop here in Rochester will do the same. Its gets a bit pricey though going thru local shops.

Get on the Waltons and Sausagemaker sites and request printed catalogs. Way more fun to snoop thru paper than flipping on-line pages.

Just to jump in, this is what I use and it turns out great. I smoke ours and bring internal meat temp up too 155°. I also let it hang too dry it out.

If you don’t have a place too hang and dry it, a refrigerator will do it for you.

Also don’t worry about having to dry it out. It’s great either way, just a preference thing.

Doing 50# of pepperoni and 50# snack sticks this week!

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Bellies from this weekend. The bacon turned out awesome.

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45# of pepperoni into smoker tomorrow morning. I run my smoke while bringing up to cooked temp in the smoker. Wouldn’t need the smoke, just a preference.

Also 25# of snatch sticks going in tomorrow. Those don’t need smoke either but I add it anyway.

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Tom meat day was a success. I ended up doing 25 lbs of pepperoni 50% pork butt 50% venison. Since I made a large order from Watson’s I used their pepperoni seasoning. We tasted it before stuffing and it was very salty. Ended up adding some dried milk which cut the saltiness back. Ended up smoking it for 9 hours and it turned out great. Was able to slice it after cooling and package it. We also did a 25lbs batch of walton’s blue ribbon brats with 2lbs of cheddar cheese and clear collagen casings. We did 50/50 pork and venison, and they were good as well. Brats were difficult to twist, but we made it work. Have used pork casings before for brats, but the ease of the collagen casings was well worth it. I also used walton’s Bbq stick seasoning. We did the same 50/50 pork and venison with 19mm smoking collagen casings. We added 3 pounds of cheddar cheese, but should have used 2 pounds. We smoked the sticks around 4 hours. We did a batch of mild pepperoni with 2 lbs of mozzarella, and a batch of maple sticks from Von Hanson’s. Meat day 2018 I the books. I also got to get my 5 month old involved from the kill to the meat making. Here are some pictures.

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If someone smarter then I can delete my double post and especially my North Dakota license. Have no clue how I did that. Here are some more meat day picture’s.

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Few more.

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That’s pretty amazing. Cute little guy….did he sample one of those sticks? Call it a big boy pacifier. lol Job well done!

Man I need to learn how to do this stuff. So jealous.
DT

deertracker wrote:

Man I need to learn how to do this stuff. So jealous.
DT

yea hashbrown metoo!!!!!!!!!!

My casings and spices arrived in the mail today for my up-coming pepperoni. Just started down to pull the pork and beef to thaw and stopped to see what is happening here and right at the top of the new topic pile….PEPPERONI. I love it.

It’ll take a couple days to thaw things….I don’t hurry it any and then I’ll get it chunked up into 1″ pieces, seasoned and then it rests overnight in the garage where its still pretty cool. 25 pounds will take me about 15 minutes to grind, mix and re-grind. Stuffing will take about 20 minutes, then the sausage rests again until the next morning when I set a half dozen sticks at a time in the oven set at 190 degrees and check the internal temp of each stick until I register 162 degrees. It comes out of the oven to cool to room temperature and when cool gets a quick wipe down and then hung in the garage for three weeks maybe. Depends on the relative humidity of the air. It can dry in the fridge too.

Honestly guys this is easy to do but it does take a little investment . I tell everyone not to buy CHEAP though. You’ll only encounter headaches and massive pains in the arse. And don’t buy under powered. I have a #8 head BigBite grinder made by LEM….available at Fleet Farms and Scheels. I have a 5 pound vertical stuffer. Both are easy to use and both are so completely functional that you don’t have a lot to have to think about other than keeping fingers out of the grinder throat.

http://www.lemproducts.com will get you in line with the equipment and the seasonings and additives are top quality too.

The absolute most important part of doing this stuff is keeping things clean. When I am cutting my deer I have no less than 1 5 gallon pail of bleach water with a good sponge handy at all times along with a 5 quart pail of the same for washing knives and sharpening utensils. I keep a roll of paper towel handy at all times and when I clear a table of meat it gets washed with the bleach water and dried before the next pile hits it. Same with pork and beef if you use beef. I have a bag-lined garbage basket right there too where all of the scrap and used paper stuff goes. I cut on nothing but the white poly cutting boards and they get the bleach treatment between rounds of meat too. There is no such thing as too clean and sterile is even better….bleach water gets you very near to sterile. Buy the cheapest bleach you can find as it matters not and use 1/4 cup to 5 quart pail and 1 cup to a 5 gallon pail.

You can wear surgical gloves or not. That’s up to you as long as you do not have any open cuts or sores on the hands. I work without gloves myself as I feel I have better control of the knives and grinding tool. Just one time mixing the spices and cure into the meat with an open cut and no gloves will be all it takes to get gloves on the cut mitts, trust me.

The initial equipment investment is the tough part but the equipment lasts for years. I have an Oster grinder that will grind about three pounds a minute that I started with almost forty years ago and I can’t even imagine how many deer or pounds of meat it has ground or stuffed. Its still going strong but today it stays in the kitchen for light duty kitchen tasks. The seasonings and casings are everywhere on the internet. I’ll help with information or sources anyway I can. But the bottom line to this is that there is NOTHING more satisfying than making your own sausages no matter what they might be.