smoker ready

23 1/2 sticks @ about 1 1/4 pounds each. Stuffed in 2 1/2″ X 12″ casings. Hoping the weather will cooperate now so I can get the smoke on these tomorrow. I cooked up the stuffer plug and man is it a great burger so the summer sausage should be very tasty too.

Sounds awesome. I’d love to try some of your work someday. Maybe learn something too.

I’m sorry, but this is what came to mind when I saw this post.

http://users.content.ytmnd.com/d/f/8/df8019412d46e18f619c16f905f84fb2.gif

lol

I have had my days, trust me. Not many, but…..

I learned long ago to slow down. If there’s a rush, wait until there’s time and not have to hurry.

These sticks will get smoke of a hickory/apple blend, then finished in the oven until they reach 152 degrees. They’ll go right out to hang in a cold garage for three or four days from the oven, then wiped down and vacuum sealed and frozen.

Its really hard to beat some sliced summer sausage, sliced swiss cheese, a plate of pickled crappie and some assorted crackers served with home spun wine while watching the boob tube on a cold winter night.

Good luck with your smoke Tom. We did a batch of Polish Sausage and Summer Sausage as well as some fresh breakfast sausage this weekend. We ground, mixed, and stuffed Saturday, then smoked and packaged Sunday. I’m curious how much difference you think it makes when you hang in the cool garage for 3 or 4 days. I’ve heard of this before, but we’ve always gone straight from the smoker to an ice water bath, then hang to dry and vacuum seal. I’m curious if we’d get any benefit from hanging to age for awhile.

I tried various sausage recipes years ago and settled in on some good ones. My dad took these and really refined them over the last 10 years or so and has got them dialed in really well for Polish and Summer, but we’ve got some work to do on the breakfast sausage. If anyone has any breakfast sausage recipes they like please share.

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to_setter…

I add distilled water to the meat and other ingredients to help everything incorporate with each other. The smoke is only done for 4 hours to add some flavor but it doesn’t get the meat to the required 152 degrees so I oven finish it. I’ve been doing this for quite a while now and have a feel for the meat prior to casing it and if I think a little hang time is called for I give it what I think it needs. Its not to age the sausage but to allow some excess moisture come out of it in evaporation. When the sausage is at air temp shortly after coming from the oven I can give the links a squeeze and just about tell how many days it needs to hang. Its amazing how much water evaporates from the hanging sausage. I’ve hung finished pepperoni for three weeks in a cold garage before bagging and sealing. Summer sausage has a large surface area and usually hangs for three or four days max.

Your Polish looks darned tasty. Do you hand blend the spices or is the sausage done with a packaged blend?

deleted ? answered.

Cat….nope. The sticks get a quick wipe off with a clean towel, then hung.

I used to water finish my summer sausage in a kettle of boiling water, then dunking them into cold, actually ice, water. I oven finish them now as I do with sticks and pepperoni. I get a way better finished product that has way less moisture when it thaws and I cut it. My summer sausage is firm and not a penny’s worth of water in the casings or a juicy meat. I’ve had summer that others have made that was juicy to the point of almost dripping when bit into and I don’t care for that at all. My sausage is not dry but certainly not in the least wet either.

Thanks for the info Tom. For the summer sausage, I typically finish off in the smoker, but have also finished them in the oven like you describe. For the Polish Sausage, I smoke for 4 hours, then go into a pot of boiling water to get them to temp, then straight into the ice water bath. I’ve found this is easier for me to control internal meat temp and cook rather quickly after the smoke to prevent them from drying out. My smoker has hot/cold spots, so not all strings of sausage are at the same temp. I do one Polish string in the boiling water at a time checking the temp before putting them in, then checking internal temp every 30 seconds or so. It doesn’t take long…so I need to stay on my game during this step. I’m not sure if that’s the best way to do it, but sure has worked good for me.

I do also add water when mixing, but only about a cup. How much do you typically add?

The Polish and summer sausage are hand blend recipes

For your water bath sausages like the polish, they’re ready when they come to the surface.

pickled crappie er never mind.

looks good there bud!!!!!!!!!!!

glenn57 wrote:

pickled <strong class=”ido-tag-strong”>crappie er never mind.

Like nordern, only bedder.

Tom Sawvell wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>glenn57 wrote:</div>
pickled <strong class=”ido-tag-strong”>crappie er never mind.

Like nordern, only bedder.

Looks very good Tom!

riverruns wrote:

We need to get together and do this bud!

I am so envious of you folks for having the equipment and aptitude to smoke your own meat. Looks like a blast.

does anyone know if tom keeps his garage locked??????

i know he doesnt have an attack dog!!!!!!

Posted a new thread…

glenn57 wrote:

does anyone know if tom keeps his garage locked??????

i know he doesnt have an attack dog!!!!!!

You’re forgetting the little lady bud. You sneak in the garage and she catches you, you’d have to go straight to Mayo’s surgical suites and have a pin-a-dik-to-me.

Tom Sawvell wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>glenn57 wrote:</div>
does anyone know if tom keeps his garage locked??????

i know he doesnt have an attack dog!!!!!!

You’re forgetting the little lady bud. You sneak in the garage and she catches you, you’d have to go straight to Mayo’s surgical suites and have a pin-a-dik-to-me.

Looks great. I will be doing roughly 50lbs of venison summer sausage in a few weeks. Plan on using 2.5lb high temp cheddar and Waltons H.

Can you please elaborate on your process? You mentioned you oven finish them. Favorite seasoning? Temp and time in smoker? Preferred wood? Temp in oven? Do you still ice bath them when finished? Thanks

Eagle….

I’m doing the Waltons H this year and it seems to be good smelling as it stuffs. The stuffer plug was pan fried and was delicious. I have had outstanding luck using the LEM seasoning I picked up at Scheels but am just trying the waltons this time. If I like the waltons I’ll stick with it. If not I’ll use the LEM next time. I do mine in 2.4″ X 12″ casings. I fire the smoker with charcoal and double wrap the wood chunks, not chips, in heavy duty wide foil. I used four of these “bombs as I call them, today for smoke. I add two bombs at a time and as soon as they stop making smoke I pull those and add the others. Its 20 degrees out side and I smoked the chubs to a temp of 58-60 degrees, about 2 1/2 hours using a mix of apple and hickory chunks, then transferred them to the oven at 190 degrees for as long as it takes to get the internal temp in each chub to at least 152 degrees. I have three cookie sheets with the chubs laid out in a single row. I use a digital thermometer with an instant read probe to get the internal temps read. As soon as a chub reads at least 152 degrees it goes right out to the garage and gets hung from a joist. The only thing I do between the oven and rafter is wipe the casing off so no grease is left on it. I don’t cold water finish any of my sausage anymore.

Most seasoning units will not have any soy protein in them . I get the LEM soy protein , large envelope @ $6.99 at Scheels, for 50 pound batches and use half of it. I seal and vacuum seal the remainder and use it on the next batch. I also add 12 ounce container of Saco powdered buttermilk to the ground meat when I mix the seasonings and soy protein into the meat chunks before grinding. I add bottled or distilled water to the mix and hand blend it to get everything blended in well, then grind thru the coarse head, and again thru the fine head. If I think the meat needs a bit more water before the fine grind I add it first and mix again by hand until there’s no water standing in the lug. The meat will tell you a lot after the coarse grind. If its feeling really stiff, add some cold water at a rate of 4 ounces. Stuffing is easiest and less troublesome if the meat is not stiff, but you don’t want it as loose as say meatloaf. Somewhere in between.

The soy protein helps the meat bind especially if using pork butt where the fat to lean ratio is a little on the lean side. The buttermilk powder is quite sour out of the container but the 12ounces mixed into the meat will add just the right amount of tang to the finished product without having to add other components that are four times as expensive and have a more critical learning curve. The milk powder also helps the meat become a nice well bound sausage in the end. I’ll get a picture of the carton the powdered buttermilk comes in and get it up here. I get this powdered buttermilk product at a local HyVee.

Here’s what the buttermilk looks like…..

I’ll add here a little on the oven heating.

I try to keep the heat between 190 and 200 degrees. Having 23 links in the oven at once will require a few hours for the heat to get thru every link so I check every one with the thermometer every fifteen minutes after about three hours. They heat one or two at a time at first then seem to just go nuts so my advice on this is to plan ahead so you have the time to baby sit that oven and the sausages. I’m at about 4 hours in and have exactly 12 chubs on wires in the garage. The last trip had five chubs to hang. I’ll be checking again in 5 minutes and expect I’ll have three or four more to move. The oven finishing is the longest part of the whole operation in making summer sausage, ring bologna or pepperoni.. Summer sausage takes slightly longer due to the thickness of each chub along with the density of the meat due to the fine grind.

The last four sticks hit the hanging hooks at 4:27.

Now on to the snack sticks. Then brats. Then breakfast sausage. Then Italian sausage.

Here’s the final product of all this work.

This the short chub from the batch. When I make a new sausage, use a new to me seasoning blend that is, I make a short chub so I can try it a little sooner after coming from the oven. This had about 3 and a half hours of hanging time and was completely cooled thru when I cut it. Boy am I smiling!

I can answer your question now about my favorite seasoning Eagle. Its the Waltons H Summer Sausage, hands down. This is amazing sausage using the ingredients listed in this thread. I’ve never made a summer sausage this good until now. Its not the least bit wet yet is still tender. This is about as close to perfect as I think I can get it.

That looks mighty fine there Tom!!

Tom do you finish your snack sticks in the oven also ?

riverruns wrote:

Looks very good Tom!

Don Meier wrote:

Tom do you finish your snack sticks in the oven also ?

Snack sticks will take heat much easier due to their narrow size, so I try to get the smoker hot enough to get the 152 degrees needed before I add the bombs to make smoke. If its cold when I do the sticks, and it generally is, I’ll just get the smoke on them for maybe three hours, then run them up to the oven and hit them at 190-200 degrees for an hour, maybe an hour and a half. I’ve done so many sticks over the years I can just about tell by feel if they’re finished. I generally stuff stick one day, then finish them the next. When its cold outside, say below 30 degrees, I’ll leave the stuffed sticks in a lug and inside in a cool, but not cold, room overnight. Being room temperature to start really cuts down on smoking and finishing time.

If I had room I’d build a system similar to Riverruns where baseboard electric heaters are used to jack up the cabinet temperature to where the meat gets the required heat while the smoking is taking place. And that cabinet would be hyper insulated! I hate fighting cold when I am smoking or trying to get meat up to the needed temperatures, but I’ve learned to adapt using what I have on hand and actually I like the way a cold smoke flavors the meat better than a hot smoke like some of the commercial smokers today do the products, but we’re talking sausage here and not ribs or turkey.

Looks like some fine snacks need company? I can bring beer and crackers.

Tom, Are you stuffing your snack sticks in natural casings?