Sausage making on the first day of the new year!

[realdocBBQ]

Headed over to my buddy's place in a little bit. We're having a sausage fest today!

We've got about 10lbs of made up sausage farce of my first kielbasa recipe with garlic powder, onion powder, pepper, mustard powder, cayenne and the regular salt and curing salt, but with grated jalapeno in it. It came out with a very mild jalapeno flavor and very little heat in the few we cased up previously. We had about 10lbs left when we ran out of casings, so we bagged it and froze it, so we'll case it up today.

I think in addition to this, we're planning another kielbasa recipe with some marjoram and maybe whole mustard seeds. Likely 100% pork for this.

Also we'll probably do a Texas hot link style with cayenne and red pepper in it. I don't think we'll probably do any chili powders in this one, not this time. Not sure. Prolly whole mustard seeds, as well. This will probably be 50/50 pork and beef.

Earlier I cubed up 4 bone in pork butts, around 30 lbs total. They're in the freezer to set up a little for grinding. He's got a select brisket he froze last year maybe, got it for $2.99 a lb, so maybe a little longer than a year ago.

Eventually he is really strongly wanting to do a chicken sausage, but he is very opposed to binders, as he is a non-carb person, so I'm a little concerned about texture and moisture without a binder. We'll have to try a small batch and see. Hell, I've got some chikkin thighs in the freezer... maybe I should take those with me. A quick batch of that, might be in order as well.

Anyways, gonna be a busy day, should have some pics to post up later!

Here's the basic recipe of the 'kielbasa-ish' one I did the first couple batches.



Wish me luck! Hopefully I don't lose a finger in that MONSTER freaking grinder he bought! It's a 1HP from Meat! Your Maker, and that thing is a BEAST! We ground 30 lbs of meat in 4 minutes on our first attempt, just struggling to keep that thing fed!

[58limited]

I need to make some sausage soon, I have a bunch of venison and some pork butts in the freezer.

[SheilaAnn]

realdocBBQ Don’t struggle to keep up! Take your time and be aware! As soon as I read that I flashed back to a former employee accident. *shudder*

but on a happy note, looking forward to pics! But based on previous sausage projects you have shown, these will be awesome. 2025 bucket list to-do for me, for sure!

[texastweeter]

To get a bind with chicken but with no powdered milk, try adding ice to the 2nd grind, then 10 minutes in the meat mixer, alternating directions every minute. Add a bit of water to the mixer as the meat starts to look dry from protein extraction.

[texastweeter]

To clarify, grind once on course, then add ice and grind again on fine, ice and all.

[TripleB]

My brother and I made 5 lb. Swt. Italian sausage last week for our Christmas spaghetti dinner. It was excellent.

I’ve never used binders, even with chicken sausage.

Can you post your Texas hot link recipe. I have not found a good one yet.

thanks

[58limited]

TripleB I looked a long time for a Texas hot link recipe myself and I settled on this almost 100 year old recipe which is now my standard Texas style hot link sausage recipe (i.e. - no cheese, jalapenos, or any other extra ingredients.) : https://youtu.be/sI3tY0jIaHg?si=SIoeSNJGepzoMR9W

[58limited]

The other Texas sausage that I really like is this one. It is very simple but very good and is a good base to add things to. I made my Hatch chile and cheddar sausage with this recipe: https://youtu.be/LSqy6iNSk5I?si=bXSm_YLaSFYbblQr

[TripleB]

58limited Thank you. Look forward to reviewing recipes and trying my hand at making them.

[Santamarina]

I’ve got the small Meat Your Maker grinder. Works like a champ. Those big ones are beasts. I don’t process enough meat to justify one, but that doesn’t stop me from dreaming.

[klflowers]

Since my son got me the Cabelas grinder, I'll be doing some sausage soon. I have made HouseHomey andouille and ground beef with the kitchenaide attachment, but I never got the hang of stuffing the casings. I'll try this recipe, thanks for posting.

[Skip]

yakima and klflowers I had trouble with natural casings being tough and sometimes chewy so I switched to Collagen Casings and have had much better luck. I actually prefer peeling them off before eating the sausage. Just my FWIW.

[58limited]

I had trouble using the grinder to stuff sausages so I bought an LEM 5lb stuffer when they had a good sale. It changed everything: quick, easy to stuff a casing, easy to minimize air bubbles. Natural casings take a little practice: rinse off the salt and soak with a little baking soda for 4-24 hours in the fridge to rehydrate, slow smoke at 150F for 2 hours then go to 175F until meat is 155F. Cold crash in ice water, let dry and bloom several hours. To cook: 275F back to 155F IT = snappy casing.

[realdocBBQ]

58limited has it right. I love the natural hog casings so far. Having a standalone stuffer is a game changer for sure.

[realdocBBQ]

Ok, time for pics!

This is some jalapeno we had left over from last time but didn't have casings for. It's essentially the recipe I posted at the top, with some jalapeno added. It's good, but not hot at all, mild jalapeno flavor. We cased up about 8lbs of it last time so I know how this mix tastes, this was maybe 10 or so pounds?



Here is our second batch of the day - Texas Hot Links! We used the recipe from 2 Guys and a Cooler posted above, though I toned down the cayenne and the red pepper by about 1/3. Eric from 2 Guys and a Cooler had said in the comments on the recipe page that he rated it about a 7/10 for heat. I don't mind the heat at all, but to ease it up for friends and family we reduced it by 1/3. A little red color from the paprika that isn't in the kielbasa recipe. Some thyme and mustard seed to go along with the garlic, onion, red pepper flake and cayenne - and the black pepper. This was around 17 pounds, we did roughly 60/40 pork to beef.


3rd batch today was a different kielbasa recipe. I based it off the recipe in the original post, with a few modifications:

Added about 0.5% of marjoram. Used freshly ground white peppercorns and reduced by around 1/3 for potency because it was freshly ground. Also increased mustard by 1/2, but split it 50/50 as mustard powder and mustard seed. Here's how that one came out:

This was about 5600 grams of all pork, around 12 pounds.


Got it all cased up and twisted into links, carried home and stuck it all in my garage fridge to cure tonight. Then I'll cold smoke these, probably in batches over the next 2-3 days.

I know the casings won't dry as much as I'd like, since I had to stack them all over each other and such, but the curing is the most important part for now. Then I can hang them out in batches, or stretch them out in one of the cookers outside to dry a bit before cold smoking. Drying the casings is a big thing, I wish I had a good rack to hang them on in open air in the garage or something for a couple-three hours in front of a fan to dry them out completely. I may rig up something to do this, we'll see.

Here's the full batch - 46 pounds done today in 3 different styles!


And we still have about 8-9kg of ground meat left over in the freezer if we want to just stuff some more later, it's probably 60/40 or 55/45 pork + beef.

Looking forward to smoking up this sausage over the next few days and the weekend, as well as some of that bacon in the bottom of the last pic, which was put up to cure on the 22nd. That's around... 14lbs of bacon I think, and there's another 10.5lb pork belly in that pic that needs to have cure applied and then be vacuum sealed to starting curing as well!

Hell of a sausage fest today!

Notes on flavor from some samples we fried up in a skillet.

1. Jalapeno kielbasa - good stuff, this isn't new, fairly garlic forward, a VERY mild jalapeno flavor and very little heat.

2. Texas hot links - great flavor, just a bit of heat on the back end from the pepper, red pepper and cayenne - I expect this to 'bloom' some more with curing and hydration of the spices and smoking. I think this is going to be very good and expect it to be moderately spicy, but not overwhelming.

3. Interesting difference in the kielbasa flavor from my previous versions. The addition of the marjoram - I saw this in about half the recipes I perused, ranging from 0.1% to 0.7%. So I went with 0.5%. It definitely adds a little complexity to the flavor, sort of earthy/grassy notes. Pleasant but not overwhelming. I think I am glad I didn't go up to the 0.7%, especially expecting further 'blooming' of the spices over the next few days. The white pepper - it was definitely noticeable, more than in previous batches using only 16 mesh Kirkland branded pepper. I am also glad I reduced the amount of this by 1/3, knowing freshly ground from peppercorns, it would have much more bite than the regular stuff. It was a good flavor, not really 'hot', but definitely tasted like freshly cracked pepper. Nice note, but I have a slight concern it may also come out too strong, but it may tone down more in the curing, as pepper is wont to do. Freshly cracked pepper is always much 'sharper' I think, than pepper in a commercially ground form. I liked it, but I'll definitely be interested to see what happens to these flavors. The mustard seed was not overly noticeable, though I do expect it will also hydrate some and might be a bit more prominent once it's all finished curing, smoking and cooking.

I'm excited!

I'm also exhausted! lol

Hope that was a fun read, I'll be posting updates on #1, #2 and #3 over the next few days and possibly weeks to see how the flavors meld and change!

[TripleB]

Beautiful. Nothing like fresh sausage. Yo da man!

[barelfly]

Heck yeah!!! I’ve got to get the grinder and stuffer out while it’s cold out and make more!

[Michael_in_TX]

I'm beginning to understand that a key piece of kitchen equipment in sausage making is copious counter space.

[realdocBBQ]

Damned skippy. This is why mostly it is done at my friend's house. Lol

[texastweeter]

And totes!!!

[58limited]

I don't think I've made more than 35 lbs of sausage at once. Good job!

[realdocBBQ]

It was a lot of work. I am... Tired. Lol

[texastweeter]

Yeah we tured 2 of the deer this year entirely into sausage. It will for sure wear you out.

[fzxdoc]

I bet your wife was happy that you were making all that sausage elsewhere.

Kathryn

[realdocBBQ]

Ok, so today is time to cook some of this sausage!

I've actually been smoking some of it. I don't have a ton of room in my fridge, but it's been given time to cure and #2 Tx Hot Links) and #3 (marjorom-infused kielbasa) have been smoking some.

Kielbasa went on Thursday evening, after a little more than 24 hours' cure. Just threw them in the Camp Chef Smoke Vault 24 - a 24" cabinet smoker fueled on propane. No heat, just threw a pellet tube smoke generator in the bottoms. Temps have been low enough, those have actually been sitting in there since that time, about 36 hours now. I've burned through the smoke tube twice in that time, I think. So, maybe 12 total hours of cold smoke?




Just now I fired it up as low as I can get it, which will often hold 150ºF in very cold weather or if I keep the door cracked in warmer weather. I threw the pellet tube in again, as well as a few chunks of apple on the wood pan above the propane burner. Nice, low and slow until around 150ºF internal.

https://share.fireboard.io/0B18BA

The Texas Hot Links I put on The Duk offset smoker yesterday morning, maybe 530AM. Cold smoked all day running through a pair of pellet tube burns in the firebox in the morning, then starting another burn at noon in-between going from one office to the other. Saw patients all day and came home to find what looks like perfectly cold smoked sausage.




^^^^This was about noon, when it 'warmed up' and internal temps got up to about 50ºF.


^^^Two pellet tubes to provide smoke, but no heat.





Then it sat in The Duk overnight, since it's cold, and today I will probably smoke it in batches in the Camp Chef once the first batch of kielbasa is done, so I can use The Duk to cold smoke sausage #1 (jalapeno kielbasa) and 4 slabs of bacon I am drying out in the fridge.

So once batch #3 is done, I'll move #2 into the Camp Chef and #1 and the bacon onto The Duk.

[realdocBBQ]

Oh yes, I was going to comment on the casing...

Previous efforts including some hog casings I got at WalMart.

I am pretty sure it was these:


Overall wasn't too impressed, relatively short, they didn't slide on my stuffing horn too well, required loading a new casing so often and struggling to get it to slide on, it was a bit of a pain.

2nd batch I bought some from Amazon.



Meh, they were probably marginally better, but not impressed, really. Still struggled getting them onto the horn at times, in spite of soaking in water overnight with a teaspoon of baking soda. It says 25lbs on the box, did NOT get 25 pounds out of it. We ground up 30 pounds of meat and ended up with maybe 12 lbs still uncased when we ran out. A couple of little accidents, and blowouts, but not 30-40% of the length. Additionally, we might have been able to stuff a few of them a little more full, but I wasn't overly impressed with this brand. 4-7 feet in length, it seemed like, mostly.

So I decided to jump in, at this point I'd done a couple of batches and decided this sausage thing was going to become a semi-regular activity. So, I hit up The Sausage Maker and ordered a package of their 29-32 hog casings and one of their 26-28 sheep casings.

I felt their shipping was a bit slow, took me like... I dunno 13 days to get my casings. But other than that, no big deal.

Here's what I bought:

https://sausagemaker.com/product/natural-hog-casings-29-32mm/

Overall, when we used these the other day, I was spectacularly impressed!

Consistency was pretty good, we probably used 1/3 or so of the "Butcher's pack" I got. We did 46lbs of sausage. One of the casings was smaller and contributed to several blowouts, as we tried to overstuff it like the others. It probably should have been in a smaller group, but that was the only one. Overall, the LENGTH of these individual casings was incredible! I bet they averaged 10 feet in length! Some probably 15 feet! We were joking at one point I was sliding a casing on the horn that it had to be the entire digestive system of one hog. lol

Also, sliding them on was SOOOOO much easier! I don't know why. I soaked about 2-3h in water with baking soda, but they were just slippery as hail and really went on the stuffing horn sooooo much easier than either of the other two brands I'd tried. This was a major plus, as previous efforts were quite annoying.

Haven't tried the sheep casings yet, those are for the future. But these hog casings, I am SUPER happy with!

Like I said, used maybe 1/3, I don't think it was 1/2 of the butcher pack. Brought them home, drained all the water, a little rinse, then added a ton of salt to them and put them in a ziploc bag, back in the fridge. They should keep pretty well indefinitely like that, as far as I know. But I can tell ya, they ain't gonna last that long! lol

[58limited]

I've had mixed results with grocery store casings although baking soda helped. I plan to order my next casings from The Sausage Maker.