Michael tries to make cured cased sausage for the first time!

[Michael_in_TX]

I finally got my act together and embarked on my first attempt to do cured cased sausage for the first time.

I am a huge fan of Bradley Robinson / Chud's BBQ. I chose his Texas Hot Guts Sausage for my first attempt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lRKFVp_ZbA

First step.....the grind!

I picked up 4 lbs of brisket point and cut it into strips, then mostly froze those. I also froze the metal grinder attachment for my KitchenAid. I used the coarsest die on the grinder and sent the meat in through. That KitchenAid struggles with grinding. It gets hot and starts to smell in not a good way. As I determined from my breakfast sausage experiments, 3 lbs is probably the max for one setting. If this hot guts experiment is a success and I decide I really want to keep up with this, I need to give serious consideration to investing in a proper grinder else I will burn out my KitchenAid's motor.

Here's the resulting meat.



I ended up with 2116 g of meat. I put that back in the freezer while I got the spices together. I have Bradley's ratios in a spreadsheet so I used that to calculate what I needed to add. For the spices that was (amounts in grams):

Meat				2416
Salt (2%)				48
Pink Salt (.25%)				6
Milk Powder (4%)				97
Garlic Powder (0.55%)				13
Mustard Powder (0.45%)				11
Black Pepper (0.45%)				11
Paprika (0.2%)				5
Cayenne (0.2%)				5
Chili Flake (0.18%)				4
Turmeric (0.15%)				4
--------
Water (10%)				242
High Temp Cheddar (15%)				362

Once I got the spices all mixed in and evenly distributed I added the water and the high temp cheddar cheese.



Then I mixed! WOW, this stuff is cold. I mixed until a patty would very much stick to the underside of my gloved hand.

I then cooked a quick test patty:



Very cheesy. Quite a bit salt forward. (I've noticed that I find Bradley's sausage recipes a bit too salty. I think I will cut my salt ratio down to 1.5%.). But, I certainly didn't hate it.

Now, the casing!

This is my first experience ever with natural hog casings. It was very much a learning experience lol. I prepped them by washing the salt off several times. I then soaked them for 30 minutes and then soaking them in a fresh batch of water for another 30. Soaking them really does help separate out the casings from one another and makes them far more pliable. After a bit of finagling I managed to open an end and get some water in and flush the salt out of the interior of the casing.

I stuffed the meat mixture into my stuffer, taking care that it was pushed down so there were no air pockets. I lubed up the horn with some water. Getting the casing on the horn was much more challenging than I expected. There is a trick to this, but I finally got it all on there.

Then I stuffed away! This was not as difficult as I anticipated. It actually went very smoothly. The hardest part was tying those stupid knots! Casings are very slippery and I am not the most dexterous person in the world. The key to stuffing is to have patience and pay attention. Also, casings are not as delicate as they appear. That surprised me.

During this stuffing phase, I had no blowouts and ended up with two nice coils (I needed two casings for the full batch) of sausage. (Curiously, the second casing went on the horn much easier and faster than the first for whatever reason.)

Now here is where things started to go wrong.....twisting.

My very first twist caused a blowout. So did my second. My frustration was enormous, especially after stuffing with no blow outs. I took a bit of a break for a few minutes and came back. I then tried again, very, very gently to squeeze the meat. I noticed what was causing a large part of my problem: the cheddar chunks are dense and they were puncturing the casing. Recognizing this and moving very slowly and gently allowed me to get my first successful twist. I repeated this with that full first coil and only had one additional blow out.

For the blown out sausages, I cut them off, removed them, and tied off the ends. (That is so tricky!). I then moved on to the second coil. I had no blowouts on this coil! One factor is that I did not stuff this coil as full as the first one, so the meat had room to move when I pinched it.

Here is the result:



For my first try at this, I am quite happy!

These have been sitting in the fridge overnight on that wire rack. I'm going to give them a full fourteen hour cure time and then I will move on to cold smoking them.

To Be Continued...

[barelfly]

Man, seeing your posts on this last few weeks, I need to get back to this! Looks great!! As you start to get the hang of this, charcuterie using Umai Dry bags is outstanding! I highly recommend it now that you have what is needed for this.

And just to give you an idea here’s a link

https://pitmaster.amazingribs.com/forum/the-pit-mastery-program/hot-dogs-and-sausages/656294-another-trip-down-the-charcuterie-path

[Purc]

Looks great and fun even with the learning curve. Looking forward to seeing the final product.

[Michael_in_TX]

I remember you and I were talking at the Meat-Up about how Bradley perhaps makes it look so easy with his tight video editing. And yes, he does make it look easy LOL. That simple phrase: "tie it off!" was nearly maddening for me this first time around.

[Jerod Broussard]

I didn't need to see the post nor the pictures, I just needed someone typing in the third person to make my day.

[Michael_in_TX]

In undergrad, when I was a philosophy major, I wrote a paper on the Multitude of Selves.

[Jerod Broussard]

Michael_in_TX I was told about a young woman whose Master's Thesis was on the multiple pronunciations of the word "Brahman."

[Porkies]

Did you mean "cute girl wrote my paper"? Or maybe a multitude? Michael_in_TX

[PGH_RAM]

You nailed it! I bet that's going to be delicious once it's had some time to bloom!

As for your KitchenAid, take a look at the 8qt commercial series. It has a 1.3 HP motor and is NSF certified. I've ground batches up to 25 lbs with it and the motor casing barely warmed up. Plus, the beater, whisk, and dough hook that come with it are all stainless steel and, therefore, dishwasher safe.

https://www.kitchenaid.com/countertop-appliances/stand-mixers/bowl-lift-stand-mixers/p.nsf-certified-commercial-series-8-quart-bowl-lift-stand-mixer.ksm8990er.html?

[Michael_in_TX]

You know, that is a thought. I could get a sausage grinder AND upgrade my KitchenAid -- which I love using for bread and pizza dough -- at the same time.

[58limited]

Great job! And you picked a good recipe, I've made Bradley's hot guts before and it is a good solid recipe. For my last batch a few months ago I combined elements of Bradley's recipe and one from Smokin' Joe's Pit BBQ's youtube channel and I made Hatch Chile Cheddar sausage that is out of this world.

[Michael_in_TX]

I'm itching to try a summer sausage as that venison-brisket-cheddar-jalapeño one you brought to the Meat Up was fantastic.

[Michael_in_TX]

Here is Phase Two.

Smoke tube getting happy.



After it got going, I snuffed it out and placed it horizontally in the back. Then I put the heat deflector back in and on top of it. Then the cooking grate and our sausages.



A little crowded in there! I do this when I make jerky, too. I forget my Chimp has a relatively limited capacity lol.

The sausages darkened in color overnight and the casings did dry out as expected. My twisting game, sigh, is not on point. I did some links well and others quite poorly. But this is a learning experience and I now know I need to give that part of the process more attention.

Plan is to flip at two hours and go another two hours if the smoke tube holds out. (It should, I did a test run two months ago and got about five hours.) Temperature in the grill is around 112 F and we are in direct sunlight. Ambient outside temp is 91 F, heat index of 103 F. In other words.....summer has arrived in Texas.

[Michael_in_TX]

Two hour mark, pre-flip. Smoke tube still going strong. Happy to see that I don't have sausage stuffing leaking all over the place. (The first time I cold smoked cheese, 1/4 of my cheese melted!)



It is rather toasty in there. We're hovering around 140 F due to the grill being in the direct light of the Texas afternoon sun. I've added a probe to one of the sausages. We're at 108 F.

I'm going to let this all go another two hours or until the smoke tube runs out. The goal is to take these all to 150 F before I ice bath them in any case. I am sure I will need to turn the pellet grill on, but it will be interesting to see how much pellet grill time I will need to hit 150 F.

Also, as a quick aside, if you have a recent iPhone and an Apple Silicon Mac, iPhone mirroring is absolutely amazing. It is not perfect, but it has been awhile since a piece of tech has really enhanced my life.

[hoovarmin]

Epic!

[Clark]

Did you know that grills and smokers can be cleaned?

[Michael_in_TX]

LOL....yes, it is long overdue.

[mnavarre]

Yeah, It'll take you a couple of batches before you really get a feel for how tight you need to stuff the casings. Basically they should be taut but not tight, if that makes any sense. Another tip is to not tie the end of the casing until you're almost done likning, just leave enough casing to give yourself some runway to be able to tie off. Looks like a pretty dang good first run!

[Michael_in_TX]

That is an excellent idea!

[Michael_in_TX]

After four hours of cold smoking, I kicked the pellet grill on at 250 F PID-mode and brought the sausages up to 150 F internal.

Nice & plump! (As Bradley likes to say.)



I then put them in an ice bath for about fifteen minutes. I then wiped them all clean and stacked them up.....



To my astonishment, my highly imperfect twisting job was not the disaster I thought it might be. There's a little wrinkling, but not much.

At this point, I grabbed three and put those back on the Chimp to bring them to 160 F internal. I then got busy and vacsealed the rest.



Here are the three I cooked.....I tried to have them rest a moment, but I just couldn't.



And here we are!



So, how did I do? It does not suck. That snap of the natural casing is wonderful! As I expected from my test patty, this is very cheesy, overly so. It's almost 50% cheese, a bit much for my tastes; not bad, just much cheese, which threatens to cover the brisket. The bites (like the third slice from left) with less cheese I greatly preferred. If I do another one of Bradley's sausages with cheese, I'll cut it down by at least 25% of his ratio.

The flavor of the spices is quite good, and there is arguably a lot going with it. It is no where near as spicy as I was expecting. There's a little bit of heat, but not much. (Which is good, so I can share this with my wife.)

Oddly enough, the flavor reminds me a little bit of Tejas Barbecue's chile relleno sausage, which is weird. There's no cumin in this. Maybe it is the brisket and/or the garlic.

The one drawback is there is just a hint of acridity. I recognized the flavor immediately. It is the exact same acridity that I got on my smoked cheese, for which I also used this smoke tube configuration. I use the B&B Championship blend pellets, which have served me well for years, but they are also very inexpensive pellets.

That smoke tube also puts out a lot of smoke. It was full-bore for four hours. Perhaps I should cut that time down in half. More thought needed here. This didn't ruin the sausages by any means, but there is just that latent hint of an off-smoke/overly-smoked taste.

I'm not complaining! These turned out far better than I ever expected for my first attempt. I am quite excited.

This was fun and I definitely want to do it again. I most certainly will do some 2 lb batches for a while so I can dial in stuff a bit better. 4 lbs makes a lot of sausage!

[Purc]

Great job! They look perfect

[58limited]

Looks great. Usually, going heavy with the smoke on sausage is a plus but if it tastes acrid to you then cutting back is the answer. And yes, Bradley goes heavy on the cheese.

[Michael_in_TX]

I wonder if my acridity (which, again, is very slight) is that I'm using a Chimp -- a tailgating model -- and Bradley is using a huge Yoder. He's going to naturally get more air movement.

[SheilaAnn]

Michael_in_TX is this your first time linking and twisting? I say, G*d dayum, son! Former employees would take MONTHS to get links this awesome looking! PM me for my address so I can order a few packs 💕💕💕💕💕

JK! Fantastic job, Pitmaster!!!

[Michael_in_TX]

You are so kind. Yep, this is the first time I have ever done anything like this! And I am certainly not the most dexterous person!

[realdocBBQ]

Michael_in_TX I think you did a phenomenal job! Those are awesome, and they look delicious! I am envious, I am seriously wanting some more sausage, but I haven't been able to find time with my 'partner in crime' to make more in quite a while. I think Jan 1 was our last foray. We REALLY need to do more - but he has so much going on with work, family and keeping up the homestead that I really am better off doing it myself... but I don't have the room or kitchen counter space to really do it.

Anyways enough of that... yours looks AWESOME! Way to go, man!

A note about the 'acridity' of the smoke. Yes - with a smoke tube, you are getting somewhat 'dirty' smoke, especially if you don't have a fan going in the cooker at the time. Some pellet grills will let you run the fan only, like my Yoder - although I'm not sure this makes a lot of difference.

One thing I've noted in researching cold smoking cheese, many MANY guys (ok, and gals) like to rest their cold smoked cheese for a week or two before consuming, they say this allows it a chance to 'mellow out' some and get rid of some of that dirty smoke flavor. Similar reports with bacon smoking - and this part I can verify/vouch for. Letting a cold smoked slab of bacon sit uncovered in the fridge for a few days DEFINITELY mellows out the smoke. Still allows the smoke flavor to be there and be prominent, but it isn't as dirty or acrid tasting as when you first smoke it. I think I remember this from some of my sausage making, too, though it's been a few months now, so a bit hard to remember. But I think so. The sausages 'mellowed' and got better over time, both in the smoke flavor and the spices.

I think you've got it down, man. Just practice will improve your technique now. I think you'll find you go through those sausages faster than you expect, and you'll be ready to make more! lol

I was *this close* to going down to Austin for Bradley's last sausage-making class. But it was Mother's Day AND I am glad I didn't spend the money, as I think something came up right after and we needed it - car repairs on one of the fleet, I think it was.

Anyways, great job and keep it up! lol

[Michael_in_TX]

Thank you!

It will be interesting to see if the smoke mellows out....I noticed that with my smoked cheese as well and it mellowed even if they were vacsealed, just probably took longer.

I might play around with putting a small 12v computer fan on the Chimps vents, although just smoking for less time would probably have the same effect.