I was craving some this week, so I decided this weekend would be the perfect opportunity. For those who don't know, there's nothing especially "gut"-focused about these sausages, other than being in a natural casing. They're basically like a hot link. There is no specific recipe or ingredients list, except that they all contain salt, pepper, (usually) curing salt and cayenne. My recipe is based off of Bradley Robinson from Chud's BBQ and published as part of 2 Guys and a Cooler's Celebrate Sausage Season 3 Episode 9.
His recipe sounded a bit hot to me for my wife and others, so I toned down the cayenne a bit. I am glad I did - they came out with a little bite for me, but would have been vastly overpowered for my wife if I had left it as it was. Even now, it's still a little warm for her.
This was planned to be a couple of small batches, around 5 lbs each. One with cheese, one without. Then I started pulling scraps out of the freezer and realized how much I had... then I bought a brisket to cut up and grind... next thing I knew, all said and done, I had 38 lbs of ground meat and fat. DOH! Just a side note - I've said it before, but the MEAT! Your Maker 1HP #22 grinder is a freaking beast. I can't imagine what the 1.5HP model is like. Sheesh.
I feel like I spent the whole weekend grinding, mixing and more importantly cleaning. Man, sausage making is a mess!
Someday I want to have a big open kitchen with insane amounts of counter space and a giant island (with power run to it) and a big, big BIG and DEEP sink. Actually, I'd love to have a commercial wash station, honestly. Wife will probably ixnay that, but that's what I'd like to have.
This was my brisket trim scraps I had left over before cutting in to my 18lb Primer brisket.
And the Prime brisket itself:
The brisket meat (not extra fat) ground up - I estimated this about 85/15. What do you think?
My pork ground up was about 80/20 or so - mostly from a couple of butts, well, three actually. I had only the bone portion, having cut the boneless portions off for steaks or thinly sliced for al pastor. Had a pack of belly trim and some rib trimmings as well.
I plugged into AI all my weights of lean beef (85/15) and pork grind (80/20) as well as how much just fat (95/5) from the beef, added in my recipe(s) and started working through fat ratios need and had it print me up 4 sheets to come up with my end products. In the end I had this:
All-beef Texas hot gut - 2722g (~6lb)
Beef & pork Texas hot gut - 4991g (~11lb) - with diced jalapeno and pepper jack cheese
Country breakfast sausage - 3655g (~8lb)
Ground beef/pork mix - 4444g (~9.8lb) - this is for general purpose cooking. Weeknight tacos, spaghetti, dirty rice, sloppy joes... anything you'd just use regular ground beef for. About 75/25 fat, about 16% pork.
Hot gut sausages were calculated at 70/30 for fat content, as hot gut IS supposed to be a juicy, greasy sausage that literally drips down your chin. In retrospect, it might be a BIT greasier than we like, so I might reduce the fat content in the future - although it's going to take ma a LONG time to eat all this. lol
"CHEESE DOWN!" A cheese mishap:
I had cubed up some cheese on Friday and put them in the fridges to dry out. I didn't have, and don't want to pay for high temp cheese. So I used my own, cubed up small and left out on sheet pans to dry in the fridge for a couple of days. One was a plain pepper jack block I got at Restaurant Depot (5lbs, cut off around 1-1.5lbs to cube). The other was about a 1.4lb round of Flamin' Jack from Sam's. It is a Member's Mark brand, made in Wisconsin and I incorporate this into my hand grated cheese blend. It is this Flamin' Jack that sadly ended up in the floor during the process... I'm not even ashamed to admit that my first thought when I looked down was, "5 Second Rule!" This is some good and spicy cheese. But alas, it is a garage floor, and no way I was getting it cleaned up in 5 seconds. This was going to go in the spicier beef-only hotguts, instead they ended up with nothing.
This was the all-beef hot gut, cased up:
Doesn't look like much, does it? Only around 4.5lbs or so. My stuffer is gigantic and leaves around a pound and a half in the bottom when it is 'empty'. I need to buy a handful of silicone eggs to help reduce that. After frying up a couple of patties for myself, I had around ~1lb left to put in a ziplock in the freezer.
The second batch was the pork/beef mix and I threw in the dried pepper jack (this worked REALLY well in place of high temp cheese) and around 190g of diced jalapeno, deseeded and diced to around ~1/8".
Skipping ahead - smoking in the cabinets:
All finished sausages:
Meat porn:
And this time I was REALLY good and actually LABELED everything:
So that was it. Very good, very juicy and greasy Texas hot guts.
Salt
Black pepper
Curing salt
Granulated garlic
Granulated onion
Paprika
Cayenne powder
Guajillo chili powder
Ground mustard
Mustard seed (whole)
Liquid was Sam Adams Octoberfest beer in the all-beef version and Negra Modelo in the mixed beef/pork version.
Very tasty. Lotta work. Lotta LOTTA cleaning and washing up. <sigh>
Smoked in my 2 propane cabinet smokers for around 5 hours up to 145-150ish using pellet tubes full of mixed pellets and wood chips (apple this time).
I have acquired the equipment and containers to make this process work well - what I am most limited by now is my kitchen space. <sigh>
But it was a good weekend playing with my meat.
His recipe sounded a bit hot to me for my wife and others, so I toned down the cayenne a bit. I am glad I did - they came out with a little bite for me, but would have been vastly overpowered for my wife if I had left it as it was. Even now, it's still a little warm for her.
This was planned to be a couple of small batches, around 5 lbs each. One with cheese, one without. Then I started pulling scraps out of the freezer and realized how much I had... then I bought a brisket to cut up and grind... next thing I knew, all said and done, I had 38 lbs of ground meat and fat. DOH! Just a side note - I've said it before, but the MEAT! Your Maker 1HP #22 grinder is a freaking beast. I can't imagine what the 1.5HP model is like. Sheesh.
I feel like I spent the whole weekend grinding, mixing and more importantly cleaning. Man, sausage making is a mess!
Someday I want to have a big open kitchen with insane amounts of counter space and a giant island (with power run to it) and a big, big BIG and DEEP sink. Actually, I'd love to have a commercial wash station, honestly. Wife will probably ixnay that, but that's what I'd like to have.
This was my brisket trim scraps I had left over before cutting in to my 18lb Primer brisket.
And the Prime brisket itself:
The brisket meat (not extra fat) ground up - I estimated this about 85/15. What do you think?
My pork ground up was about 80/20 or so - mostly from a couple of butts, well, three actually. I had only the bone portion, having cut the boneless portions off for steaks or thinly sliced for al pastor. Had a pack of belly trim and some rib trimmings as well.
I plugged into AI all my weights of lean beef (85/15) and pork grind (80/20) as well as how much just fat (95/5) from the beef, added in my recipe(s) and started working through fat ratios need and had it print me up 4 sheets to come up with my end products. In the end I had this:
All-beef Texas hot gut - 2722g (~6lb)
Beef & pork Texas hot gut - 4991g (~11lb) - with diced jalapeno and pepper jack cheese
Country breakfast sausage - 3655g (~8lb)
Ground beef/pork mix - 4444g (~9.8lb) - this is for general purpose cooking. Weeknight tacos, spaghetti, dirty rice, sloppy joes... anything you'd just use regular ground beef for. About 75/25 fat, about 16% pork.
Hot gut sausages were calculated at 70/30 for fat content, as hot gut IS supposed to be a juicy, greasy sausage that literally drips down your chin. In retrospect, it might be a BIT greasier than we like, so I might reduce the fat content in the future - although it's going to take ma a LONG time to eat all this. lol
"CHEESE DOWN!" A cheese mishap:
I had cubed up some cheese on Friday and put them in the fridges to dry out. I didn't have, and don't want to pay for high temp cheese. So I used my own, cubed up small and left out on sheet pans to dry in the fridge for a couple of days. One was a plain pepper jack block I got at Restaurant Depot (5lbs, cut off around 1-1.5lbs to cube). The other was about a 1.4lb round of Flamin' Jack from Sam's. It is a Member's Mark brand, made in Wisconsin and I incorporate this into my hand grated cheese blend. It is this Flamin' Jack that sadly ended up in the floor during the process... I'm not even ashamed to admit that my first thought when I looked down was, "5 Second Rule!" This is some good and spicy cheese. But alas, it is a garage floor, and no way I was getting it cleaned up in 5 seconds. This was going to go in the spicier beef-only hotguts, instead they ended up with nothing.
This was the all-beef hot gut, cased up:
Doesn't look like much, does it? Only around 4.5lbs or so. My stuffer is gigantic and leaves around a pound and a half in the bottom when it is 'empty'. I need to buy a handful of silicone eggs to help reduce that. After frying up a couple of patties for myself, I had around ~1lb left to put in a ziplock in the freezer.
The second batch was the pork/beef mix and I threw in the dried pepper jack (this worked REALLY well in place of high temp cheese) and around 190g of diced jalapeno, deseeded and diced to around ~1/8".
Skipping ahead - smoking in the cabinets:
All finished sausages:
Meat porn:
And this time I was REALLY good and actually LABELED everything:
So that was it. Very good, very juicy and greasy Texas hot guts.
Salt
Black pepper
Curing salt
Granulated garlic
Granulated onion
Paprika
Cayenne powder
Guajillo chili powder
Ground mustard
Mustard seed (whole)
Liquid was Sam Adams Octoberfest beer in the all-beef version and Negra Modelo in the mixed beef/pork version.
Very tasty. Lotta work. Lotta LOTTA cleaning and washing up. <sigh>
Smoked in my 2 propane cabinet smokers for around 5 hours up to 145-150ish using pellet tubes full of mixed pellets and wood chips (apple this time).
I have acquired the equipment and containers to make this process work well - what I am most limited by now is my kitchen space. <sigh>
But it was a good weekend playing with my meat.
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