Meat Processing

@daveomak Welcome to this site! I know you from another site that I cannot log onto any more. May we converse in a pm?

@joemy96 That makes perfect sense. I have never made 32s so my experience has only been with 19s and 21s

@cooper1 said in Summer sausage question: Thanks John, I smoked them last night and they came out perfect as usual. So with that I’m not going to mess around with a good thing! Wisdom incarnate. Congrats

@Bruce-0 Fat won’t necessarily go bad, but it will go rancid and give you an off-flavor. If it is going rancid, you will notice a change in smell, maybe a change in color, and it should be noticeably different than truly fresh meat. If it was not 100% fat, but still had a fair bit of protein on it, the lean/protein portion left will go bad before the fat does. My best suggestion is to treat it like other fresh meat and if you are not going to use it within a week or so, vac seal it or at least put in a more closed container and freeze it.

@miller Yes if you want to smoke right away I would suggest using encapsulated citric acid or sodium erythorbate. If you aren’t really experienced with smoked meat stabilizer I would avoid it if you have access to the other two.

That looks absolutely horrible!! I would need to try it to confirm though Joking of course The more I see you guys using dedicated smokers the more I feel that at some point I will have to buy one

@jamieson22 Amazing!

Yes you can refreeze if you really need to. For the best quality finished product, you really want to grind whole fresh meat and fully process it within a narrow time window. The quality of ground meat degrades over time, whether it is frozen or fresh

Looks delicious! I’m definitely going to revisit this post and take some notes. Thanks for posting.

That would work just watch the salt content I guess?

They are all cure accelerators. I am not sure at what speed each one works at compared to the other, but for home processing, I would guess there isn’t much difference. You only want to use one of them. If you like the tang, I would just stick with the ECA.

Yeah I wondered the same thing, as in maybe it needed a higher concentration since it wasn’t 100% pork. I don’t have any left over seasoning from the package and it was 75% pork butt and 25% venison.

@andrew Welcome back Andrew. It’s been a while since you have posted. What have you been making lately? Anything of interest?

@tjsauer do you buy a bbq mix or make it up yourself and use bbq sauce?

@wdaly thanks. They did turn out really good.

@briox Look into cheese cloth soaked in butter to drape over the chicken. We did this with the Thanksgiving Turkey and was the most moist, best turkey I’ve ever had in my 52 years!!! It was done in the oven, but will be trying in the smoker!

@wvhunter1965 said in Chipped Deer: @mrobisr , Thanks for the info, sorry to be such a rookie but I am learning! We were all rookies at one time or another.

Well, I only got the snack sticks done yesterday. Another problem I ran into is they snapped as I was taking them out of the smoker to put in the sous vide. Like a dummy (this is a trend, I admit), I just dropped them in the water and figured it would be fine. Got them done, in the ice bath, take them out…there’s fat all over the outside of the sticks. The flavor is really good - I mean, it’s Willy’s so of course it is - but I am thinking I didn’t mix well enough, and then when they snapped, the fat got on the outside. So, they’re slightly gross from that. Not sure how to get the fat off, lol. Still have to do the summer and pepperoni. And I have a super busy week with Christmas and my son’s birthday tomorrow. Any clue how long I can wait to smoke in the fridge? 3ish days? longer?

I am going to be making summer sausage with 50% deer and 50% fresh pork butt. Last year I did one batch and smoked on the pellet grill to temp. of 160. Did another batch and just hung to dry for 3-4 weeks in a 40-45 temp. controlled environment. Kept an eye on the 2nd batch till it was dried. Both batches were 50-50 deer-pork butt using H summer sausage seasoning, sure cure, and sure gel. This year wanted to try Habanero BBQ seasoning. My wife and I prefer the Old Tyme (hang to dry) summer sausage the best. My question has anybody used the Habanero BBQ in the Old Tyme sausage? I was wondering about all the sugar in the seasoning. I might have to just smoke it to 160 degrees but rather go hang to dry. Thanks for your help.

I always add Montreal steak seasoning (1t for pint and 1T for a qt) and a clove of fresh minced garlic when I can mine. [image: 1639840640726-c8fa020b-39d0-40c6-b783-76aa68608638.jpeg]