Meat Processing

@jroby3646 Those look like the same ones I got. At some point in the future ours will come with this option!

@txoutdoorsman It is the difference between my wife punching me in the arms and taking an uppercut from a trained boxer! Now, that might be over selling how hot the ghost pepper cheese is but when compared to the pepper jack it has some real heat!

@Biscuit Here is a link to the suggested sizes of stuffing tubes for various casings: https://meatgistics.waltonsinc.com/topic/187/what-size-stuffing-tube-to-use-sausage-casing-size-chart

I tried a small batch of the pineapple chicken brats with your seasoning. They taste great, but don’t have any pineapple flavors. Do I need to add dehydrated pineapple? I followed the video on meatgistics for chicken brats with carrot fiber. Any help would be appreciated for my next attempt! Gotta get the meat birds out of the freezer before the next deer comes!

This is a good instructional for linking that I have used. After blooming and drying or smoking, the sausage joints are set enough where you can cut and store https://www.google.com/search?q=linking+sausage&oq=linking+sausage&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i22i30l3.11097j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#kpvalbx=_yaDPX-L-B4i0swWQ-r2oAQ15

I always put cheese in mine, and it don’t have to be high temp. Most of the time I just use shredded sharp cheddar (that’s what the wife likes) but also great with swiss. Another thing to try is I always mix in wild rice (cooked first) It is awesome.

@Kentucky-Fisherman I should expect no less jabbing as I am a bit of a purist and usually dish it out myself. A better grinder is next on my list (current KA mixer) and a hanging smoke rack for my WSM 22.5. https://www.hunsakersmokers.com/products/stainless-steel-rib-hanger

@folsomwest So first, the 140° thing is based on appendix A (https://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/wcm/connect/fsis-content/fsis-questionable-content/oppde/rdad/frpubs/95-033f/95-033f_appendix-a/default/ct_95-033f_appendix+a) from the USDA and it is for beef or pork, I do not think it covers wild game in any way. You could apply the same principles but our official recommendation with wild game is 160°. As for the particle definition we once tried to layer ground venison then pork fat and then venison to get a more traditional bacon appearance and it failed miserable. All the fat rendered and escaped out the sides of the pan. I don’t think there is a way to do that. However, you could do what we did with some venison ring bologna a long time ago (I would have put my hand on a bible and sworn we had done a video on this) where we ground fat and lean separate and the fat just once then stuffed it into casings and smoked it. The fat rendered for sure but where the meat was encapsualting the fat it stayed in that pocket (mostly) so we had these really nice pockets of fat within the meat. Now, when you went to pan fry that it would render and escape again so I don’t know what the work around for that would be.

We make it differently and don’t have problems. What we do is stuff them in the fibrous. Then we cold smoke them in a smoke house (it is like an old wooden shed on the farm that breathes a lot and is not insulated). Then we cook them in a kettle with water. Then they hang a bit to dry. Into the vacuum seal bags and freezer. When they thaw out the fibrous casing is usually loose and comes right off. With this method I think you get a lot more moisture into the product though. I should mention that we don’t use a commercial spice/cure mix. We have our own recipe and we use tender quick to cure.

@John-Belvedere I’d use one plate so that the drop would be more signifcant, just like you said!

@Kainam Very high on my list of to do. I’ve been reading everything I can find on it and how we can guarantee a safe product when doing it at home. I could just use our eller dry curing chamber but there isn’t a lot of value to you guys when we do that.

Lost River Jones, The one I use is called Big Oven. It should be readily available on their website and it is actually a web based software so I can view/use it on any device although I find it works best with Google Chrome. You can copy paste recipes and then you simply label as ingredient, instructions etc. If you have the paid version (which I do as I said at $20 annually) you can create custom folders etc. They have about 500,000 online recipes that are searchable, some of which are good and some are not so much. They are all added by users to my knowledge and that leaves a lot of room for varying taste. I use it mostly for my own recipes but have found some good ones on there. It also has some great features such as a leftover feature where you can enter up to three ingredients and it will search for a recipe that uses those ingredients. Check it out! caddis, I think I simply wanted to retain more moisture in the final product and was attracted to the carrot fiber as it indicates that it doesn’t change the taste of the final product. Since I wanted to add a fair amount, I decided it would be a good thing to try. It has worked out well and I really like the finished product. I also use this recipe in hot dogs, but, I am looking for a different way to cook them as the last batch was overcooked and ended up as snack sticks (and very good ones at that). Thinking of trying a water bath for the hot dogs instead of oven or smoker. May or may not work but we will see!

Thank you you y’alls responses.

@deweymeats Just my take on this. Have never added anything other than the seasoning for jerky. Personally I wouldn’t add either one. Can’t envision any flavor enhancement with either one.

@sidpost A little bit of good information here https://meatgistics.waltonsinc.com/topic/2150/jerky-202-smoked-vs-dehydrated-jerky on difference between using a smoker or a dehydrator.

@1oldfart Don’t worry about that. Part of that could be how much water (if any) the belly was pumped with before you got it.

@jwhcrs I think you were looking for someone to post a homemade PSS seasoning? If that’s the case I don’t remember one ever being posted here. I did use the search feature and I entered “cup” thinking that if someone did post a recipe like that they might have used cup as a measurement. I found a few but nothing that was PSS. If you’re interested you could try looking through cup and then maybe do teaspoon or tspn or tablespoon?

@bird as long as the ham is precooked, you can’t use it as the main portion of your bologna if you are going to use cooked Ham. The reason for that is the proteins in the ham denature when they are cooked and then cannot be reformed into a solid complete piece once they have been broken apart.

@deweymeats I dont think they will every go bad but @Tex_77 is right, 2 years for the seasonings before they start losing their potency and around 3 for the cures. Some cures will harden up though if you don’t store them properly for a few years.

@Ace56 I would prefer pork butts over bacon and bacon or 50/50 mix of pork butts is a bit of a toss-up. The issue with adding bacon is that it tends to make the snack stick sort of soft, where quality bacon fat keeps it nice and firm. We are going to do side by side comparison on adding 50/50 butts to venison and adding pork fat with he deer that we were recently given to process. But your math looks right to me also.