Meat Processing

@IVERYAN First, congratulations! I hope you got a good deal on it and his loss is your gain! With a hydraulic stuffer, there should be no need to use 2 qts of water to a 25 lb batch to get it to stuff into 19mm casings. I can use my hand crank stuffer and use 1 qt of water and get it to stuff into 19mm casings on a 12mm stuffing tube. Having said that, there isn’t really any major problem with your plan, just know that it is going to be almost soupy when you are stuffing it and while I didn’t you possibly could have some consistency issues. What I would imagine is that it would have hotdog like consistency. If I were you I would do a smaller test batch first before committing to a 25 lb batch, just to be sure. You could even try mixing a few lb with 1 qt, a few lb with 2 qt and then mix the rest of your batch to whichever works best. Also, yes, if you are using Encapsulated Citric Acid you don’t want to hold it overnight as the encapsulation might start breaking down. The sure cure can safely be held overnight, that isn’t any issue.

@kstrantz We can do custom seasoning through Excalibur. They usually require large amounts being purchased at a time but if you had a specific seasoning you wanted to make without the bite that might be a good way to go? We would be able to tell them you like the taste of seasoning A but don’t like the spiciness and they could work to make a custom batch (available only to you) with a reduced amount of pepper? The only downside to that is the minumim amounts per order are pretty large. If you are interested in that you could contact Walton’s Customer Support at 800-835-2832 or cs@waltonsinc.com What @Joe-Hell says is probably the simplest way to go about it, the downside being that the other flavors might diminish as well. You could combat that by adding more of what you do like but even after all the test batches it might take to dial that in, it leaves a lot of room for error.

@Stephen24 That’s up to you but I like to keep them whole. They give you a little bit more of a dramatic appearance when left whole.

Awesome! Thanks guys!

@Jonathon Thank you – I have some Carrot Fiber.

@Departing-Contestant good advice, keeping it cold, semi frozen, is a key. Many of the commercial processors I have worked with use bowl choppers for the emulsification process.

It has been well documented on here that we do not have a “How to make Andouille Sausage” video here. I’ve actually made the product and recorded everything twice already, however the first time there was a miscalculation on ingredients and the second time everything was out of focus. Well tomorrow we try the third time! I am planning on using the Andouille Cajun Sausage Seasoning BUT I am going to add cure so I can smoke it and be safe and I am going to add a small percentage of shrimp ( I did this last time and the product was delicious!) some sure gel and maybe some hi-temp cheese…though the thought of shrimp and cheese in a sausage is a little too much for me. I will let everyone know how it goes!

@raypete good to here. I’m in South Western Minnesota. My neighbor raises for Heart Brand as well.

@nthcbr954 I prefer Beef and wild game for the meat block. Pork is great to, however it create a softer finished product. I like a good snap in my sticks. Likewise I will try to use beef fat, usual trim from my briskets. I like pork and pork fat better in other smoked sausages though.

@greesemunkee One thing you might try to just to identify if it is part of the problem is to buy one package of sure gel binder and try that on a batch. Sure gel is a VERY good binder but as you can see it is not cheap, if you wanted to try something else I would go with Super Bind which is a mixture of carrot fiber and potato starch. Using one of these two would pretty much ensure that if a binder was going to fix your issue then one of these would. For the money I like Carrot Fiber best though, inexpensive and does the trick. As @doc_craig says protein extraction (mixing) is also VERY important in preventing the fat from rendering out of the meat which could cause your rubbery casing as the fat will come out of the meat and the casing will be cooking in it during the entire process.

@Parksider tinkering is a time-honored tradition!

@sakepower It would help but I don’t know how you would do it. The citric acid is encapsulated in cotton seed oil (i am ALMOST positive that is what it is) and that dissolves into almost nothing above 130° F making it the perfect for use here. I don’t know a ton about egg white powder but I feel like it would wash away when it got wet? The only thing I could find on encapsulation and egg white powder was it being encapsulated for some reason. I would ask our application specialist but he is attending AAMP now. So, it might work but I do think the simplest thing to do would be to use dehydrated.

That’s a steal! I would have bought that in a heartbeat.

@Joe-Hell it was on sale .99 lb. bone in bought 30 lb. processed 20 and froze 10

@msalmon I used boneless/skinless chicken thighs on my recent chorizo and added a ratio of fat to bring it to 30+% although I was looking for a fatty product as chorizo tends to be quite high in content. It wasn’t until I started stuffing that I remembered that was going to use a little carrot fiber. D’oh! Surprisingly they didn’t lose much fat when cooking.

@Joe-Hell Thanks, I searched for close to 1/2 hr last night… couldn’t find it anywhere on the website!

@raider2119 I’ve got an entire corner of my garage of things that are basically junk but that I know will come in handy one day in one of my “projects”! I have been lucky enough to use one or two of these to solve a problem my wife was having so she doesn’t really bother me about it! Tinkering is the best, I love doing it, especially on something that is already broken. That way I can’t really ruin anything just fix/improve/repurpose it or not!

@PaulGrant Yes, if you like cheese with other flavors you will like it with tex-mex. That and the willies are the two that I would always recommend Cheddar with, I love our ghost pepper but it can be over powering in my opinion and tex-mex already has enough flavor!

@ggillis I still remember the first time I indirect smoked them. Totally changed the entire flavor profile. Wonderful!

@Dave-R pics of his ribs. I have lost about 10 lb in the last 3 or so weeks but seeing ribs first thing on a Monday morning makes me think I am about to start eating EVERYTHING! [image: 1561992025966-daverrib1.jpg] [image: 1561992033061-daverrib.jpg]