Meat Processing

@armyguy glad your starting out, it’s a fun hobby/obsession! So, if you want to smoke them then they can’t be bratwurst, brats are a fresh sausage that you don’t add cute to and just grill or cook in a pan or oven. What it sounds like you want to make is cured sausage. The processes are similar but there are 1 or 2 differences that can heavily effect your outcome. The main one being that with cured sausage you want to achieve protein extraction during the mixing process. This will bind up all the meat, fat, water and additives and prevent the fat from cooking out during the smoking process. The other major difference is that you don’t add cure to a bratwurst. You should check out the cured sausage section of meatgistics university, then watch the basic cured sausage processing video and article. I think that will answer more of your questions for the type of sausage you want to make! I’d link you right to it but I’m on my phone. Good luck and let us k ow if you have any other questions!

i use flat iron steak to make pastrami… i also have used store bought corn beef to make it…

@North biggest difference between H Summer and Ton’s is that H summer has whole mustard seeds where Ton’s has ground mustard seeds. Either would be great but I’d probably go with H Summer, it is a best seller and with good reason! For Breakfast links adding pure maple syrup is a better idea, I don’t have good luck with adding bacon,m gets mooshie (sp?) whenever I try to use it. Regular hot dog seasoning (or closest we have) that gets great reviews Hot dog & Bologna then there is the Reduced Salt Frank & Weiner or the Chili dog is really good to but out of those I think the Hot Dog & Bologna will be the closest to what you are looking for. For summer you can absolutely use the H or the Ton’s as a base, people do it all the time with good results. The gigawatt will give you a nice amount of heat but it shouldn’t be burn your mouth hot. I like to add ghost pepper hi-temp cheese to it so people sweat when they eat too much, it keeps people from treating them as “samples”! For the salt the breakfast with probably the least salty taste would be the maple, so you are good there. I might stay clear of the Italians as I seem to remember them being salty but I love salt so it is hard to say for sure. For hotdogs, they are all going to have about the same saltiness aside the reduced salt frank and Weiner (linked above). On your last bit, you said “mix spices with seasoning” did you mean with the meat? If so never mix the seasoning and cures in and then hold before stuffing, if you are using sure cure (or any cure really) then mix, stuff and then hold if necessary. If you wait then everything might start to “set” and you could break your stuffer, not to mention it will be much much harder to crank. If you aren’t using cure then just stuff, if you are using sure cure (and no accelerator) the stuff and hold in a fridge overnight to allow the cure time to work! Good luck!

thanks, I appreciate the help.

@twilliams The broth will work well as long as it is thin enough to not bother your injector. As for the seasoning, I would go with the ultimate pork rub as the butter garlic and Pa’s don’t seem like they will compliment each other as well, at least to me, I could be wrong though!

Re: Waygu snack sticks

Yes it is a big help!have not had a chance to look for seasoning yet but cant wait to try it. Thank you!

@chasm907 You’re welcome, just wanted to point one thing out that I wasn’t clear on. The Andouille seasoning bags and the cure packages we send along are designed for 25 lb batches and the meat I gave you was for a 10 lb batch so don’t use the entire bag of seasoning or the entire bag of cure. Either up the amounts of pork and beef that I gave you by 2.5 or divide the bag of seasoning by 2.5.

@Rogers I was gone for the weekend but a few of my favorites that werent mentioned ar Habanero Mango Philly Brat, Reuben Brat, and perhaps my favorite brat for general purposes Apple Bratwurst! The Apply is best with cheddar cheese but it has a really nice sweetness and (surprise surprise) Apple taste that goes well in a bun, without a bun, cut up and put in stir fry or really anything!

@Dave-R stuff them with lamb burger. Slit open the rib along the bone and fat and stuff with burger and tie. Otherwise slice at 1 inch or bigger and fry as 🥩. Either a roast or steak. Called scotch chops or roast

@Jonathon They were black bear taken in Canada. They were taken by some customers of mine.

@Dave-R I have the cold smoker attachment and use it exclusively these days rather than the chip tray. It was s gave changer to say the least. Yesterday I made some smoked trout that turned out amazing!

@tarp Yes I stay twisted. Lol

@roosterndad If you are looking for a ratio of cold phosphate to water then you would want to use .5 of a lb to 9.5 lb of water, this would be enough for 100 lb of meat at a 10% pump ratio, which would be the correct amount. So if you are doing a 10 lb batch it would .05 of cold phosphate and .95 of a lb of water. I normally don’t add cold phosphate by itself, I am adding it to an injection solution that I have already calculated the water for so I just add in the cold phosphate to that solution at the ratio of 2 oz per 25 lb of meat.

@GalvanAP I’ve only used the oven method once. My dehydrator racks are just a hair larger than my largest sheet pan so I filled the rack with the jerky and then placed it in the oven until it reached 160. Then transfer the rack to the dehydrator until I reached the desired moisture content…or lack thereof. I’m not saying it’s the best way to do it but it seemed to work really well for me. I plan to try it again this weekend. Previously I would use my smoker for both the ‘cook’ and the drying but it took forever. I would probably start with the Walton’s video tutorial and go from there.

@Jonathon I definitely plan on keeping it less than 3 inches thick. Would love to hear your results.

@Lunkerchaser It’s really not advisable, as if the encapsulation breaks it is going to denature the proteins and ruin your sausage. Now, most of the times the encapsulation will not break but if you can avoid holding it overnight and remove the possibility then that is better.

@Denis For hot links I would follow same schedule at cured sausage but your biggest problem is probably going to be the starting temperatures, we like to start the cooking process around 120°. I JUST shot a video on using an oven to cook at lower temperatures by propping the door but it wont be edited and up in time to help you so let me summarize what I learned. You will need an ambient temperature thermometer to do this as you wont be able to rely on the readings from your oven. If your oven starts at 175 then you need to prop the door slightly to get the top rack to stay at 120°, I tried and tried to get the top and bottom racks to stabilizer at 120 but could not do it, so I would suggest you use 1 rack only. Once you have it steady around 120 either up the temperature of your oven by 20-30 degrees to get it around 130 or 140 or close the door even more if there is room. From there you just have to place with what you set the oven temp at vs how wide the door is propped. Now, if your oven starts at 150 I’d be pretty tempted to go right from 120 to 150 to make it easier. Go an hour at 120 30minutes at 140 30 at 150 1 hour at 160 and then 170 until internal temp is 160° as long as you are doing beef or pork and 165 if you are doing wild game or fowl. Hope this helped!

@twilliams I always do it as @DeerSlayer said, but there are some people who add the seasoning, additives and even the water into there batch size. I only recommend this if you think a previous batch you have made was good but needed a stronger taste to it, 95% of the time factoring just your meat in is the correct move for a home processor.

@Doug-Kapfenstein I dont think you need one as you arent worrying about the casing wrinkling. It might still happen a little to outside but it wont be much. Honestly, I dont think it is going to hurt anything so Id say do it but if you would rather not then skipping it wont hurt anything!