What went wrong?
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When making venison summer sausage I use 17 pounds of lean and 8 pounds of pork fat so I don’t think dante322 is far off. My experience in terms of saltiness has been similar when using Excalibur’s H Summer Sausage seasoning so I don’t use it anymore. I don’t think the stalling issue is related to the seasoning and cranking it up to 185 will definitely give you wrinkles and oil. Hopefully this won’t offend the sponsor of this great site but I find Deer Hunter summer sausage seasoning to be the best flavor profile when using wild game or very lean meat. It also produces a better texture for some reason. I am using ECA and cold phosphate regardless of the seasoning and my meat/fat ratio is also consistent. Just my 2 cents…
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vjbutler The wrinkling could have been bumping it up to 185°. You say sure gel and binder, I am assuming you mean sure cure and binder as the sure gel is also a binder? Was it oily on the outside of the sausage? It sounds to me like your fat did not bind with your meat and then “fatted out” that can create an oily appearance and texture around the outside of the sausage. This could be from not mixing enough but as you used a binder I would think more likely the culprit is when the fat was added to the meat. Did you add it during the mixing process or during the grinding process?
What was the temp of your deer when you were mixing it? What grinding plates did you use? Do you have a way to increase the moisture in your smoker?
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dante322 Sorry, I responded to vjbutler but I meant to respond to you. Also, I was not clear in my earlier message. If you did “fat out” the product very well might taste saltier than normal as you have lost all of that fat.
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DANTE: Please see my thread (Summer Sausage Nightmare) from August in the Meat Processing section. Sounds like we had similar issues.
One of the gurus on this forum suggested that I stop smoking after no more than 4 hours, as the longer time to get to an internal temp of 160 F is a “stall” (heat loss of the smoker and product (including water pan) is equal to heat in to the smoker) so the product sits at about 130 F and internal temp goes nowhere.) The solution is, after 3-4 hours in the smoker, transfer to a water bath at poaching temp (about 200 F). This brings internal temp of the Summer Sausage up to 160 F in about 20 min, not 5 or 6 hours, and helps prevent “fatting out” of the product. Product retains moisture, casings are nice and full, and remain smooth.
Also suggested for my SS Nightmare: More complete mixing of the meat before stuffing into casings. I found that 8-9 min of mixing in a hand operated Waltons small meat mixer works well, giving a good sticky feel and appearance to the meat and provides for good protein extraction and fat/water binding in the meat (it becomes an emulsion) without total loss of texturing. I also found that grinding the lean meat (beef or venison) separate from the pork fat and adding the fat to the cold ground meat preserves some of the traditional texture of SS.
Don’t give up on the Walton’s Excaliber seasonings–they offer some great stuff–but the techniques of getting to a good “family ready” final product may take some adjustments. One final comment, I found that adding Encapsulated Citric Acid (ECA) as is frequently recommended here at Walton’s for SS and snack sticks did not work for me. It gave a strongly acidic taste that made my SS inedable.
Good luck. It’s truly frustrating to go to all the effort and expense of making a batch of Summer Sausage, only to end up tossing the whole batch. I’ve been there, too.
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Yes… sure cure and sure gel binder. The venison and pork fat were both still partially frozen when I ground them. First through the large course plate, then again through the small plate. (Not sure of sizes, but these are the plates i normally use for summer sausage). I probably should have put the meat back in the freezer before seasoning but i was pressed for time. I mixed by hand for 14 or 15 minutes. I also think I might have added to much water. The video said 2 quarts for wild game 2 pints for fatty pork. I put in 1 quart and about another cup. I mixed until it got tacky and then mixed some more. The meat seemed soupy to me but the video said that would be ok.
The shriveling occurred before I bumped the temp up. I was using a digital thermometer with a probe, when the temp stalled for a couple hours, I suspected the temp might be reading inaccurately so I opened the door to confirm with a dial thermometer. The digital was accurate but the sausage was already shriveling.
Another thing that bothered me was the casings… these had perforations for some reason. I e never used perforated casings before and seemed like I was losing a pot of moisture through them. Did I have the wrong casings? The other fibrous casings in the catalog said you were supposed to poke them anyway. -
dante322 Okay, thank you for the information. The holes in the casings are designed to let pressure bleed out during the cooking process and it also helps it form tighter to the sausage, so you had the right type of casing. Your grinding sounds fine, mixing by hand to get proper protein extraction would take about that time on a larger batch. I’ve used 2 qt of water before to 25 lb of meat and yes, it does make it soupy but that should all come out during the cook cycle (it will extend that cook cycle though). Grinding the meat and fat together is correct.
I looked back art your meat block and I’d say part of the issue is that you used almost 1/3rd fat. That is a lot of fat, it would have been very difficult to keep that all bound up. 20 lb of venison to 5 lb of pork fat is good enough. If you were using untrimmed butts than 16 lb of venison to 9 lb of the butt would be close to enough but when it is straight pork fat that is getting it up a little on the high side. This would explain why it took forever to cook as well as the fat rendering out of the meat would constantly be bringing down the surface temperature of your meat.
Get more help with your processing questions and learn more about processing meat by subscribing to our waltonsinc.com youtube page at https://wltns.link/waltonstv I am a Gorilla, love yourself
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dante322 Okay, thank you for the information. The holes in the casings are designed to let pressure bleed out during the cooking process and it also helps it form tighter to the sausage, so you had the right type of casing. Your grinding sounds fine, mixing by hand to get proper protein extraction would take about that time on a larger batch. I’ve used 2 qt of water before to 25 lb of meat and yes, it does make it soupy but that should all come out during the cook cycle (it will extend that cook cycle though). Grinding the meat and fat together is correct.
I looked back art your meat block and I’d say part of the issue is that you used almost 1/3rd fat. That is a lot of fat, it would have been very difficult to keep that all bound up. 20 lb of venison to 5 lb of pork fat is good enough. If you were using untrimmed butts than 16 lb of venison to 9 lb of the butt would be close to enough but when it is straight pork fat that is getting it up a little on the high side. This would explain why it took forever to cook as well as the fat rendering out of the meat would constantly be bringing down the surface temperature of your meat.
Jonathon Just to get this straight, is the correct ratio for fat supposed to be 20% of the meat weight or 20% of the total mixture weight? Also, another question regarding grinding: If I take already ground hamburger & grind it through a smaller plate with added pork fat this time, Will grinding the fat 1 time be enough? I don’t want to emulsify the ground meat by grinding it too much? Thanks in advance! You guys are true American scientists!
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@kanevak Some commercial processors (don’t hold me to this but I think it is most prevalent when doing wild game) will count the seasoning and additives to their meat block but in general we do not. So if you are doing a 10 lb batch you would want 8lb of lean and 2 lb of pork fat (or any really but pork is best in our opinion). Now, if you make a brat or snack stick andlike the flavor but wish it was strong calculating the seasoning and water into your meat block is a good way to up that taste. I say that with some caveats though, the Habanero BBQ is a BIG bag of seasoning that is at least half sugar, somewhere in the 3 lb range and you wouldn’t want to use 20 lb of meat 3 lb of seasoning and 2 lb of water, or whatever other additives as there is a good chance the snack stick or summer sausage could be overly sweet. So, if you are going to factor the seasoning and water weight into your meat block do smaller batches first until you have found what you think the sweet spot is.
Yup, I find that grinding pork fat once, especially if it is through the smaller plate is sufficient. With a cured sausage you are going to mix it pretty intensely and that will break it down further and for brats and things like that you want some particle definition anyway.
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Cabelas90 and lamurscrappy Do either of you count the seasoning and water in the meatblock for wild game or anything else?
Get more help with your processing questions and learn more about processing meat by subscribing to our waltonsinc.com youtube page at https://wltns.link/waltonstv I am a Gorilla, love yourself
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Cabelas90 and lamurscrappy Do either of you count the seasoning and water in the meatblock for wild game or anything else?
Jonathon We do Not here except for a few pet treat recipes. Otherwise meat block dictates how much water seasonings ect. All of our Recipes are in Excel forms where you enter the meat block weight and it calculates how much ingredients you add by weight. If there is a way to attach a file Id be glad to share our Base Sheet that anyone could use and modify.
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Jonathon In regards to fatting out (my nemesis), is it critical to mix the meat binder with the water? Can it be mixed in dry and separate from the water? I realized that I missed this step in the process and mixed the binder in dry with the meat.
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Jonathon We do Not here except for a few pet treat recipes. Otherwise meat block dictates how much water seasonings ect. All of our Recipes are in Excel forms where you enter the meat block weight and it calculates how much ingredients you add by weight. If there is a way to attach a file Id be glad to share our Base Sheet that anyone could use and modify.
Cabelas90 You would be a superhero if you shared that Excel form!
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@kanevak Yes, on a cured product it can be mixed with the meat and the water added as you go. For a fresh product it is better to add the binder to water (if you are using one, you don’t really need to on a fresh product) because we aren’t wanting to overmix the meat.
Cabelas90 see what happens when you get all noble? I’ll see if there is some way for us to facilitate this but I don’t think there is. @kanevak if you are just looking for he much of seasoning to use per lb of meat we have the Seasoning, Additives and Cures broken out by 1 and 5 lb batches at the bottom of this page
https://meatgistics.waltonsinc.com/category/23/seasonings -
Cabelas90 You would be a superhero if you shared that Excel form!
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@kanevak Yes, on a cured product it can be mixed with the meat and the water added as you go. For a fresh product it is better to add the binder to water (if you are using one, you don’t really need to on a fresh product) because we aren’t wanting to overmix the meat.
Cabelas90 see what happens when you get all noble? I’ll see if there is some way for us to facilitate this but I don’t think there is. @kanevak if you are just looking for he much of seasoning to use per lb of meat we have the Seasoning, Additives and Cures broken out by 1 and 5 lb batches at the bottom of this page
https://meatgistics.waltonsinc.com/category/23/seasonings -
Cabelas90 and lamurscrappy Do either of you count the seasoning and water in the meatblock for wild game or anything else?
Jonathon we do not either. As it works out we end up with xtra meat (snack sticks/summer sausage/etc) that we just give back to the customer and they are xtra happy.
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