How Much Water?

[sfishy]

How Much water do you use with Carrot fiber when making summer sausage , using the H Summer seasonings?

[rjsenk]

I don’t know what the “official” answer would be, but I just recently made 25 lbs of andouille sausage (from scratch) in 5 lbs batches as I am mixing by hand. I ended up putting all of my seasonings + binder in a bowl and added 1.5 cups of ice water and mixed it all together. I then poured half of the mixture into the meat an mixed thoroughly. Once completely incorporated, I added the rest of the seasoning mix. At some point in the process, I added between .5 and .75 cup of ice water to help with the mixing. I have found that a little extra water doesn’t hurt as it will be cooked off during the smoke period. Not to mention it makes it a little easier to crank through my 3l stuffer. The end result was amazing; by far the best sausage I have ever made. I usually use a soy binder, but the carrot was way easier to work with and I believe the end product was much better. I hope this helps with your question.

[Jonathon]

sfishy what rjsenk says about the extra water is true, it is going to help everything mix together and anything that is not bound up in the meat is going to cook out. The downside of this is that it will most likely increase your cook time. The upside is that mixing and especially stuffing will be extremely easy, that isn’t as important with summer sausage as you are using larger casings but it is a huge help when making snack sticks!

So the minimum I would use is 1 qt if water for 25 lb but I have gone as high as 2 qts when using carrot fiber!

[clubchuck]

I recently made 25 lbs. of H and 25 lbs. of W. I was also using carrot fiber for the first time. After receiving advice about carrot fiber from the Walton’s Community and knowing my goal is a semi-dry sausage I was confident to experiment a little. The H was mixed with 48 0z. of water and 4 oz. of carrot fiber. The W was mixed with 36 oz. of water and 3 oz. of carrot fiber. I do not notice a significant difference between the two, both have a good bind and great texture. Hope this helps.