Problems with smoked Kielbasa

[bigdave]

Problems with cured sausage Kielbasa

turned out very dry cold smoked 8 hrs hot water bath till 155 very firm and dry inside should not have cold smoked?? warm smoke? 10# 2 cups water 1# back fat 5# pork butt 4# chuck FIRST TIME WITH SMOKED SAUSAGE AND CURE #1

[bigdave]

bigdave said in Problems with smoked Kielbasa:

Problems with cured sausage Kielbasa

turned out very dry cold smoked 8 hrs hot water bath till 155 very firm and dry inside should not have cold smoked?? warm smoke? 10# 2 cups water 1# back fat 5# pork butt 4# chuck FIRST TIME WITH SMOKED SAUSAGE AND CURE #1 help what did i do wrong new to making sausage

[Jonathon]

bigdave I wouldn’t have cold smoked it first, I would have gone with the smoke schedule in our Homemade Smoked Kielbasa recipe but I also don’t think that is what caused your issues.

Can you give us some more information on your process? How long did you mix it, did it get good protein extraction? Did you vac seal it before you put it in the water? My thought is that by just cold smoking it and then putting it into the hot water it might have fatted out but as it was in the water it wouldn’t have been obvious. if you vac bagged them first you would have seen a lot of liquid in the bag when they were done, if you didn’t then you might not have had a way to see it other than really greasy looking water.

What seasoning did you use?

[bigdave]

OK we will give you all the info i can
recipe
5# pork butt
4# ground chuck
1#pork back fat
4 TBS kosher salt
1 TBS black pepper
2 TBS Spanish paprika
3 TBS chopped garlic
11/2 of dried Marjoram
2 TBS white sugar
1 1/2 each of the following
All ground thyme - celery seed-coriander- nutmeg
2 tsp instacure
1 1/2 cups dry none fat milk powder ground fine
2 cups ice water
Ground all meat through 3/8 plate
all meat was ice cold and mixed very well and very sticky so good extraction
stuffed in to 36 to 38 pork casings
smoked i guess 4 to 5 hour cold smoke till color was good smoker never got over 70 degrees removed to 180 water for 10 to 15 mins till it hit 155 temp no fat in water plunged in to sink of ice water
bagged one day in fridge
grilled slowly till 160 degrees
Was very dry and not much flavor was nice and wet at stuffing went right out of suffer in to cases no idea what went wrong first time doing cured sausage recipe sounded good only thing i can think of was cold smoking to long i like smoke taste thank for your time Dave

[bigdave]

Sorry second grind through 3/16 plate

[Jonathon]

bigdave I can’t speak as to if the issue was your seasoning as we use prepackaged seasoning but everything else you did (including grinding, mixing, cooking, cooling packaging and even heating it back up slowly) seems good to me. I am sorry, you gave me all the information I could have asked for and I was hoping to see something I could point to and say “ah ha!” but it all looks good to me. I wanted to check the water but 1 cup is about 8 oz to 2 cups would be about 1 lb of water which is perfectly fine for 10 lb, even a tad higher than normal so thats not it.

The only thing that seems odd is the long period of cold smoking, which you had already identified.

[bigdave]

Well thank you for the look at my problem next time try to cook in the smoker with your cooking schedule for smoker i don’t think i can run my smoker below 150 and keep it making smoke! time will tell time to run some test’s on min temps on it
thanks again Dave