How to Make Homemade Summer Sausage - Recipe
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How To Make Homemade Summer Sausage
Learn how to make homemade summer sausage with Walton's and Meatgistics. Read the guide, and then post your questions or comments below.
What Is Summer Sausage?
Summer Sausage is a semi-dried sausage that is typically stuffed into a larger diameter casing, like fibrous sausage casings. Most summer sausage has a low pH, which gives it that familiar tangy flavor. pH values can range from 4.5 to 5.2, and this also helps aid in shelf-stability. Besides pH, water activity can also help determine whether a product is truly shelf-stable or not, which means in summer sausage we need to bind water in the meat snacks and make it unavailable for microbial growth. Water activity is not something that can be measured by a home meat processor, but we still setup our process and thermal processing to attempt to achieve a lower water activity. Summer Sausage can be made using a variety of meats and anything like wild game or venison, beef, pork, poultry, or a combination of meats. Walton’s recommends using a lean to fat ratio of at least 80/20, and many times a 30% fat ratio, with a maximum of 40% fat. Fat is where most of your flavor comes from so changing your lean to fat ratio will change the overall taste and mouthfeel of your product.
Meat Block
25 lb 80/20 beef trim (or 20 lb wild game and 5 lb pork fat or beef fat, though beef fat will have different texture and taste)
Ingredients
1 package Excalibur Summer Sausage Seasoning
1oz Sure Cure (packet included with seasoning)
6oz Sure Gel Meat Binder
4oz Encapsulated Citric Acid1
2 to 3 lb High Temperature Cheese
2.4 in x 12 in Mahogany Fibrous Sausage Casings
2 Quarts Ice Cold Water
Process
Grind the meat twice. The first grind can be done using a 3/8 in (10mm) grinder plate, and then the second grind should use a 1/8 in (3mm) grinder plate. A sharp grinder knife and plate are key to help you create a better meat snack by helping retain better particle definition, color, and help prevent any smearing of the meat. If you cannot easily distinguish the lean from the fat when grinding, then it may be time for a new grinder plate and knife.
Meat Mixing
A meat mixer is your best option for meat mixing when making summer sausage. We need to not only thoroughly mix the seasoning, spices, and additives into the meat, but we also need to achieve a good protein extraction. Protein extraction is visibly noticeable when the meat starts to get really sticky. What this does is allow the proteins in the meat to bind with water and fat giving your sausage a better consistency and mouth-feel when eating, plus it helps keep it from being crumbly in the final product. Hand mixing is possible, but difficult to achieve the same result as using an actual meat mixer. For the mixing time, we need to mix for a total of around 8 minutes. During the mixing process, reverse the direction of mixing every 1 minute. As soon as you start mixing, you can add all the ingredients except Encapsulated Citric Acid and High Temp Cheese. Those 2 ingredients can be added in the last 45 to 60 seconds, or just long enough to evenly disperse. Over mixing Encapsulated Citric Acid or High Temp Cheese can lead to breaking the encapsulate or smearing the cheese.
Sausage Stuffing
Avoid creating air pockets when you load your sausage stuffer and begin stuffing until the casings are full with a smooth exterior. Remember to leave a little extra on the ends of the fibrous casings so you can twist tight and clip them tightly closed with a pair of hog ring pliers.
Note
(If you do not use a cure accelerator like Encapsulated Citric Acid or Smoked Meat Stabilizer, then hold in a refrigerator for approximately 12 hours or overnight)
Thermal Processing
Either hang on smoke sticks or lay on racks in your smokehouse or oven. Just be sure to leave a slight gap between the Summer Sausages. A simple cooking schedule you can follow is here:
125F for 1 hour
140F for 1 hour
155F for 2 hours
175F until internal meat temp of 160FCooling
To help set the casing to the meat and also prevent wrinkling we need to shower the summer sausage when they are done cooking or put them in an ice water bath. It should only take around 10 to 15 minutes to get the temperature to drop down. Then, we’ll let them set out for about 1 hour at room temperature before moving to the refrigerator/freezer. After we are totally done with the cooling process, then we will package in vacuum pouches for longer term storage.
Wrap up
It’s easy to get started on making a basic version of summer sausage, but practice does make perfect! Walton’s has Everything but the Meat to make fantastic tasting and looking summer sausage. Plus, we have tons of knowledge and assistance if you need it for perfecting your own process. If you have any questions or need help in your process, please share your questions or comments below.
Other Notes
Place a small pan of water in the bottom of smokehouse during entire cooking cycle to help increase humidity
If your smoker, smokehouse, dehydrator, or oven cannot reach temperatures as low as 125F, just start as low as possible and slowly increase the temperature over timeFoot Notes
1. If you do not use a cure accelerator like Encapsulated Citric Acid or Smoked Meat Stabilizer, then after it has been stuffed into its casing hold in a refrigerator for approximately 12 hours or overnight (Return to text)
Shop waltonsinc.com for Summer Sausage Seasonings
Shop waltonsinc.com for Sausage Stuffers
Shop waltonsinc.com for Meat Grinders
I have used an electric smoker for the past 15 years for brisket, ribs, pork butt , fish, and veggies.
This last week I made my first ever batch of summer sausage following the recipe and and supplies from Walton’s. This batch was 20 pounds when finished. Fantastic appearance and taste, I could not be more pleased.
Next up is a 25 pound batch of bulk breakfast sausage to go into 2 pound bags.
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justinslater83 That sounds like a good plan to me but if you dont want to grind twice the fat will be fine going through the 1/8 plate with the deer. The only time I REALLY separate fat from lean and grind the fat through a 3/8 is when the partical definition is important to me, which is rare.
Jonathon I have been making 100-150 lbs of summer sasuage a year and have found that if I course grind the very cold meat first, put it back in the freezer to chill while I put my 1/8" plate in my grinder and grind the cold beef fat 1/8" and then thoroughly mix the fat and meat together then grinding them 1/8 I get better mixing and protein extraction. I then thoroughly mix in all the other ingredients and the Stuff.
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akdave 100% correct. If you have the time between grinds you will benefit from putting it back in the freezer first. There are two temp ranges that protein extraction will occur and I am going to get this somewhat wrong, one is around frozen meat to 40 something degrees and the other is above 65 degrees. Obviously above 65 degrees is useless to us but I would think (again, dont know this and cant prove it ) the closer you are to 30 degrees than 45 the better protein extraction it will provide.
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Is there anything wrong with doing the grind the night before and refrigerating over night? What about adding the seasoning and also doing the mixing the night before? Would the Encapsulated Citric Acid cause something to happen with the meat that I wouldn’t want?
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Is there anything wrong with doing the grind the night before and refrigerating over night? What about adding the seasoning and also doing the mixing the night before? Would the Encapsulated Citric Acid cause something to happen with the meat that I wouldn’t want?
Crawrugger There’s nothing wrong with grinding the night before or actually stuffing the casings the night before, the only concern I would have in your situation would be the Encapsulate citric acid. If I am using that I do everything at once, I don’t hold it overnight, my concern being I don’t want the encapsulate to break while I’m holding it. Jonathon is the man to ask about this as he is way more knowledgeable on the subject than I am.
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Crawrugger There’s nothing wrong with grinding the night before or actually stuffing the casings the night before, the only concern I would have in your situation would be the Encapsulate citric acid. If I am using that I do everything at once, I don’t hold it overnight, my concern being I don’t want the encapsulate to break while I’m holding it. Jonathon is the man to ask about this as he is way more knowledgeable on the subject than I am.
AdamCA I’m getting ready to try a 16-17 lbs venison to 8 lbs pork trim mix this weekend using Waltons H summer sausage seasoning, 4oz of carrot fiber binder, 4oz encapsulated citric acid, 3 lbs high temp cheese, finely chopped jalapeno. So if I do all at once i’ll go with the ECA if I let it refrigerate overnight I can skip that.
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Crawrugger Correct, if you go with Encapsulated Citric Acid you should go right to smoker, if you don’t add ECA then hold it for at least 12 hours. Now, the encapsulation is made from cottonseed oil which shouldn’t break down until it is exposed to temps over 130° for an hour but when you mix it in you often rupture that casings a little, so safest bet is to go right to smoking when using ECA.
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Flavor wise, what does everyone prefer…Summer sausage using the Encapsulated Citric Acid and smoked right away or Summer sausage not using the ECA and refrigerated overnight? I guess I don’t really know what that “tangy” flavor is that is talked about being associated with the ECA.
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Flavor wise, what does everyone prefer…Summer sausage using the Encapsulated Citric Acid and smoked right away or Summer sausage not using the ECA and refrigerated overnight? I guess I don’t really know what that “tangy” flavor is that is talked about being associated with the ECA.
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Crawrugger with summer sausage I prefer encapsulated citric acid because I really like the tang and it allows me to go right from stuffing to smoking. If someone doesn’t like that tang I always recommend that they either hold it or use Smoked Meat Stabilizer or if you have a VERY accurate gram scale use the Sodium Erythorbate.
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I finished making 25 lbs of summer sausage, using 2.4in X 12in Mahogany Fibrous Summer Sausage Casings. For others that are using a conventional oven to make their Summer Sausage I had the oven set at 170 degrees(lowest setting possible) and the cook time was 10 hrs total to reach the 160 degree internal temperature. The final product turned out great!
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Crawrugger So no stepping up? Just started it at 170°? Glad it came out good!
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Crawrugger So no stepping up? Just started it at 170°? Glad it came out good!
Jonathon Yes, with my conventional oven I didn’t have the ability to get any lower than 170 degrees. I just set it and left it. I didn’t preheat at all and had 25- 1lbs summer sausages in there so it took a while to get up to temp but other than that no tricks.
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Also, for those that don’t have the money to spend on a mixer I used a drywall mud mixer connected to a drill to mix 25 lbs of grind in a 5 gallon bucket and it worked great. $10 solution.
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Going to make a smaller batch of the Tons flavor summer sausage. Want to double check my math as all of the conversions are not in the chart.
All of these numbers are per lb of meat block:
1 Tbls seasoning
1.134 grams sure cure
4.5 grams carrot fiber
2 to 2.5 oz water
2.268 grams smoked meat stabilizer -
BrianB Ton’s isn’t on the list because it is only available in 100 lb units so I dont know the volume on it.
Ton’s 0.6 oz per lb
Your sure cure is correct
Carrot fiber is correct
I prefer using 2 to 2.5 lb of water per 25 lb of meat, so that would be 1.28 oz of water. However, with carrot fiber 2 oz of water per lb would be fine. Might take a little longer to cook.
Smoked meat stabilizer correct as well! -
BrianB Ton’s isn’t on the list because it is only available in 100 lb units so I dont know the volume on it.
Ton’s 0.6 oz per lb
Your sure cure is correct
Carrot fiber is correct
I prefer using 2 to 2.5 lb of water per 25 lb of meat, so that would be 1.28 oz of water. However, with carrot fiber 2 oz of water per lb would be fine. Might take a little longer to cook.
Smoked meat stabilizer correct as well! -
BrianB Yes, 2.25 oz of carrot fiber is a lot more than you would expect it to be as that stuff is so light and airy!
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Jonathon, in your Summer Sausage video you put both carrot fiber and ECA in the mix. I know the ECA is to give the tang to the meat but doesn’t it also act as a cure accelerator? Was the carrot fiber also needed to smoke the meat right from the stuffer?
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