How to Make Homemade Summer Sausage - Recipe
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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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