How to Make Homemade Summer Sausage - Recipe
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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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When do you the Carrot Fiber binding, do you mix it in when making the sausage or right before you case them?
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Robert Newsome You mix it in with the rest of the seasoning and any other additives aside from Encapsulated Citric Acid or cheese (last 60 seconds) or if you are making a brine and using Cold Phosphate (has got to be dissolved in the water first)
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So, I followed the directions to what I thought were a ‘T’, ingredients ( I did sub out for carrot fiber vs the Sure Gel), temperature schedule, the whole thing. Using 80% venison, 20% pork fat a couple of things happened. First, There was a lot of fat rendering, and that led to some loss of volume. I was kind of surprised, the sausage was not adhering to the casing. Second, was the water intrusion during the ice bath. I actually used bagged ice because I had an issue the last time when I made meat sticks, they were waterlogged. So, I put everything in an ice cube bath (no water), for 10 minutes or so, and when it was said and done, I had what I could only call a substantial amount of water inside the casing. The water would have come from the ice melting of course. I hung the sausages from a dowel in my refrigerator for a few days, hoping they would dry out some. I think they have that this point, and the casing seems to have shrunk now, but I am not sure if the sausage has adhered now. Overall the taste is good, consistency is about right, the ECA is a little over powering to me, I would skip that and just let them rest overnight.
Next ice bath gets some sort of a bag or something in between the product and the ice. Waterlogged twice now and mildly infuriated.
Is losing all that fat normal? My final casings looked nothing like the pictures in the recipe.
ihang10 said in How to Make Homemade Summer Sausage - Recipe:
I did sub out for carrot fiber vs the Sure Gel
This might be part of your problem. Unless you have an allergy issue, try using Sure Gel. You’re going to get much better extraction, and that will help with both your fat-out problem and the casing adhering.
Something else to try is to start cooking at around 110F for a good hour or so before moving on to 125F and then stretching out the schedule from there. I did that with my last batch of Summer sausage (pork & beef) and was VERY happy with the results. I don’t have my notes in front of me, but I believe I had steps at 110, 125, 140, 150, 160, 175, and then I finished them in sous vide. The whole cook was close to 14 hours. There was significant weight loss, but it wasn’t from fat-out. There really wasn’t any fat-out to speak of.
I didn’t package them when I put them in the sous vide (which took about 30 minutes), and they were in the water bath for about 10 minutes, and I had no significant water inside the casings. I did let them sit out on a rack at room temperature with a gentle fan on them to dry out the casings a bit before vac-packing them, and that also turned out well.
That’s about the only things I can come up with
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