New to Collagen

[jdkeller]

I have used natural casings in the past…mostly for brats, but I am new to using collagen casings. I have seen most every u-tube video but none of them are very helpful. I could use any helpful advice when it comes to collagen casings…I’m not even sure if I purchased the correct ones for my project, which is Andouille sausage. I bought Walton’s 32mm Smoke Collagen casings…

[Jonathon]

jdkeller Yes, that’s about the right size for making Andouille Sausage as long as you are planning on smoking them. The best thing about collagen is that you dont have any prep work to do like you would with natural casings, you simply take them out of the package, put them on the stuffing tube and you are good to go!

One thing to be away of though is that the collagen casings will not hold a twist like natural hog or sheep casings will. For me, this trade off is worth it as they are so much simpler to use. I also prefer the bite of collagen compared to natural casings. Let us know if you need anything else!

[Parksider]

If you really want to keep the twists we use small zip ties. Don’t seem to be an issue in the smoker we’ve used them for years and we like the linked look so that’s the simplest way to keep them. We used to tie with butcher string but that seemed to take forever. I know we’ll get some comments about the plastic but it works and I haven’t started sprouting an extra arm or anything so we go with it…And its a good way to color code hot=red, mild=green, cheese=yellow.