Summer sausage help!
-
I made some summer sausage this year. I want some feed back on what may have gone wrong. I’ve made it before using LEM summer sausage seasoning with the Ghost pepper cheese from Walton’s. This time it was waltons H Summer sausage and ghost pepper cheese. I like to mix mine with beer instead of water. It was smoked to 160 internal temp. I made two 25lb batches. It was 80/20 whitetail/feral hog with only the feral hog fat. I like mine to be lean. The summer sausage tastes fine it’s nice and spicy. It looks good upon initial slice. Unfortunately when I slice the whole log and bag it, it’s starts to turn color by the next day! I have eaten some of it and yet to die or get sick!! Can someone please explain to me what I may have done wrong? I doubt there is a big difference between the lem seasoning and Walton’s. They were mixed according to directions stuffed in fibrous casisings and sat in the fridge 24-48 hours prior to smoking. There does not appear to be a difference in either batch. Here are some pictures. 
-
Wierd. It looks like maybe 2 things. That looks like oxidized meat, and it only happening after slice tells me that the color hasn’t been firmly fixed, the myoglobin is oxidizing? and changing to look like meat without cure. So, my guess would be:
- Cure#1 sodium nitrate, probably called Sure Cure by Waltons, was not mixed in thoroughly. Looks like some areas didn’t get enough cure to fix theor myoglobin color to pink.
–solution, mix the cure1 with a bit of water first, spread it more evenly thru meat. Mix longer and more thoroughly. - Color weakly fixed. Didn’t use a cure accelerator like vitamin c or sodium erythorbate, whose primary use besides reducing cure time, is to fix the cure color so color degradation doesn’t happen. Waltons sells a vitamin C and citric acid accelerator they call hmm… smoked meat stabilizer or something. I don’t like it as you’re adding straight citric acid, which breaks down protein bonding and is whole reason folks use encapsulated citric acid ECA. But in any case, Marianski says primary use of accelerators commercially is good color fixing.
Just my two guesses, hope that helps? At least you say it tastes good, I just would leave whole until eating then eat quickly before color turn
- Cure#1 sodium nitrate, probably called Sure Cure by Waltons, was not mixed in thoroughly. Looks like some areas didn’t get enough cure to fix theor myoglobin color to pink.
-
I made some summer sausage this year. I want some feed back on what may have gone wrong. I’ve made it before using LEM summer sausage seasoning with the Ghost pepper cheese from Walton’s. This time it was waltons H Summer sausage and ghost pepper cheese. I like to mix mine with beer instead of water. It was smoked to 160 internal temp. I made two 25lb batches. It was 80/20 whitetail/feral hog with only the feral hog fat. I like mine to be lean. The summer sausage tastes fine it’s nice and spicy. It looks good upon initial slice. Unfortunately when I slice the whole log and bag it, it’s starts to turn color by the next day! I have eaten some of it and yet to die or get sick!! Can someone please explain to me what I may have done wrong? I doubt there is a big difference between the lem seasoning and Walton’s. They were mixed according to directions stuffed in fibrous casisings and sat in the fridge 24-48 hours prior to smoking. There does not appear to be a difference in either batch. Here are some pictures. 
Hello! It looks like you're interested in this conversation, but you don't have an account yet.
Getting fed up of having to scroll through the same posts each visit? When you register for an account, you'll always come back to exactly where you were before, and choose to be notified of new replies (either via email, or push notification). You'll also be able to save bookmarks and upvote posts to show your appreciation to other community members.
With your input, this post could be even better 💗
Register LoginSponsored By:
