What Is Summer Sausage?

Summer Sausage is a semi-dried sausage that is typically stuffed into a larger diameter fibrous casing. It can be made from beef, pork, wild game or some combination of meat. Some people are intimidated by making it but the most basic steps can be done by almost any home processor.

Meat Block

10 lb of Untrimmed Pork Butts
1 Bag of H-Summer Sausage
1 oz of Sure Cure (Included with purchase)

Equipment

Walton’s #12 Meat Grinder
Walton’s 20 lb Meat Mixer
Walton’s 11 lb Sausage Stuffer

Casing Preparation

Before you begin processing take your casings out of the package and soak in warm water for an hour to make them pliable for stuffing so do this early enough in the process to prevent any delays later.

Process

The first thing you need to do is to grind your meat. Make sure you have oiled your plates and knives before starting your grinder. You will want to grind the meat twice, the first grind should be through a 3/8 plate and then with a 1/8 plate. Remember to keep your meat cold through this process. You can also simply purchase ground pork, it is readily available just make sure you aren’t buying lean pork, you want and need the fat.

Meat Mixing

Next, you need to mix the seasoning and cure into your meat. To do this you can either use a meat mixer or do it by hand. Because this is a product that we are going to cure and smoke we need to achieve a high level of protein extraction so doing this with your hands is difficult but can be done. When using a mixer add the meat to the mixer, then the seasoning and cure and finally the water, you will want to mix in both directions until all seasoning and cure has been mixed in and you have good protein extraction. You will know that a good level of protein extraction has been achieved when the meat is sticky and tacky if you can pull a handful of it apart and it stretches that is a good sign.

Sausage Stuffing

Next, choose the largest stuffing tube that your casings will fit over and begin stuffing. Stuff until the casings are full and smooth but leave yourself enough room on the end to close with a hog ring. To close with a hog ring twist the end and then put a hog ring over the twist and crimp it down.

Note

When you are done stuffing the product has to be held in the refrigerator overnight to allow the cure time to work. If you added Encapsulated Citric Acid or other cure accelerators you skip this step.

Thermal Processing & Smoking

Set up your smoker and hang your sausage on smoke sticks or lay on racks and smoke at
125F for 1 hour
140F for 1 hour
155F for 2 hours
175F until internal meat temp of 160F

When they have reached 160° internal temperature remove from the smoker and put them in an ice bath to bring the heat down and help set the casing.

Cooling

Lastly, leave them out at room temperature for about an hour before vacuum packing them, this will ensure you don’t get additional moisture in the vacuum bag which would affect the shelf life of your meats.

Wrap up

In later classes, we will go over these and more advanced steps in greater detail for making Snack Sticks.

Other Notes

Depending on your pH and your Water Activity your sticks might be shelf stable but without a way to test this you should vacuum pack and refrigerate these.

Watch WaltonsTV: Basics For Making Summer Sausage

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