Big Mike here from SE Washington. Avid hunter for decades and meat processor for the last 3 years. I kill/process several deer and elk each year making a lot of jerky and sausage. I use a Traeger BBQ and will soon purchase an A-maze-N tube for cold smoking. I’m always mining for new information and recipes!

Hey I made a 10 pound batch of summer sausage using a 70/30 mix of buffalo meat and bacon ends. I tried Walton’s H summer sausage seasoning with 2.5 Tbsp mustard seed thrown in. I stuffed the Walton’s 12” mahogany casings tight and because I didn’t use ECA I refrigerated the sticks overnight. Using a Masterbuilt 30” digital smoker I followed Walton’s guidelines on slowly heating/smoking them. First the good news, they were perfectly cooked from edges to the center and the flavor was so good I will be hard pressed to try anything else! My only issue was in ice bathing the sticks. I got a fair amount of meat shrinkage away from the casings. Any advice would be greatly appreciated! And fear not; I will suffer through eating my “mistakes”.

I soaked the casings for 50 min in warm water, mixed the meat 8 minutes (4 min in each direction) using a mixer then sprinkled the mustard seed in and hand mixed for 2-3 minutes more. I got excellent protein extraction. The sticks were soaked in ice cold water (1/2 ice & 1/2 water) for 30 minutes then patted dry and placed on racks to air dry for one hour. Cases were all nice and tight prior to the ice bath but were wrinkled after the ice bath. Jonathon

Parksider Thanks. I did all that. I stuffed them tight twisted the tops down tight and secured them with twist ties. I’m going out right now to try again. Thanks for the tips!