My friend uses UMAI and they make for an easy and consistent way to make charcuterie. Probably safer too. Most recipes you find use sodium nitrate (pink curing salt #2) to protect from bad things. There are books on charcuterie you can read, but I never bought any yet. I found a lot of good teaching info on the internet and recipes too. I usually make soppresat and chorizo. We are making lanjaeger and metworst this year after my friend made some smaller batch and it was great. YooperDog and banger king are right in that using a controlled system is better to get good results. I have made a few batches hanging in my garage in the winter. That usually is fine for temperature but I the humidity is uncontrollable. Also, most recipes ferment the sausage before drying/curing. Don’t be afraid to to hang the sausage at room temperature for the period of time the recipe calls for (usually a half a day to a day). Fermenting is also tricky. To do it right people use an instrument to measure the pH to tell when the fermentation is right. Last year I made Chorizo and I over fermented. It had the consistency and sour taste of pepperoni. They were rock hard. Oh and if you decide to use casings Waltons has 2.4x12" salami casings that are pre cut and have a string on one end. They are really nice for this. Good luck!

We make it differently and don’t have problems. What we do is stuff them in the fibrous. Then we cold smoke them in a smoke house (it is like an old wooden shed on the farm that breathes a lot and is not insulated). Then we cook them in a kettle with water. Then they hang a bit to dry. Into the vacuum seal bags and freezer. When they thaw out the fibrous casing is usually loose and comes right off. With this method I think you get a lot more moisture into the product though. I should mention that we don’t use a commercial spice/cure mix. We have our own recipe and we use tender quick to cure.

I am curious for this too. I really don’t want to invest in a linker. I made them once before and manually twisted links and had some success. I thought about just stuffing them all through and then come back and tie off with twine. Also a pain but might be easier than trying to twist link.

I was just putting my meat block together as well. Last year I made snack sticks for the first time and I thought they were awesome. I used 19# venison, 3# shoulder and 3# back fat. It was more meatier but with the high fat still moist. Based on my calculations this is about 70% lean meat, but it would depend on how trimmed your venison is.

What I need help with is I am going to purchase a new stuffer. This old thing from the farm that we have just doesn’t cut stuffing anything that has a lot of binding or goes through small tubes. I would really like a motor driven. Anyone have a suggestion?

Re: Toile Paper Shortage

I will tell you one thing. I am mighty happy with all the charcuterie and frozen meat I made back in January! Here is my emergency food supply I keep on the ready in the fridge, daily! Priorities.

I am interested in this thread. Every year we cure our bacon in submersion and then cold smoke in the smokehouse. Since we do this typically in February, the smokehouse is really cold. I suspect it is only 10 or 20 degrees above ambient, so we are talking 30-50F. We also smoke the bacon in the smokehouse over a period of maybe 2 days (not smoking all the time as the “fire” goes out). I am talking a smokehouse constructed of barn board and fairly open air flow to the environment.

This year I decided I wanted to cure my on slab because I wanted to try a different recipe with spices and sugar in the cure. I smoked mine for about 3 hours in my pellet grill, with the grill off, and using one those smoke tubes and pellets.

The product turned out fine, but I noticed that the bacon is different than when smoking at low temperature with thermal processing. It seems more pungent and strong. I was expecting to have to smoke the bacon maybe 3 times at 3 hours a piece, but given how strong it was after one session I stopped there.

Is there a difference in the quality of smoke with cold smoke vs. warm smoke? I seem to recall people saying when cooking with smoker you want to wait until the quality of smoke gets better at higher temperature. If I smoked the bacon at higher temperature like thermal processing would I get a better result?

Jonathon Thawed a pack tonight and threw on GMG. Held up nice. I had request to make them crispy.

I guess heat up. My father in law makes ours and he cold smokes in smokehouse then cooks them in water in a kettle. They are pretty good but the casings separate and they don’t have as nice of color as yours.

twilliams looks real good! How did you cook?

We store casings for several years packed in salt in freezer.

Jonathon the consistency was very good. My problem is the “100 yr old” stuffer and the really small stuffing tube just didn’t work. The product would just push up around the plate. When I tried to add more water thinking it would help it just got worse. I think if I had better equipment in this case it would have made the difference. On a positive note the stuffer did the job to press lard and we had some nice cracklins to eat!!

Half-a$$ hot dogs. Let’s just say it was a real learning experience. Meat sticks were easy compared to these suckers.

Well hot dogs are stuffed. Everything went well until I tried to stuff into 26 mm casing. Ground once on 3/8 then twice on 1/8 plate and mixes by hand twice in between. Left meat in tote outside between grindings and before stuffing to get cold. That old Enterprise stuffer would not push through the tiny stuffing tube.

So had to resort to hog casings. Guess I will have 1/4 lb hot dogs!! At least I got them in casings.

It was a learning experience. I need a better stuffer and a meat mixer.

skibumben man they look good!!! I just finished half of my soppressat today. They looked good but I didn’t eat. I have about 10 lb left after that. Without a nice chamber the drying is not as consistent.

Now that I am trying to make more complicated and precise meat products, I am beginning to realize my meat processing tools are lacking. Time for researching some upgrades. I am talking about measurement devices. I actually on have a digital scale and the one I have is basically crap. Anyone have any favorites of the following:

• Digital scale

• pH meter

• compact digital hand held temperature probe?

Appreciate the responses!

NDKoze Curious how your maple sausage turned out. I am making a batch 2 weeks from now. I bought a lb of ground pork and will be testing a couple recipes tomorrow for breakfast. Most recipes I found call for about 5-10% maple syrup to 100% meat weight. Jonathon gave 2.5oz to 5 lb which is about 3%. I have a couple test patties as low as about 6% and as high as 18%. So we will see what kind of sweetness and maple flavor I get.

NDKoze will to share your recipe? Next time I will keep in mind the Excalibur.

skibumben I just finished my 10# of Chorizo, but I don’t have a nice curing chamber. Hang them in the garage - old school. Can you somehow describe the chamber or send me a message with some kind of link. I would like to check one of those out. I had grand plans 2 years ago to make one out of a fridge. Bought humidity and temperature controllers. Do you control all of that (humidifier, dehumidifier, heat, etc?)? Also, just curious if you would share, what temp and humidity profile do you like to use? Fermentation chamber? (I used a new clean tote, couple adjustable curtin rods I have for hanging, hung them in tote, set next to pellet fire place in basement for 24 hours). Sorry to bug you but i am trying to learn as much about charcuterie as I can.

Joe Hell So last weekend I took finished my spanish dry chorizo. I had been weighing them and they were at 37-41% weight loss. I noticed these guys were much stiffer than my soppresat since the first day after fermentation. So I suspected the pH was pretty low and I had a full fermentation.

I gave them a nice little bath in some spanish red wine, let them air dry, wiped them with olive oil and vacuum sealed them. I sampled one and they came out pretty nice. They definitely had the tang from low pH acidity.

One negative I noticed they were kind of “crumbly” is the best word to describe. I don’t know if that is because the acidity was too high, I didn’t get enough protein extraction or if it was something to do with the fat content, or some combination of these factors. They still seem to slice okay. It won’t stop me from eating them! Jonathon do you have any ideas about the “crumbly” characteristics.

Some pictures for you. I definitely recommend using the imported spanish smoked paprika and putting some heat (you can use the picante paprika or your favorite ground hot pepper).

So the only way to make links is to use natural or cellulose casings, correct?

Njlungbuster I couldn’t get the post to work. Trying to upload picture of recipe.