I’m a home processor and I made summer sausage today and had a huge fat out issue. We thought we had good protein extraction, is there any other reason why that happened?

Also the meat is a grayish color, any ideas why?

Thank you, I can’t believe we made that mistake. I just talked to my processing partner and we forgot the cure. We use the sure gel and the encapsulated citric acid but we forgot the cure. Is it safe to eat if we got it to 160 degrees?

Is it normal for summer sausage to take 12 hours to cook?

I made 25 lbs of venison and beef summer sausage this weekend and it took 12 hours to get to 160.

We followed the suggestion on Walton’s for the first 6 hours, 125(no humidity), 140, and 155 for an hour and 175 until done. At hour 8 we turned up the smoker to 185/190 to try and get them done. We stalled from 150 to 155 for a few hours.

Is this normal?