Home Made Sausage, Cured, and Smoked Meats - Page 7

Thanks. But I'm sure a lot of sausage gets handled in dorm rooms.

So I had some time to kill between getting ready for tonight and some unpacking and laundry. What to do? Well, how about making Thuringer sausage? It's a multi-stage process, so I just completed the first stage. Four pounds of pork butt ground coarse, 1 pound of back fat cubed, several spices (lots of coriander) and something called "Fermento." It's a milk product that will give the finished sausage that tangy lactic flavour that dry cured salumni. So here it is, the meat ground, back fat diced, and the spices and Femento mixed in. I packed it tightly to eliminate air pockets and covered it in plastic. It will sit in the fridge for three days until I start the second stage.



Stay tuned.

Making another rasher of bacon. It's a 3# pork belly. As you can see, I had to trim it to fit into the freezer bag. 50 grams of Ruhlman's basic cure, five cloves mashed garlic, four crushed peppers (my wife grew), four crushed bay leaves, several juniper berries and peppercorns crushed. A week in the fridge, flipping it everyday, then smoke it next weekend. I think I'll use hickory this time and do it in my big smoker vs. the stove top one.

If you ever want to buy, I'll provide the links. The sausage stuff is pretty affordable and stores easily.

Okay, so just chillin' out tonight after a pretty packed last two weeks. So what's a guy to do on a Saturday night when he wants to relax? That's right. Play with his sausage! This is my attempt at thuringer. I actually had to do it tonight, as I need to let it hang at room temp for 10 hours before smoking. I squirm at the thought of letting raw meat hang at room temp, but I have a teaspoon of "pink salt" in the mix, preventing nasty bugs from growing. Tomorrow morning, around 6a, I'll be packing it into the smoker for two hours of cold smoking, then bring it up slowly to an internal temp of 150. It will be getting smoked the whole time, which should take about five hours.

Finally done. Several hours in the smoker, after a 10 hour hang at room temp. God, I hope my sodium nitrite does its job! Here they are about to get put into an ice bath for chilling. I also kept one out, lightly caramelized the outside, and tried out. Great texture, unctuous, nicely smokey and spicy. Got the natural casing just right. It snapped as my incisors bit though it, just like Ruhlman describes in his book. Natural casing ftw.

My smoker, as wonderful as it is, just is not cut out for smoking home made sausage. It has two major problems. First, it doesn't have enough room to hand links properly. This I've been overcoming by merely laying them on the shelves. Not a big deal, I could live with that. However, it just doesn't want to make smoke at low temps. About 180 is where it starts to make good smoke. This is great for ribs, brisket...basically, everything but smoke curing sausages.

So, I think when my tax return comes in, I'm buying this: