Home Made Sausage, Cured, and Smoked Meats

[jcman311]

Since its not steak, Ill poast it here. First try at smoking with my gas weber. Hickory chips and set at around 250F. We’ll see how this turns out.

 

[jcman311]

Cant wait to taste....

Took a little longer than I expected, but it was a first crack at this.

 

[Piobaire]

Bump my first batch of sausage just a few months shy of one decade ago.

Okay, all done. Excellent results for our first try! Btw, I say "our," as this really takes two people to make happen quickly and easily. Okay, so first, grinding the meat I've had seasoning. First time using the grinder, recipe called for fine, works perfectly. All metal items had been in the freezer, and you'll see the bowl I ground into is sitting in ice.

Next, the "primary bind." Added roasted, minced poblano peppers, cilantro, one cup ice cold water. Let mix for one minute or so, until it amalgamates well.

All mixed:

Next, we made a little patty and fried it to check taste. You can always re-mix with more seasoning if needed. It was great, so time to stuff it into the hopper of the sausage stuffer:

Slide several feet of hog casing on, and time to actually make my first sausage:

You can see the hog casings floating in water in the bowl and I think this shot gives a good view of the action. Here's my first full casing. I was packing the meat too tight so the casing burst at one point. No problem, I just filled the rest, squeezed some meat out at the burst, and tied it off and put the meat back into the hopper. You can see the knots. The other two casings filled without incident, as now I have the feel of the thing.

Here's all the sausage, nicely linked. Will sit overnight in the fridge to dry, then will freeze most of it, leaving just enough in the fridge for Monday's dinner

 

[jcman311]

No one comes here anymore.

 

[Texasmade]

No one comes here anymore.

This thread or SF in general?

 

[jcman311]

This thread.

 

[otc]

I admit...my smoker has been languishing on my balcony for probably 2 years now.

The meat grinder and sausage stuffer are also sitting idle. At this point, I suspect my opened package of salted-packed casings are probably also past their usable lifespan. The vacuum packed fatback in the freezer is probably well past how long you are supposed to freeze that stuff for...but I bet it is still OK for sausage.

Keep seeing all-metal kitchenaid attachment grinders pop up on slickdeals and get tempted though. My grinder is a bit too big for small batches. Great if you are cranking out two different 5# batches on the same day...but not ideal for small quantities (both not as effective, and a fair amount of waste that gets stuck in the workings and overworked if you try to force it through). The 5# vertical stuffer would still be too big, but at least you can scoop the waste out of that thing and just use it as loose sausage.

 

[Piobaire]

Caught a buy one, get two free on quality chicken at Whole Paycheque. Grilled/smoked on the Traeger and all vacuum sealed and cooling for the freezer now. Will have a bunch of nice, chopped chicken salads in the next several weeks.

 

[jcman311]

My local grocer had a weird supply for the chicken I used last week. No whole cut up birds (like the bulk package) and I was too lazy to cut up my own bird. Instead, the wife bought the quarters and some boneless skin-on chicken breasts (the breasts were out of the butcher case) I have to say the skin on breasts were amazing and the quarters sucked. Next time smoking I'm just going to use the skin on breasts. Might experiment with other grilling techniques for them as well. (One can always discard the skin later)

 

[Piobaire]

Best chicken skin I've ever had was in Hawaii at a hole in the wall Japanese place for pau hana (happy hour.) Deep fried chicken skins with ice cold Sapporo on tap for $5 is hard to beat in Hawaii.

 

[Piobaire]

Okay, just found another rabbit hole to go down. I hope some of you motherfuckers go down the same hole.

Rusk.

I will make some this fall as I don't do a lot of sausage making in the warm weather.

https://www.thepauperedchef.com/article/homemade-british-bangers-and-the-search-for-rusk

 

[Piobaire]

All the charcuterie I made. Top is duck breast prosciutto, then jalapeno salami, and lastly pork rillettes.

 

[Piobaire]

This is really worth the watch.

 

[erictheobscure]

This is really worth the watch.

i'm not sure what the deal is with olympia provisions. they're fairly prominent in food-related online content. and the guy seems cool enough. but on the handful of occasions i've bought they're stuff, i've been underwhelmed and left wondering why i spent that much money on some okay-tasting cured meat.

 

[beargonefishing]

I never thought I’d need a broiler to cook a fried chiken, but I’ve got one last month, Imperial IRB-36 on https://mcdonaldpaper.com/broilers-charbroilers site. Extremely convenient one. It has two independently controlled burners that have stainless radiants allowing to make awesomely tasting fish and chicken. I tried to make grilled kabobs, but it tasted way different.

So you broil fried chicken?