We have a long established BBQ thread, so I figured a thread dedicated to the art of sausage making would be fun as well. Any and all sausages welcome.

I'll start with my Kabanosy. A Polish Slim Jim if you will, only about 10X better. I first discovered them in Celina's Polish deli in Chicago and every time I go back there I bring home about 20 pounds of it. I've come up with a dang good recipe for them and they turned out great this time.

First, get yourself a good fatty butt, cut it up, and mix in your spices.

Grind 'em up in the behemoth machine that could grind up a live yak in no time flat.

The white stuff on top is ice run through at the end to clear out the extra meat. A trick I learned from a buddy. Works great.

Mush it all together, stuff in 18-22 sheep casings. I buy mine from Syracuse casings in, yep, Syracuse. High quality, good prices, fast shipping, and the best casings I've found. Almost never a blowout.

Let them hang to dry for an hour or two. I put these next to a fan for about an hour.

Then smoke with your choice of wood. I used oak in my Bradley this time and it turned out wonderful. 140 for an hour, 150 for an hour, 160 for an hour, and 170 to bring it up to 155. Cooled with a cold water spray and left to hang out in the garage for a few days to dry out.

The finished product:


Very tasty indeed. Not quite as good as Celina's kabanosy (I suspect they use a lot of MSG that I try to avoid), but really good.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Gustofer,

Thanks for sharing. That looks great.

I have 3-4 pigs I will be harvesting this fall. It will be my first time and will probably be making a bunch of sausage.

quote:

Originally posted by dar185:
It will be my first time and will probably be making a bunch of sausage.

I enjoy making sausage. It's fun and frustrating at the same time. It's taken me awhile but I finally have breakfast sausage, Italian sausage, kielbasa (FINALLY figured that one out), bratwurst, and these kabanosy down. My recipes don't appeal to everyone (although most of the folks I've shared them with really like them), I like the flavors and that's what's important.

I have a fairly good summer sausage recipe as well, but it's just missing...something, and I can't figure it out. I'll get it eventually.

The best advice I can give is to start off small with 1-2 lbs at a time. That way you don't waste a bunch of meat when it doesn't turn out.

Looks good! Are you using pink salt AKA Prague Powder to eliminate the botulism risk?

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
Looks good! Are you using pink salt AKA Prague Powder to eliminate the botulism risk?

Yep. 1 tsp/5#. That and cooking/smoking to 155F takes care of the bugs. At least it has so far.

I took a marvelous Charcuterie class a couple years ago. Of the 4 different samples we built that night, 3 of them turned out dang good, & the 4th one had some kind of obvious error during curing a week, that I was afraid to actually try eating it.

I was all excited waiting for the next class, but the old guy retired & closed down his shop.

I've still got a couple books & a marvelous nearly unused 1/2 horse power Cabella meat grinder.

Never did find my old Italian sausage recipe, but came up with one that is every bit as good. Looking forward to sausage and peppers.

I had never heard the word, “charcuterie” until a couple years ago from my SIL. Now it appears to be something other than what I thought it was: a board with meats, cheeses, etc. served to guests. How do you define it, Gus?

I was always told it was just a fancy way of saying sausage making.

I guess I have a different understanding of Charcuterie. When I saw the title, I thought I'd be seeing pictures of those boards with cheese and salami and stuff.

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:
I guess I have a different understanding of Charcuterie. When I saw the title, I thought I'd be seeing pictures of those boards with cheese and salami and stuff.

You're not wrong, most people recognize it for a deli board of various meats, cheeses, nuts, fruit, bread. Charcuterie is French for a variety of prepared meat methods: sausages, air dried, cured, confits, terrines, etc. A knowledgeable and professional butcher should know how to do a variety of these techniques. If anything, it's another business channel beyond just selling cuts.
I once ordered a Benton's Cured Ham, my sister took to calling it American Charcuterie or, American Jamon as everyone sliced into it

when I was in the meat biz, we made a lot of sausage,
using a yuge Hobart mixer/grinder and did 50 lbs at a time,
decent stuff for store bought mix,

my MIL lives in farm country, we get a few lbs of breakfast sausage from someone she knows each year, beats storebought as well

quote:

Originally posted by lyman:
...beats storebought as well

Yep. Much better for you (if that's possible with sausage ) with no preservatives and other crap they put in. It is tough to beat the taste of some of the store-bought stuff, though. That's part of what makes it a fun hobby - tinkering around with spices and/or smokes to get that flavor that you really like without adding a ton of MSG.

So My oldest daughter and I decided to start making our own venison summer sausage during a trip back from hunting. She looked up seasoning and what we needed and we gave it a go. I'm sold on doing it yourself as it is way better than our processor does. At least what we think and those that have tried it think. We do cheat some as we use the ground venison that we get back from processor and buy between 1.5 2 lbs of ground pork to make our mix but it is good. We Also just tried making Cajun cheddar sausage that came out excellent. Don't have pictures of that process just end results. We're getting our supplies from The Sausage Maker for now and the sausage stuffer I ordered off of Amazon and it is great.








Cajun cheddar sausage after smoking some ribs ended more hot smoking them than just smoking and used cure #1 for both summer and Cajun


Hray

Very nice! I struggled with summer sausage for a long time as I don't have a fermenting chamber to really do it right. I've come up with a jalapeno/cheddar one that is pretty good though even if not fermented appropriately. Just did another batch of kabanosy that's hanging out in the shop drying now and should be good to go by tomorrow.

This guy has some really good recipes if you're feeling adventurous: Taste of Artisan

Could you please share your kabanosy recipe please
Thanks

quote:

Originally posted by scsigs:
Could you please share your kabanosy recipe please
Thanks

5# pork butt
1 tsp Prague powder
5 tsp salt
4 tsp pepper
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp caraway seed
2 tsp sugar
1 cup cold water
1/2 tsp cayenne
1 tsp Accent (MSG)...optional.

Grind meat fine, and mix in spices well. Then mix some more.

Stuff in 18-20mm sheep casings and allow to dry. I hang them in the smoker at about 120F without smoke for this.

Then heavy smoke (I've been using hickory lately) at 140F for two hours. You can finish them in the smoker by slowly increasing the temp (150-160-170) to an internal temp of 154F, but I've found it unpredictable, so I remove them from the smoker and poach them to 154F. I have a large low country boil type pot that I use for this and bring the water to 165F and turn off the heat. I drop the sticks in and it takes about 5 minutes to get them up to temp and they're all even. Then, I remove them, spray with cold water to stop the cooking, and hang them out in the shop for a few days at roughly 50F until they dry.

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:
I guess I have a different understanding of Charcuterie. When I saw the title, I thought I'd be seeing pictures of those boards with cheese and salami and stuff.

Charcuterie is French for I want to make a sandwich, but I don't have any bread.
Rod

I'll jump in here, humbly ask for some help from you guys, and also ask for other good forums/resources you've found to help y'all along the way with this.

We lived in TX for a number of years and while there I was on a relentless pursuit of making proper brisket. I've gotten there, but what I did NOT take the time to fully appreciate or develop was the same skills with regard to sausage. For those of you who've been you know that TX style sausage is incredible and a worthy contender to the world of brisket there.

So, now I decided to give this a go and see if I can figure it out. Only sausage experience is wife's family tradition of holiday Italian sausage which is nothing but ground beef plus pork or breakfast sausage plus some fennel and other seasoning. Stuffed, not smoked, generally cooked on stovetop. Nice tradition but hardly real sausage.

This past weekend was my first attempt at proper TX sausage. Starting point was the basic recipe from Chud, who I've been following for some time. Link here to video. Standard recipe with 70/30 meat fat ratio, I split brisket and pork butt for this, plus seasoning, curing salt, milk powder binder and some liquid.

Other than texture being too grainy, not as juicy as needed and seasoning underwhelming it was fine. IOW useless.

I ran nearly frozen cut up meat through coarse grinder once, mixed in everything else by hand, chilled again, stuffed natural casings pretty plump. Refrigerated on racks for about 18 hours, then smoked.

I didn't have a cold smoke setup so instead used a BGE set as low as I could get it, but that's still in the 180-190 range. Smoked/cooked about 2.5 hours and they were already at 165-170 so pulled off, chilled. Warmed one back up and it was underwhelming as noted above.

I'll add a pic below, but I'm not sure where all I went wrong on this. Possibly overcooked initially or on reheat? Is the outcome solely a result of not slow smoking these and I need to do that next time, or is there something else y'all can offer as a suggestion to improve this.

As pic shows, this has little texture like you want in this style sausage. I can fix the seasoning, but the rest is a mystery.



All pics

Georgeair, I'm guessing your sausages cooked too hot and rendered the fat. The temp really needs to be under 150 or so and maybe bump up towards 170 towards the end to fully cook.