New sausage strategy

[PurpleFloyd]

So up to now I have been struggling with finding the time to thaw the proper amount of venison,pork and beef to make summer sausage and snack sticks. I end up with batches that are too big to manage with the time and equipment that I have and it always puts too much stress on getting it done right and on time.

I have decided to build a bigger smoker so that when I do have time to smoke bigger batches that I have the capacity that my 40" masterbuilt lacks. But I came up with a simple solution to give me more flexibility to do smaller batches faster. The other night I gathered all the packages of Venison and beef that I had, weighed it and it came to 66 pounds of venison and 33 pounds of beef trimmings from a 1/4 that I had the butcher package in bulk rather than grind into burgers. This was the perfect 2/3-1/3 ratio I use anyway. So I ground the venison through the coarse then fine plate and put it in a tub and put it on one side of my digital scale then did the same with the beef and put it on the other side of the scale. I then zero'd a large pot on the scale and added 6.6 lbs of venison then added beef until it hit 10lbs on the dot. ( If you do sausagebut don't have a digital scale I highly recommend it.) then my better half got out the vacuum sealer and we sealed 9 bags of pre ground meat plus one 5 lb bag after shrinkage. 

So now when I want to make a batch all I need to do is pull a bag or two out of the freezer, thaw and then throw it in the mixing tub, add seasonings, binder, cure, water and throw it in the mixer and from there right into the stuffer. After this coming deer season I am going to buy beef in advance and grind and freeze that the same way on day one so it's neat and organized. 

I am also ordering a bunch of 10lb mixes of Curleys seasonings as well to experiment with different things.I am getting:

Chili Hot Dog  mix

Jalapeno summer sausage

Summer sausage

Teriyaki stix

Cody's snack sticks

Tex Mex sticks

Polish Sausage mix

and Old fashioned Wiener mix.

 

I am going to use 12" 1 lb mahogany casings for the summer sausage, 21mm collagen casings for the snack sticks and 24mm clear collagen casings for the hot dogs and polish sausage

[Jim Almquist]

I like the 3lb chubs for Summer Sausage. The Polish and the Old Fashion Wiener mix are great. I mix the Wieners  into brat casings.

[PurpleFloyd]

I am partial to the longer casings as well but for now they are too long to hang in the smoker plus they throw off the 10 pound batch ratio as well. The bigger smoker will give me the ability to use those in the future. 

[ThunderLund78]

Great idea, Purple!!!  I've done the Chili Dogs and Cody Sticks from Curley's.  Both are excellent!

[PurpleFloyd]

To go with my pre packaged pre ground meat, I spent the early part of the day today taking the seasonings that I bought in bulk and repackaging them into portions that sync with my meat portions.  

This should keep me busy for a while. I ended up ordering from Walton's instead of curly's after looking over the cost/ availability. 

So now I have an assortment that includes

Summer sausage with encapsulated citric acid

2 types of snack sticks

Bacon

Polish sausage

Pepperoni

2 types of Jerky

And pork sausage.

The only thing missing yet is I want to try the chili dog seasoned in collagen casings.

Diet, what diet.

[bobberineyes]

Dang right that'll keep you busy. Good thing it's bird chasing season soon to chew on and walk off. Looking good pf!!

[PurpleFloyd]

I did my first batch of venison sausage today and it worked slick. I had 20 lbs thawed and ready to go this morning and whipped up a batch of Waltons Tons sausage recipe. From the time I took it out of the fridge until it went in the smoker it was like 45 minutes to set up, mix and stuff. I think this is going to work great.

I also found an old round top refrigerator down the street that I can have for free to convert into a cold smoker.

On this batch I used encapsulated Citric acid which is a first so we will see how that works out after I let it freeze and set up

[ThunderLund78]

Have fun with that smoker build, Purple. Building mine was one of the most fun and rewarding projects I've ever worked on. Don't forget to give it a clever name