What went wrong??

[CrappieAttitude]

So my brother in law and I are doing a little field research on creating our own summer sausage and deer sticks. I have a grinder with the stuffer attachments and a smoker and thought what the heck, lets see if we could figure this out ourselves.

So Sunday we are making good progress stuffing everything and putting it into the smoker. Later that evening, thnking that we have allowed enough time to let things cook, my brother in law called me informing me that the stuff was over seasoned and tough as leather.

So needless to say, our first batch wasn't even fit for the dogs. I know that typically when we cook venison, it doesn't take that long, however since we mixed pork as well, we wanted to make sure that we allowed enough time to cook that.

For those of you do it yourselfers, how long do you typically smoke your sticks and summer sausage for?

Any other helpful hints would be very much appreciated.

CA

[CrappieAttitude]

Nobody has any advice in this area???

[Deitz Dittrich]

I know nothing about it.. but I would be willing to bet it would help if you posed the exact recipe and how long and at what temp you cooked at.

I think then the smart people would be able to pick away and tell you what might have gone wrong.

[polarsusd81]

Yeah, without the cook time and temp, it is hard to tell, but generally for smoking you would want the temp to be somewhere from say 180 to 220 at most. My guess is the temp may have been just a bit too high. Low and slow on the smoker.

[LABS4ME]

Most sausage recipes have an exact temperature to smoking duration. As an example, the sticks I did 2 years ago went something like 1 hour at 180 no smoke, 1 hour 180 degrees smoke, slowly bring temp up to 200-220 and monitor till inner temp of sticks is 180 degrees. Cold water bath immediatley following removal from the smoker and allow to dry at room temp one hour.

You have to know how much pork you put in to the mix and make sure you thoroughly cook it without overcooking the venison. It's a tricky timing deal and takes a fair amount of practice (I'm still learning and my end product still varies). Also if you have a drafty smoker, you will have more problems with a uniform end product. A real good smoker pays dividends many times over when making sausage.

One other thing to look into is this: you produce all the sausage, (grind, season, stuff etc.) the fresh you need not worry about, but the sausage that needs smoking bring into a butcher shop and have them smoke it for you. They generally will do this for a by-the-pound fee. That way you can get the majority of it smoked professionally but save a few pounds of each kind of sausage off to the side to experiment with on your own until you have it down.

By a good book on suasge making or read a lot on-line to really understand the methodology of making sausage. It truley is an art that takes years to perfect.

Also make sure you are using the proper amount of cure with any sausage that will be smoked. Buy good (premium) spice mixes for sausage... the ones that need cure should come with them and you don't have to worry if your seasoning and cure amounts are right on... just mix into the pre-dtermined amount of meat. I too like to go with 'homemade' recipies if possible, but always start off new varieties with a good spice mix like 'Legg's Old Plantation'.

Good Luck!

Ken

[Tom Linderholm]

Great insight Ken, my thoughts too as I read this was that it may have been a little overdone. One thing when I am blending my own sausage I like to cook little taster's in a saute pan after putting the initial ingredients in then adjust to taste as I go.

[walleyeking#8]

We have processed venison for many years now, and what we do even though we add beef or pork, is we make sure to add plenty of water to the ground meat before we start stuffing. This will keep it moist throughout the smoking process and the end result will be moist sausage and not to spicy. Hope this helps. I agree with the others also, do a taste test before you start stuffing to see if it is what you prefer.

[CrappieAttitude]

Thanks to all for the responses so far. I talked to my bro-in-law last night and he stated that the package didn't have detailed descriptions on the cooking time/temp. He had them on the smoker for quite a while and I think that he just over did the time.

I have a cheaper brinkman smoker that I purchased last summer that is a grill/smoker combo type of unit. There isn't an actual thermometer on it is just has categories on it warm/ideal/hot. during the whole time that we were cooking, the temp barely got into the ideal setting. This is why we kept in on a little longer.

walleyeking#8...Interesting about the water part, I never really thought about that. We did add some distilled water to it, but probably not enough.

I think our biggest problem was that we tried to guess the amount of seasoning needed from the package instead of going right with the recipe on the box. All of the packages came with its own cureing salt, but since it was a trial thing, we didn't want to use up all of the ingredients on the first batch. His summer sausage had enough seasoning to make 25 lbs of sausage. "that's a lot of sausage" So we tried to divide the package into what we figured would do about 5 lbs of meat. I guess our math was a little off.

I'll pass this info on to him and hopefully we can try another round this weekend.

Thanks again to all, I really appreciate the insight.

CA

[DIRTY BIKER]

Make sure to follow directions on what ever seasoning's you get weather it be a kit from the store or a special blend from the butcher. Don't forget to weigh your meat to determine how much seasoning's to use generally I use 24lbs of veni to 6lbs of ground pork to make a 30lb batch, then fry some up and taste its easy to adjust before you stuff a bunch of casings and find out you don't like it. The smoking process should be LOW & SLOW and generally most recipes call for some type of cure so the internal temp I get on my summer sausage is about 160 degrees don't forget to add water or beer to your mix also it will keep it from drying out

[Shack]

I like to add in some ice before extruding into caseing.

Also run cold water over like stated or douse with cold (clean) wet rag. Helps stop the cooking effects and slowly cools down meat.

You will distroy a bunch before you get anything realy good to eat. Just try, try and try again.

Good luck!

[IndyEFI500]

Crappie:

If you want better temp control, go to almost any hardware store or big box lumber yard that sells grills. They should have better thermometers for around $5. I just put one on my spare grill so that I am not guessing anymore. My smoker has one and it is amazing what you learn with it.

[terryt]

I build a smoker a couple of years ago. and am still experimenting with temps,but what i have found what works 4 me is to slowly bring temps up, usually take about 12 hours to smoke summer sausage.I only bring internal temp of meat up to 160 degrees and never had a problem.

[Coach1310]

We've been processing our own meat the past 3 years. I have no specifics(they are all written in a note book that I don't have), but some things we do that seem to help.... add water before stuffing.....make sure to put all finished product directly from the smoker into a cold water bath when done(I can't tell you how much of a difference it makes)....like has already been said invest in a thermometer for your smoker...and sample your mixture by making a couple of burgers/patties before stuffing everything to make sure you like the flavor...good luck on the next run

[CrappieAttitude]

Good advice guys. I appreciate it. We have yet to make another attempt. I think all of this talk about snow and ice has changed our priorities right now. I'll let you now how the next one turns out.

CA