Homemade Sausage Making

Hello to all:
I tried a new approach to smoking a turkey breast that I thought I would share with you. I bought a bone in, skin on, half turkey breast from Walmart for $ 10.00 First I deboned the breast , left the skin on. I wet cured/brined the turley breast for three days. Then I vacuum sealed it cooked it in my sous vide cooker for 3.5 hours at 150 degrees F. After that I chilled it down in an ice bath and air dried it for a couple of hours. Then out to the cold smoker set at 155 degrees for four hours. The result was incredible. Very moist and juicy. I thinly slice it, put the slices on a cracker with some cranberry sauce and served a platter to some Christmas Eve guests. The whole thing disappeared in minutes.

Happy Holidays to you all !!

Bert,

An interesting approach but what is a sous vide cooker?

Cooking using the Sous vide method is a technique rather than a specific piece of equipment. The big commercial restaurants all use this method of food preparation. For the home cook there are a couple of products out there such as Sous Vide Supreme and Polysience immersion circulator, that can do the same job at a much reduced price. For the DIY selfer with a little technical skill you can build you own for less than $ 100.00. The key is a very accurate temperature controller. You need one that will controll the temperature to within one degree. I built one and it is accurate to within .1 degree. I use it in my smoke house as well and it is incredible. You also have to have a vessel to hold you food while it is cooking. I use a turkey roaster that I bought for $ 20 bucks. I plug it into the temperature controller that I built. If anyone want the details of how I di it. I would be happy to share it with them.

Bert,

I would be interested in you doing a how to!

Hi Bert,
I imagine that there are a lot of members including myself that would like to get more information on this home made sous-vide cooking piece of equipment especially the make of the temperature controller.
Best Regards,
Jan.
Brisbane.

I found this with a brief search. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sous-vide

Hi Fellas: I will be happy to share with you what I have put together with the sous vide as well as the temperature controller. I am helping the wife over the next couple of days with some cooking. We are having a cocktail party on Dec. 30th, so I will look at putting some information together after that. I am firing up the smoker tomorrow to cook up some Indian candy salmon, smoked chicken breast, venison kielbossa, and some chicken sausage with feta and spinach.
Talk soon,

Bert,