Homemade Sausage Making

"The best laid plans of men and mice go aft aglee."
On Wednesday I brought three new batteries home with plans to take them to my boat for installation today.
When the boat is stored on land it is ten feet to the deck from the ground and these batteries weigh about 80 pounds each. I have a fine means of hoisting them into place and this morning I woke up to RAIN.
I may just have to make sausage today and work on the boat on a dry day. It isn't like I don't have enough to do to keep me off the streets and out of the pool halls.

I had plans today but they were vetoed by mother nature so I made the best of it.
I had a piece of lean, as beef eye round, pork loin that was worthless for chops or roast so I ground it to make hot smoked Polish sausage adding about 30% fat to the mix. I am not new to grinding meat at home but keeping it slightly frozen I hadn't done before although when we ground burger meat in the A&P when I was a kid we got frozen beef in 60 pound boxes and ground that as soon as it could be cut safely.
I sorted out a length of dry salted casing and put it to soak before I started grinding. The meat went through the 3/8 plate and the fat through the 3/16 plate. I mixed the salt and cure with the called for water added the garlic and marjarum and pepper and mixed by hand until it was uniform in appearance. By then the casing was soft so I went to work finding the hole in the end and started it on to a stuffing tube. I used the tube as a funnel and filled the casing with water and gathered the whole business onto the tube. The I discovered that I couldn't get the tube and the casing through the adapter ring. So I stripped almost all of it off and threaded the piece onto the tube. Back goes the casing. It all gets assembled onto the grinder with a small three leg support for the extruder screw. I made rough balls of sausage mix and got started. I filled about an inch and tied a string around the casing and put the little lump back into the mix. The rest of the filling was a simple joy it all went very well.
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The pictures show well. fresh from the smoker the taste was good but the mouth feel was off. I could call it mushy. I smoked to 160 F over oak. I light the fire with the gas flame and when I get a good smolder I turn off the gas. As the wood distills the charcoal starts to burn and the smoker gets hotter so I must watch it and rake the fire apart to kep it down. I use a cement board for a flame shield.
The other caseless sausage is an experiment in brown ad serve smoked meat sausage. From the same loin that I used for the smoked sausage I had made some smoked chops but the were devoid of any fat. Those I ground up with 30% added fat and stuffed the last two links on the casing and laid out the rest naked..
There is a trick that I learned from my mother with grinding meat. There is always a fair amount the gets left in the grinder. Grinding a couple of slices of bread will force most of that meat out and the dog will love the meat flavored bread..

Hi Ross,

You wrote:

fresh from the smoker the taste was good but the mouth feel was off. I could call it mushy. I smoked to 160 F over oak. I light the fire with the gas flame and when I get a good smolder I turn off the gas. As the wood distills the charcoal starts to burn and the smoker gets hotter so I must watch it and rake the fire apart to kep it down. I use a cement board for a flame shield.

Do you mind if I chime in here a bit? If you are making a "cured-cooked-smoked" product, 160°;F. is the upper limit of heat you`d want for "prep cooking". If the sausage is cooked to a point much higher, the fat will "break", rendering the sausage worthless as the texture no longer has proper lubrication and "chew`. At this point, there is nothing that can be done to save it. It would be much better to stop the cooking process at 148°;F. and allow the "carry over effect" to raise the temperature to 152°;F., then shower them. Lots of folks misunderstand this "prep cooking" step. It is meant to be done slowly with gradual, small, elevations of heat over an extended period of time, in many cases well over 8 hours. As the temperature surpasses 137°;F., any possible trichinella spiralis are destroyed. As the temperature climbs to about 152°;F. (67°;C.), microorganisms as staphylococcus aureus, salmonella, E. coli 0157:H7, listeria monocytogenes, campylobacter jejuni, shigella, bacillus cereus and other nasties, are destroyed. BUT... botulinum spores are another story! They are extremely persistent and will survive heating up to 250°F. (121°;C.) - thus the use of sodium nitrite.

As sausages reach 152°;F. (67°;C.), they are generally showered with cold water immediately, until their IMT drops below 100°;F. (38°;C.). Sausages of this type are then refrigerated for 8 or more hours before being cooked on a grill or in a pan for consumption. If the product is not further grilled or cooked, it may be air-dried until the Aw value drops below 0.85, whereby it becomes a "semi-dry-cured" sausage and may be eaten "as is" without further cooking.

Goodness ol` timer, I surely don`t know it all, but you might try reducing the "prep cooking" temperature just a bit to guard the texture. Refrigerate the stuff at least 8 hours, then grill it and I believe your texture problems should be fixed. Oh, and don`t forget to mix the primary bind, developing the actomyocin. If you are stuffing sausages right out of the grinder, the problem probably lies herein. Try using a separate vertical stuffer. If you don`t have one, grind the meat, mix it by hand until you have a sticky meat paste, then put it through the grinder again using only a "spacer" instead of a grinding plate. This will allow you to fill casings much more easily.

Over the years, I`ve seen people become so disenchanted using a grinder to stuff meat into casings, that they soon lose interest in the craft. Such a shame! Using a "dedicated" stuffer (about a hundred bucks), the entire process will become quite pleasant, without the frustration and bad language.

Best Wishes,
Chuckwagon

Not the least way disenchanted. I did mix until sticky. I suspect that the temperature was raised too quickly. I am still making shift as you can see. The meat that I used was worthless anyway so there is no loss.

There is an adage: That if you try something once and it works, you will try it a hundred more times to get it to work again. But if you try something once and it doesn't work you will only try it ten more times to make it work before you abandon the effort.
Thomas Edison was once asked if he was making any progress on a project. He replied that so far they had found 278 ways that didn't work

I think that I should build a proper smoke house with good controls and the ability to hang the links.