Homemade Sausage Making

Hi,

The first picture is of my first attempt at sausage making earlier in the year. It's hot smoked polska kielbasa. Notice the solid pink color inside.

The next photo is what I want my sausage to look like. What is done differently? Any insight would be appreciated.

My guess is the size of the grind. I'm curious to hear the real answer.

BTW, your's looks great Nick

Hey, hey, atcNick!

A policeman once asked me why I ran a stop sign. I told him that I just didn`t believe everything I read! Heck, let me take a stab at this one ok?

I really like the look of your first sausage too. Heck, I`ll come to your house for dinner any day of the week! Generally, for aesthetic purposes, lean meat is ground coarsely while fatter meat is ground finely. If you`d like your sausages to have a more attractive and professionally finished appearance, grind the nearly frozen meat using a 3/16" or ¼" larger plate, and then separately grind the frozen fat through larger 3/8" or even ½" holes in another plate. Some people don`t even grind the fat... they cut it into larger dice with a knife! Then after the primary bind develops the myosin, the diced, frozen, fat is "folded" into the mixture by hand. This will give you the appearance of the sausage in the second photo

You`d be surprised how many beginners believe they can just begin tossing large chunks of meat into a grinder and be done with it. That reasoning is like me... just won`t work! First, cold meat just out of the refrigerator is cut into two-inch chunks. Place the chunks inside a clean container or on a tray inside the deep freezer for ten or twenty minutes to firm up the meat, ready for curing or grinding, being careful not to freeze them solid. Keep a sharpening steel at hand for honing the edges of your knives often. By cutting the meat into chunks, many problems are eliminated before grinding. Any connective tissue or sinew is cut into short lengths rather than long strands invariably wrapping themselves around the auger of the rotating cutting blade in the grinder. If you see "smearing" taking place or if the sausage exiting the plate`s holes begins to look bland and ragged, you`ll know you must take the grinder apart and clean the blade. Hope this helps. I surely don`t know it all, but I make a pretty good biscuit!
Best wishes, Chuckwagon

Hmmm, the second picture doesn't work for me. The first one looks great though

The second one looks hand stuffed with larger fat chunks for texture. Then casing is removed when finished. but I like the looks of yours better.

I definitely see things through the eyes of CW. I also see a difference in the appearance of black pepper.

More importantly, it looks like you either changed the density of your stuffing, but more likely it is that you changed the way you handled the sausage after cooking it. To me, the wrinkles in the second photo show a sausage that wasn't cold "showered" after the cooking process.

My guess would be the first sausage was ground and possibly double ground before being stuffed then smoked and fully cooked to about 150-160 F, removed from smoker given a cold shower and placed in a cooler.
the second sausage seems that the meat and fat were not ground together and just coarsly chopped, spiced mixed to a bind, fat added back into the mix then stuffed. I would think it was then cold smoked and then hung to dry for a couple of months.