Sausage

Anybody here besides me make smoked sausage regularly? My basic meat recipe is 80% venison and 20% fat pork, then add my seasonings and cure. I used to make regular links but went to "bucksticks" which are a snack sized casing that dries to about 1/2 to 5/8 in diameter when dry. Sausage is ancient so I would think it's period correct for most, if not all of our history in the Americas.

 

Anvil

I would be interested in knowing more about your experience in smoked sausage making. Can you provide details? :master:

 

[shmrck1]

Anvil,
can i assume we are talking smoked dried sausage(much like jerky)?????
snake-eyes :hmm: eace: :thumbsup:

 

one of my staple trail rations are 'LANDJAGERS' sausage...if your from MN. or Wisc. you KNOW that one..... a GREAT recipe book for sausage is 'The Sausage-Making Cookbook by Jerry Predika' I been making sausage and Jerky for 'bout 20-25 years... it just keeps gettin better....(Wish I did...) :cry: :thumbsup:

 

[Riley/MN]

one of my staple trail rations are 'LANDJAGERS' sausage...if your from MN. or Wisc. you KNOW that one..... a GREAT recipe book for sausage is 'The Sausage-Making Cookbook by Jerry Predika' I been making sausage and Jerky for 'bout 20-25 years... it just keeps gettin better....(Wish I did...) :cry: :thumbsup:

I have had that before but I don't find it often. Dry sausage, supposed to keep good. Never lasted long enough with me to know for sure :winking: Do you have a recipe?

BTW, I went bear hunting with a friend (from another board), who happens to be a butcher, last Sept. By the time I left his house, I left with a fully processed bear. Still have summer sausage and snack sticks in the freezer :thumbsup:

 

Badwind

Landjager is pretty good. I found my book on sausage maiking but it is limited. "Home Sausage Making" by Charles Reavis from 1982. OK but not a lot of recipes and no Landjager.

Found a recipe on the web but I have no way to hold these sausages at the temps they call for. Do you go through all of this when making your Landjager?

Landjager recipe

I have no way to hold the temp and humidity they call for or for the amount of time they call for. Do you have an easier way?

 

O.K. class, pay attention now :crackup: :crackup: this is a 're-work' of original 1750's recipe, when ya eat it think of all them BLOODY HESSIANS living off of this stuff..

LANDJAGER (the ORIGINAL K-rat)
9 lbs LEAN beef, COARSE ground
6 lbs LEAN pork, coarse ground
3 T.white pepper
3 T. black pepper
3 t. caraway seed
12 cloves garlic crushed
6 T. sugar
3/4 cup mortens canning salt
3 cups DRY white wine

Mix together, run thru grinder w/ medium chopper plate..let sit for 48 hours, mix again and stuff 'fairly' loose in 1" casings, double tie off every 6-8".. place in a cookie sheet (should fill 3 of them) and stack in fridge w/ 5 lb. weight on top ( a sack of flour works good) let sit at least 24 hours.. COLD smoke 24-36 hours W/ an even mix of alder, hickory, and apple chips. air dry till rock hard....

I have some of this that is at least 3 yrs old, it is STILL o.k. to eat,but it DOES taste kinda stale thou.... :haha:

 

I don't use all them salt-peter, nitrite,nitrates...thingys... THAT is what FERTILIZER is made of :redface: :haha: :no:

 

All right! Thank you. This is much easier than what I found on the web. If long term storage was not as important as chewability, I would imagine that could be left a bit softer and more moist. I know this is not jerky like when doing it this way, but much easier to munch on during the last few games of the NFL.

 

It stores well, but it IS rather tough to chew, AS-IS... I 'usually' cook my sausage w/ beans, rice, parched corn, or just what ever comes outta my haversack first..... Last 'trek' out to my pal Mikes (7 miles, my regular 'scout') I had a couple of red spuds, 2 hunks of landjager, a piece of bacon and a BIG piece of hard cheese.. I 'fried' the bacon in my boiler, chunked up the spuds, and saus. added enough snow to keep it from sticking, cooked till 'almost done' :: and wolfed down the whole mess w/ the cheese and a big mug of tea :: ::... I got to Mike's just before dark and woosied out...got a RIDE home cause it was droppin into the minus range..

 

I am speaking of smoked dried sausage. Basically, it's any relatively lean meat with a little fat for binder, then ground, seasoned, put into a casing and smoked. Basic ingredients are garlic, salt and pepper - what you add beside that is up to you. I often put in red pepper, marjoram, mace, ginger and other spices. You pack the casing, hang it a short while to dry and smoke for a few hours around 160 degrees. The meat is taken off the smoke and dried several days until it's somewhat hard - just shy of breaking when you bend it in half is about right. We snack on this all year long but it is also very good to carry while hunting.

We make 25-50 lbs at a time and freeze it in bundles of 5 links (25 lbs makes about 75 straight links that are 18" long). These are sometimes called "snack-sticks". The spices can get stale if you make up more than what can be eaten in 6 months or thereabouts.

BTW, you are inviting botulism if you don't use some sort of nitrate cure in your meat, unless it is otherwise cooked. Fertilizer or not, a pinch is all it takes to kill the nasty little critters that can make you real miserable (or worse).

 

BadWind

Now I can't say that the trek sounds too great in the frigid wx but I have to say the whole idea of doing what you just did sounds pretty cool. A plaque on the bedroom wall here says "A Walk in the Woods is Good for the Soul". And making lunch over a hot fire on a cold day in the woods is even better! :thumbsup:

 

Thanks Anil. What temp is the drying process done at?

I use Morton tender quick in other recipes I have tried and have no problem with that.

 

I dry it in the house or outside in front of a fan (away from the dogs). I don't have a cooler so can only make sausage from later November to March or so. It's pretty dry and cool here in the winter so that's the best time for us.

Morton's Tender Quick is a good cure - I have used it before with success.

I'll look up my recipe and post it tomorrow if anyone is interested.

 

Anvil

By all means, please post your recipe. Between yours and Badwind's I will have two new additions to try. My out buldings have no heat. My garage is heated but I worry about contamination from the vehicles. So I too would be limited on when I could hang sausage to dry. So late fall works best and is probably most traditional anyway.

 

This is for 10 lbs:

1 quart ice water
6 Tbsp salt
2 Tbsp powdered dextrose or brown sugar
2 tsp of Modern Cure (Prague Powder #1)
1 Tbsp Black Pepper
2 Cloves of garlic (minced)
1 tsp marjoram
1 tsp red chili powder
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp ground ginger
8 lbs lean meat (venison, elk, antelope, etc)
2 lbs fat pork or trimmings (butt roast, rib, etc)

This also makes a good fresh breakfast sausage with the elimination of the cure, an increase in the fat meat to a 50/50 mix and cut the salt to 4 Tbsp. Great with eggs and biscuits...

I do one grind thru 1/4 or 3/16 plate and mix all the meat by hand. I then add the spices and water and mix again so it's as homogenous as I can make it. At this point, take a teaspoon of meat and cook in the microwave to taste for flavor. Adjust if necessary. Pack into the casing size of your choice then hang for 45 minutes at room temperature. Smoke at low temp for another 45 minutes or so with the damper open to dry a bit more, then smoke 2-3 hours at 160-170 degrees. The inside of the product should reach 152 degrees to kill possible trichinicae.

Remove from the smoke and hang until sufficiently dry to your liking. Some folks like it softer but we prefer it chewy - more like jerky. Of course, you can play with any of the spices to make it hotter or have a particular flavor come out. The only other advice I have is to keep the meat COLD prior to smoking. Some people abuse ground sausage meat but I treat it just like filet mignon and the final product will reflect your care in handling.

Many of the local German folk in this area make our own sausage so it becomes something of a competition and we take pride in it.

 

[cayugad]

I got a book called, Great Sausage Recipes and Meat Curing by Rytek Kutas . In the book it has hundreds of ways to make sausage of about any kind of meat, from fish to fowl, beef to buffalo. It also tells you how to dry meats, make smokers, just about anything to do with preserving meat. And the book is actually well written.

I did notice that some of the ingredients you have to purchase on line out of a place in New York called The Sausage Maker but the stuff sure turns out good. That is if it lasted around here long enough to really evaluate it....

They also mention Prague Powder #1 & #2 which are cures or preservatives as I understand it. I guess as much as I dislike the idea of adding chemicals to my products, I do like the idea of knowing that the stuff I am making is safe to eat months from now.

Their Venison Salami is excellent!!! :thumbsup:

 

Cayugad,

I have the same book and my variation began with his recipe then I modified it to suit our family's tastes. However, I buy all my products from a place called Allied Kenco in Houston or locally at our meat markets. Enough people make sausage in my area that the butcher shops usually carry most of the supplies.

The cures are there to kill botulism. People say they were not used in olden times but who knows how many died from undiagnosed food poisoning? They generate gas as they decompose and are mostly gone by the time the sausage is ready to eat. Not much is used anyway so it's a small part of the total mix. Prague #1 is used in smoked sausage and jerky and #2 is used in salami and pepperoni, which is hung for a long time.

I prefer the risk of long term nitrate poisoning over a short painful death from botulism... :boohoo: :crackup:

 

Outstanding. Thank you. This sounds delicious. I may have to keep the venison roasts I have in the freezer until spring to make this. We are living in a deep freeze this year in MN.