First Crack at Sausage Making

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techsan

Newbie
Original poster
Jun 8, 2016
2
27
Driftwood, TX
Long time lurker, first time poster. Thought I should pay back all the good information and advice I've gotten here over the years.

So, here's how my first try at smoked Polish sausage went...

Used 9.5 lb. pork shoulder and 1 lb. flank steak.

Seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic and cure in the traditional way of the Polish sausage.

Cut all meat into 1 in. cubes. Used grinder attachment on stand mixer to grind pork shoulder once through the fine plate and flank steak twice through the fine plate (since I was only using flank steak to help bind). Both meats were extremely cold, bordering on freezing. Used metal bowl set in another bigger bowl holding ice to catch ground up meat.

Mixed in all seasoning, covered and put in fridge overnight.

Soaked and rinsed natural casings. Chilled all stuffer equipment before beginning to stuff.

Stuffed all meat:

Used the smoker box on my offset cooker along with charred hardwood and oak chunks to smoke for about 4 hours at 150 degrees.

Since I did not bring to temp in smoker I poached the links in water until they reached a temp of 155 degrees.

Removed from hot water and quickly cooled them off with tap water from the sink then hung to bloom.

After blooming for about 2 hours I removed and sorted into like sized groups for packaging.

I busted the casing on two, so I used these as the test links for cooking.

Turned out great. Very similar taste and texture to Kiolbassa Polish sausage.

And then this...in the never ending effort to help make sure the wifey continues to like my sausage.

What I learned:
1) My twisting needs work. I had several links unravel while on the chain.
2) This is a lot of work for one person. Especially using a stand mixer. Will consider better equipment before next effort.

All in all, good experience, good product and a great way to spend a day off. I hope this is helpful to others and thank all the posters that helped me along in the past.

Techsan
 
All around ACES......   Great job....
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Nice job on the sausage.

It looks delicious!

Since I see this your first post, would you swing by Roll Call & introduce yourself.

That way we can all give you a proper welcome.

Points for some great sausage making.

Al
 
Awesome, I'm hoping to get a meat grinder and stuffer myself soon to make me some tasty sausages like this! Way to go.

Sent from my SM-G925P using Tapatalk
 
Very nice, Techsan, especially for a first shot! The twisting thing just takes practice. My problem is the end strings slipping off when I try to hang them by the strings :-(

Welcome to the Forum!

Dan

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(Why the fine plate? Just curious...)
 
When I first started out, I hung my sausages to smoke and it just caused me troubles (unsightly touch spots, links unraveling, dealing with string, lower links finishing before the upper links, etc..).  Nowadays, I just lay em on the racks and smoke away.  At the low temps used for cold smoking, I only get the slightest grill marks (which kinda just make em look good anyway), and it saves me the headaches involved with hanging.  I'll admit though that a smoker full of hanging sausages does look better from a purely aesthetic point of view. 

Great work for a first time around!  Congrats and welcome!
 
I agree that laying them on the racks works just as well, MJ, as long as you have room. I don't in the MB, but when I figure out how to get low temps in the offset that's probably how I'll go...
 
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