Decided to play it fairly safe for my first serious hot smoke and smoke some thick sausages for cold slicing and eating.
Used about 5lb pork shoulder with 1lb cooking bacon. Used vanilla vodka, honey, smoked paprika, fresh ground black pepper, garlic, smoked salt and coarse ground coriander for seasonings with a couple of handfuls of oats for rusk.
Chopped it in the food processor as that makes a dryer cooking mix than mincing/grinding.
It's a very low fat mixture - probably less than 10%. The idea was a sausage that wouldn't shrink too much during the smoking (and it didn't - as you can see).
The salt, honey and vodka are all antibacterial agents - nothing else needed :-)
Loaded the sausages into 3 of the bradleys trays and put a shallow tray with apple juice beneath them for drips and to stop the sausages drying out too much (it seemed like a good idea at the time).
After reading lots of different things and advice from the forum I decided to go for five hours at 80c (175 in the weird f numbers ;-).
Once up to temp the bradley was rock solid. Didn't even seem to mind too much when I opened the door for a quick peak and poke at the sausages.
Well wouldn't you ?
The sausages taste and look fantastic, nowhere near as strong a smoke flavour as I was expecting. I've vac packed them for storage in the freezer. they'll just be defrosted and eaten as required :-)
Worked out the overall cost to be about £2 a sausage (approx $3.75).
Which given the quality is pretty good. I don't think you can buy any commercial product with this high a meat content (and consequently a very low fat content)
I admit to spending the entire afternoon hanging around the smoker to keep an eye on it. Which probably wasn't necessary. next time I'll have more confidence in it's temperature holding and just pop round to check it every now and then :-)
All in all a success and my first real hot smoke. Pics below.
Used about 5lb pork shoulder with 1lb cooking bacon. Used vanilla vodka, honey, smoked paprika, fresh ground black pepper, garlic, smoked salt and coarse ground coriander for seasonings with a couple of handfuls of oats for rusk.
Chopped it in the food processor as that makes a dryer cooking mix than mincing/grinding.
It's a very low fat mixture - probably less than 10%. The idea was a sausage that wouldn't shrink too much during the smoking (and it didn't - as you can see).
The salt, honey and vodka are all antibacterial agents - nothing else needed :-)
Loaded the sausages into 3 of the bradleys trays and put a shallow tray with apple juice beneath them for drips and to stop the sausages drying out too much (it seemed like a good idea at the time).
After reading lots of different things and advice from the forum I decided to go for five hours at 80c (175 in the weird f numbers ;-).
Once up to temp the bradley was rock solid. Didn't even seem to mind too much when I opened the door for a quick peak and poke at the sausages.
Well wouldn't you ?
The sausages taste and look fantastic, nowhere near as strong a smoke flavour as I was expecting. I've vac packed them for storage in the freezer. they'll just be defrosted and eaten as required :-)
Worked out the overall cost to be about £2 a sausage (approx $3.75).
Which given the quality is pretty good. I don't think you can buy any commercial product with this high a meat content (and consequently a very low fat content)
I admit to spending the entire afternoon hanging around the smoker to keep an eye on it. Which probably wasn't necessary. next time I'll have more confidence in it's temperature holding and just pop round to check it every now and then :-)
All in all a success and my first real hot smoke. Pics below.
