Natural Sheep casing color

[david wilke]

Hope an expert can help me out with this.  

I smoke snack sticks using natural sheep casings.  I use the normal methods repeated here multiple time so I won't bore people with those details.  My problem is when I smoke a normal batch of 10 to 15 lbs  for my taste I like to have about 3 hours of smoke and then finishing them off without smoke the remainder of time.  Unfortunately, I don't get a very nice mahogany color to my finished product.  I know this does not effect the taste but I see at my local butcher shop their links are all a nice dark brown.  I do bloom them for at least 2 hours and they do darken up a bit but still not what I would like.  Short of smoking longer is there anything I can do to dye or color the natural sheep casings like they do with the collagen casings?  Or is there something I can add to the meat to color the casings without the meat having a weird color ?

 

[blaise]

If you are using a very lean pork (loin) you may not get a dark color no matter how long you smoke. I smoke my kabonosky 8 to 10 hours and never get a mahogany color

  I usually add about 40% beef or use all beef if I am concerned about color.

Lots of people I know add cheap almost flavorless paprika, just for color sake and they use quite alot of it!

Blaise

 

[boykjo]

Forming a pellicle will allow the smoke to adhere to the casing and become darker in color when smoked. After the casing are stuffed, hang the sausages and place a box fan towards them. The sausages will form a pellicle. You will see they will become tacky at the touch. At this piont the smoke will stick to the casing surface. Remove the fan so you don't dry the casing. place sausages in smoker and add cold smoke with no heat during this condition and they will darken without heat. I usually cold smoke for 2 to 3 hrs like this before tuning on the heat.

Here's some kabanos I did a while back

http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/t/134705/kabanos-dried-and-finished

Boykjo