New to pepperoni making... lots of help welcomed!

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traceeo

Newbie
Original poster
Nov 21, 2016
4
11
My husband and I bought a STX Turbo Force 3000 and made sausages last month - they were a success!

Last night we made pepperoni for the first time and I have some questions.

For your reference we used this recipe: http://www.lets-make-sausage.com/smoked-venison.html

We have yet to use our game meat until we find recipes we like so we used a mix of beef and pork in the above recipe.

First we ground the meat, seasoned and cured it, re-ground it and then stuffed the casings. Put it in the fridge and have yet to finish off the process. My questions are as follows:

1. When we re-ground it after adding the spices and cure it was very sticky going through the grinder again - is the second grinding not advised? Was it safe for us to re-grind it with the cure in there? I am not concerned we might have braked it down to much or something?

2. After a lot of reading today I see we should have weighed the meat on a kitchen scale so we knew exactly the amount we were using. We had just under 9lbs of meat (not confirmed on our scale) and we used the same spice/cure amount as stated in the above recipe. While I know we would have been above the minimum nitrate requirements but is it possible we put ourselves in the danger of two many nitrates?

3. We do have a smoker but I am not wanting to finish off the pepperoni by smoking it as its hard to control the temperature and I would prefer to finish these in the oven. Is it safe to take any pepperoni recipe and put them in the oven to cook opposed to the smoker like the recipe indicates? What temperature and how long do they go in the oven?

4. And being I'm here asking a ton of questions I mine as well confirm that using pickling salt in place of kosher salt is totally fine?

I have learned we should have done a bit more homework before tackling these but I think I'm doing the right thing by asking you all to ensure proper food safety is being done.

Thanks in advance for all your help and I appreciate any feedback and tips!
 
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