Russian Cold Smoked Update

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oberst

Meat Mopper
Original poster
Jan 8, 2015
254
163
St Louis
An earlier post noted my effort on Russian Sausage, p432 of Marianski "Home Production of Quality Meats and Sausages."

I picked this recipe for a couple key reasons; no culture was called for and I didn't have any on hand, and it calls for drying in a "cool drafty area." In other words, no 60 days at 55 degrees and 75% humidity.  And with no cooking, I figured to incorporate a good portion of smoked goose fat.  The recipe does call for 6 days of cold smoking though, but figure I can pull that off with an Amazn tray stuffed full a couple times a day.  Folks suggested I use a culture on this recipe, but with the batch made up and none on hand I decided to go with the recipe as is. 

Let's take a look:  Here is the goose fat; note that its a combination of fat and meat, and looks just like bacon.


And here is the lean meat; mostly goose with some pork and venison, after 4 days of chilling with the salt and cure #2.  Bowl contains the goose fat.


After grinding and just before stuffing; I incorporated the diced goose fat at the end, with minimal mixing.  However, note that the goose fat was mixed in with the lean meat for the 4 day cure period.  I separated it out before grinding as I wanted to incorporate fat pieces as the recipe calls for and I like fat chunks in sausage.  Could have also just ground it all together too.


Stuffed into LEM fibrous casings.  They are nice and strong and allowed me to force out most air bubbles; I hope they will work well.  I've become a big fan of natural casings but had these on hand.

The sausage has been hanging for a day now and looks okay. My first shot at a dried sausage like this.  I do note just a few drops of clear fat dripping off the bottom of each sausage.  They haven't been over 63 degrees but I know goose fat runs extremely easily.  One more day of hanging and then 6 days of cold smoking, with a month of drying.  Oh, I also like the recipe as it calls for 1/4 cup of brandy!  Lets see what happens!
 
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Oberst, morning....  Looks good.....  

I'm reading Marinaski's recipe in my book (2010)...   Are you familiar with curing ??  

I am continually surprised at the "errors" in his recipes...

He calls for 5.0 grams of cure #2  or  1 tsp. of same...    yet he's using 1000 grams of meat ..  2.2 #'s.... 

I'm thinking 2.5 grams of cure #2 or ~1/2 tsp of cure #2 would be more appropriate for that amount of meat..... 

Then, in the written instructions, he calls for adding the Cure #1....

How do you deal with those inconsistencies ???
 
Yea that was very confusing.  I had a couple folks tell me that the 5 gm was a typo and that it should have been 2.5gm, like with all the other recipes for 1kg.  I stuck with the Cure #2 because it was a dried sausage.
 
Good choices...   
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Russian failure!!  Well this didn't work out for those of you who followed my attempt to make this fermented sausage with goose meat and fat.  Remember, my goal was to be able to use the low melt point goose fat in a sausage that wasn't cooked.  I tried the same thing in a cooked sausage, and that fat melted out so fast and made it clear that a cooked sausage with goose or duck fat was not going to work.  So I tried the Cold Smoked Russian out of Marianski, which calls for 5-6 days of cold smoking.  I thought that would allow the sausage to dry and get the benefit of the tasty goose fat.

Didn't work; not even close.  You see in the pix above the sausage.  I smoked it for days, but already had some fat drip out when the temp got up a little bit when the sun hit the smoker.  Then I hung the sausage in the garage, where it was quite cool; again fat dripped on the floor.  I was warned on another site that poultry fat complicates sausage making, increasing the possibility of of spoilage with the soft fat.  I decided to proceed anyway, given that I had used plenty of salt and Cure #2, to see if the sausage would firm up over time.  It did not after a month.  Today I cut it open, and while I think it would be safe to eat, I didn't like the soft texture and appearance.  Even if safe it wasn't worth keeping, and incorporating safety into the decision there was nothing to do but throw it out.

This is the second batch of sausage I've thrown; I concurrently did a Polish cold smoked out of Marianski.  I used hog casings so they were smaller than the big casings I used for the Russian, and this sausage dried better as well, almost getting hard after shrinking 30%.  I ate a couple links, but the taste and texture wasn't there.  That soft fat degraded the sausage I think, and it just wasn't as good as the semi-dried Polish I made with ven and pork.  Live and learn.  It looks okay here:


But not so good here.  If I squeeze this it oozes fat.


I've concluded that no duck or goose fat in sausages that will be dried!  As a result I'm now making venison burgers with smoked duck and goose trimmings and that's working out just fine.  Put them in a dry pan and enough fat melts out to cook them nicely!  Enough fat to fry some potatoes or cabbage at the same time.  A perfect use of those duck and goose trimmings.  
 
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