Deer Sausage

[tastetester]

I finished u a batch of deer sausage using the recipe from meatsand sausages. com. I used pre-ground venison and pork as the base and added a proportion of back fat that I ground through a 3/8" plate. Stuffed it into 31 mm hog casings and held it in the fridge overnight. Then smoked it with a mix of fruit and hickory to 154 degrees internal. I forgot about putting a water pan in the smoker and I think they lost quite a bit of weight during the smoke. I'm pretty happy with them overall and just cooked some up in a split pea soup for my dinner.
Drying pre-smoke

Getting some color

Did the main smoke at 150 degrees

Then bumped it up to 172 degrees
Done

I forgot to get an interior shot, but maybe I'll remember tomorrow when I have one for lunch.

Michael

 

[39Buick]

Those look tasty! Does the water really help with retaining weight?

 

[tastetester]

This would be my question, too. It's been 5 or 6 years since I've made any sausage and my memory isn't so good anymore. I seem to have vague memories that it helped. I still have a few variables I need to get dialed in. My smoke generator moves quite a bit of air through the smoker and I have a valve I need to install to control that.

Michael

 

[Inkbirdbbq]

Good job Michael

 

[indaswamp]

Those look tasty! Does the water really help with retaining weight?

Higher humidity stops the evaporation cooling effect on the meat, allowing the sausages to stay hotter and finish faster, thus giving you a moist finished sausage. There are other factors that contribute to a moist link- grind on the mince- finer grind will hold more water, use of a binder- will grab onto more water, use of phosphates-will bind more water in the mince, and smoker temp. schedule.

I try to keep the smokehouse temp. below 140* until the INT of the link is 100~105*. This sets the meat and prevents the meat from tightening up and squeezing the water out of the link. It will also reduce the final shrinkage and size of wrinkles.

A full smokehouse will facilitate stronger smoke adsorption due to the higher humidity, which will keep the casing surface moist for a longer period of time. Also, the heat simk effect applies-takes longer for the meat to warm up which allows for more smoke to adhere.


Which is why I like to do large batches at one time instead of a bunch of small batches throughout the year......

 

[tastetester]

Higher humidity stops the evaporation cooling effect on the meat, allowing the sausages to stay hotter and finish faster, thus giving you a moist finished sausage. There are other factors that contribute to a moist link- grind on the mince- finer grind will hold more water, use of a binder- will grab onto more water, use of phosphates-will bind more water in the mince, and smoker temp. schedule.

I try to keep the smokehouse temp. below 140* until the INT of the link is 100~105*. This sets the meat and prevents the meat from tightening up and squeezing the water out of the link. It will also reduce the final shrinkage and size of wrinkles.

A full smokehouse will facilitate stronger smoke adsorption due to the higher humidity, which will keep the casing surface moist for a longer period of time. Also, the heat simk effect applies-takes longer for the meat to warm up which allows for more smoke to adhere.


Which is why I like to do large batches at one time instead of a bunch of small batches throughout the year......

I'm pretty much in 100% agreement with the logic of everything you mention here. I think the evaporative cooling is the issue I want to look into as my times are running longer than the book time by a significant amount. And to a great degree it's the time I'm interested in as I don't have any great complaint about the product. I just ate one cold and it was tasty and moist.

The large fat chunk is by design. I wanted to try a very coarse grind on the fat for this batch.

Thanks for all of the information and advice.

Michael