Down home sausage making

[sausageman]

Trying to start a thread on the art of sausage making. I've been in the butchering business for over 20 years, now operating a game processing business from my home during the season.
I began my own processing business so I could put the quality and care into the preparation that I felt my customers deserved.
Over the last couple years I've seen an increased interest in sausage making by my fellow sportsmen.
I can offer a wealth of experience in this field, from building you own smoker to what equipment you need and where to get your hands on it.

[Salmonsmoker]

Sausageman,

It sounds like your experience will provide an excellent resource for the members to tap into. During this last year we had a lot of discussion on game processing - your opinion on some of the posts would certainly add new insights. (Most of the older posts are in the bottom part of this forum and from a time when there was only one forum. By changing the time-frame you can go back to the pre-hunt discussions from last summer. Certainly we have a lot of opinions about a lot of things with regard to care and use of wild meats - but we have not had a professional openion. I look forward to your input.

Salmonsmoker

[gamegetter]

sausageman


I would be interested in hearing more about building a smoker. I have a small one but can't fit summer sausages in it.

[Salmonsmoker]

Gamegetter,

I brought forward a thread of posts from back in Jan. where we talked about home-made smokers. If you reset the timespan at the bottom of this forum, you can go back to several discussions from last summer about the same subject. If you prefer, I can bring some of them forward to this sub-forum.

Let me know.

Salmonsmoker

[Hunter333]

Sausageman, got any good recipes for making venison brats? I paid $3 a pund to have some made and I am sure that I could do it myself for less than that if I had the ingredient list :) Thanks and welcome

[sausageman]

smokers are a fairly easy to build piece of eqiupment. I would suggest starting with an old refrigerator as the box, however any type of metal box works. The refrigerator works well because they are insulated and easy to heat. Temps used in smoking are not extreme but make sure the interior of the frig is not plastic, I have had no problems with the rubber seals around the doors.
For a heat source I prefer electric. temps are much more controlable than a wood fired box and electric is much less expensive to set up than gas. A simple hot plate type burner in the bottom of the box works great. I do suggest you invest in a thermostat control, temp is very important in the smoking process. Check out farmtech.com for reasonable prices on themostats.
I have a converted a 3 door freezer box for my smoker. 2 doors are used for the smoke box with a capacity of approx. 200 lb. This side is thermostat controlled with 3-220 volt stove burners, these burners strictly maintain the heat in the smoke box. In the top of the smoke box I have mounted a 6" stove pipe with a damper for draft. I have also put an adjustable draft at the bottom of the box, this allows for drying when sausage or jerky making.
The third door of the box contains a small box with a single
burner piped into the larger box. This is the smoke box where the wood is burned. A 110 volt single 6" burner works great, just enough heat to smolder the wood chips and your wood lasts about two hours. I have seperated the smoke pot from the box so it can be tended without opening the large doors and loosing temperture.
I know most are not in need of this large of a unit but a regular size refrigerator with a small box built on one side will do the same thing.
One very important point when smoking meat is the internal temp of the product. Sausages must reach an internal temp of 152 degrees for 60 seconds to make them safe to eat. I suggest investing in a electric thermometer available at most large stores in the houswares dept. This unit has a probe that is placed in the product and a digital readout main unit that can be set to alarm when the desired temp is reached.
I know this is a lot of info, I will post a pic. of my smoker that might give you some ideas. If I can help in any other way just let me know.

[gamegetter]

Thanks salmonsmoker . I will go through the old post , no need to bring them up unless other people want to see them too.

Thank sausageman for for post too. the info is helpful.

[Salmonsmoker]

Sausageman,

Do you have any venison sausage recipe's that you can share with us. It would be good to get something general, and then list some variations that everyone could experiment with.

Salmonsmoker

[badcast]

Good topic, glad I popped in. I've been smoking meats for myself for about 25 years. But only for myself and family. As salmonsmoker said, an old metal fridge works great. I left one shelf, the top one, in and can lay meats on it or hang from it.

I used a double hotplate easiliy found at any dept. store. After going through many over the years I finally got smart and inverted a freezer basket, the hanging kind, and put that over the hotplate. I cut away a few of the wires to give me access to the burners so that I can put chips on. Then I put an old cookie tray over it to catch the drippings. So simple I could kick myself for not doing it many years ago. I used to wire the hotplates to an external rheostat but rarely do that anymore.

Despite smoking meat for so long I only made my first sausages last year. Turned out great. I haven't fussed with summer sausage due to the starter and stuff you have to put in it. All the recipes I see use starter so I assume its needed. Let me know if not. Where do you floks buy you casing and supplies?

Ron

[Salmonsmoker]

badcast,

sasusagemaker.com is a very complete source of almost anything that you would ever want for making sausages. The owner of the company Rytek Kutas, a retired German Sausage maker also has a book (500 plus pages) titled "Great Sausage Recipes and Meat Curing", with recipe's for almost anything that you could imagine making, and he also has a 1 hr and 45 min video "Sausage Making, Curing, and Smoking Meats." Both the book and the video are excellent resources for anyone wanting to experiment with making homemade sausages.

Lemproducts.com is another source of supplies.

Both of the above have an online catalog.

Also, at many of the outdoor shows (like the one in Lansing) and at stores like Lunkers in Edwardsburg or Bobs Gun and Tackle in Hastings, some items are generally available.

Salmonsmoker.

[Hunter333]

Still looking for a brat recipe. Heck, I am still looking for the deer that I will take in order to make the sausage :( Who is me...... Lots of time left to bow hunt though :)

[gamegetter]

This was in Meijer Lake and Trail magizine last year


Grind 5lbs venision and 3lbs pork through 3/8" plate. Add and mix for ten minutes:

1 pint ice cold skim milk
3 eggs
1 tbls. mace
1 tbls. white pepper
1 tbls. ginger
1 tbls. nutmeg
4 tbls. salt

Stuff casing. Excellent fried, boiled or smoked.

[ice fishin' nut]

Bratwurst Recipe

I posted this a couple of days ago in the big game recipe section, figured I would bring it here also.
This recipe comes from Eldons Sausage and Jerky Book. Sausageman made a reference to Eldons website in the hunters sausage post,,, check it out!!!


8 1/2lbs venison
1 1/2lbs BEEF fat
4 tablespoons salt
3 tablespoons sugar
4 tablespoons fresh chopped parsley
2 whole eggs
1 1/4 teaspoon white pepper
1 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon mace
1 teaspoon ginger
1 cup cold water
2 cups powdered milk
hog casings

Grind meat and fat
combine meat with all remaining ingredients except casings
knead for 5 minutes
stuff casings and twist into 6 inch links
double wrap and freeze!!!!!

Best Brat recipe I have ever found!!!
Good Luck


IFN:D