Summer Sausage Update

[Littlefeather]

I couple of you responded to my earlier post about what seasoning to use for summer sausage so I thought I would give an update. Spent the last two days grinding deer meat, smoking sausage and cleaning blood off the walls.

Bought a 3/4 hp grinder from Cabela's and man will that thing grind meat. Takes longer to cube the meat than it does to grind it. Used two different kinds of casings. The dark casings that were 2.5" x 20" and some white ones that were 1.5" x 12".

Ended up making 25 lbs of summer sausage. Eight of the big ones and 10 of the small ones. Hung them in my smoker for about 5 hours.

I ended up using the Eastman Outdoors seasoning since that was the one available in the town I live in. I am planning on ordering some others to give them a try. I added some pepper to the mix to kick it up.

The sausage turned out really good. We ate a couple of logs last night at a friends house. The meat texture was different than what you get from a locker but it wasn't bad. I think I will grind the meat through a smaller plate next time.

If you are paying a locker to do this, this really wasn't very hard. I have bigger equipment than the average guy (ha ha) with the meat grinder and my smoker which makes it a lot easier. I do think you could make this in your oven or on a grill.

 

[CamoMan]

Sounds like you have a good setup. My next-door neighbor and I are getting our locker assembled. He has a propane smoker, I have the 3/4 HP Cabelas grinder, and the Cabelas meat scale. We teamed up to buy a 7 gallon meat mixer (too hard and cold to do it by hand again). He has a nice workshop he added on to the garage, so we are ready to go. We made brats, summer sausage, bologna and salami last year. Now if we just had some deer. Oh wait, CamoKid starts hunting tomorrow. . . .

 

[Littlefeather]

I went through the hand grinder/hand stuffer phase last year and will never do that again. Made some brats and some cheddarwurst last year. I think will do brats, cheddarwurst, summer sausage and burger this fall. Considering a spicy sausage for a sausage/potato soup I made from some of my brats. Haven't felt I needed the mixer yet. I can stand to have my hands pretty cold for $150.

My daugher will hunt next weekend's youth seson. Maybe I can get some more blood on the wall.

Good luck!!

 

[moosehunter]

i have an old 2 hp grinder that came out of a mom and pop corner meat market. it came with 3 different grinder plates for small, medium, and large grinds, several knives and sausage stufffing attachments. it works pefect. it weighs about 80 lbs so you need a hefty table to set it on but it seems pretty durable.

a couple of hints i can tell you i found out. if you want to use a fine grind (smallest holes), run it through a rough grind first. also, only grind up what you want to cure. i thought i'd do 20 lbs of jerky and was at it for 2 straight days after the smoking part. 10lbs would have been great plenty.

gonna do some sausage soon now.

 

[Littlefeather]

Thanks Moosehunter, I learned your tip about the fine grind the hard way. I started doing everything is batches. I can handle 25 lbs of sausage or 15 lbs of jerky on my smoker. Any more than that just drags the process out.

Thanks for the info.