Thread: Sausage and Smoke Cooking

Originally Posted by spazola

I made beans and cornbread to go with it, coleslaw would have been nice. Sorry no after pics.

bones must of gone to puppy----I was so looking forward to seeing some gnawed on bones because I've got such a hankering for some ribs. There's just something so primal and satisfying about chewing meat off of bones.

The weather is supposed to be pretty nice tomorrow so I'll check out my local store for some beef ribs. I'm sure that they are ordered in but they are the same as if you'd just cut the ribs off of a rib roast so there's quite a bit of meat. Unfortunately I'd have to either thaw a rack of ribs or buy a whole rack as they don't sell partial racks and it's just me.

Pick up the baby backs or St. Louis style. Smoke em up on the traeger with that seasoning I sent you 225 till the meat pulls back from the ends and so what if you can’t eat it all, Travis can

Oh forgot put you a an of watered down apple cider vinegar on there with it

Originally Posted by tcrideshd

Pick up the baby backs or St. Louis style. Smoke em up on the traeger with that seasoning I sent you 225 till the meat pulls back from the ends and so what if you can’t eat it all, Travis can

Oh forgot put you a an of watered down apple cider vinegar on there with it

I ALWAYS use the Rendezvous on pork on the Traeger, I have a spray bottle with cider vinegar with some red pepper flakes that I use to spray the meat with a few times during cooking.

Yes Travis would be in Dog Heaven with leftover ribs---meat on 'em or not----

Well---------------Here it goes!

I purchased some of UMAi's 70 mm bags and other supplies to make some dry cured sausage so I'm entering unknown spaces and I'm sharing the adventure here.

NOW it's supposed to take at least 3 weeks in the frig for the sausage to have lost enough moisture to be edible, but it could take more. Seems that different refrigerators draw different amounts of moister out of the interior.

During my online research I found that it seemed like the meat was supposed to be near frozen/or at least partially frozen for the grinding, mixing of spices etc and the stuffing. However the Bactoferm Culture Starter needed to be activated in room temperature Non Chlorinated Water. After the meat was stuffed into the special UMAi bags then they needed to hang undisturbed for between 24 to 72 hours at between 65-72 degs F to get the good bugs working so that bad bugs didn't start.

The sausage is supposed to start turning a brighter color to show that the cure and culture are working, Then it's supposed to go on racks in the frig to start drying.

An oven with some pans of room temp water in the bottom seems to be typically recommended. I tested mine and it was right about 71 degs F with the light off.

SO! Here's the meat right after stuffing.



And here's a picture of them in the oven. NOTE: Once I put the very cold chubs of meat in the oven the temp dropped to 60 degs so I turned the light on. I just checked and the temp in the oven (according to my Smoke Unit) is now 70 degs so I turned the light off.



Once the sausage turns color I'll weigh them and record the beginning weight on a tag and then figure what 35% of loss would be and put that on the tag as well. Then into the frig on a rack they will go.

My frig seems to dry things out pretty quickly so I'll start checking after a week to see how things are going.

Thanks for reading

Tip for the Traeger guys, watch moisture in the barrel, I guess after all the wet weather, plus cooking several pork shoulders, I had about 1/2” of liquid in the barrel, guess what? Pellets in the tube wicked the moisture and turned the feed tube into a wood log jam, and I mean solid. The swelling make it like a solid piece of wood.

I clean it about every 3-4 cooks. You know wipe down, vacuum the inside, scrape the grill and splash pan, but with the weather we had I haven’t in over a month. Mostly covered too, but it happened. Now I know how to dismantle the hopper and how to drill out the wood

Originally Posted by tcrideshd

Tip for the Traeger guys, watch moisture in the barrel, I guess after all the wet weather, plus cooking several pork shoulders, I had about 1/2” of liquid in the barrel, guess what? Pellets in the tube wicked the moisture and turned the feed tube into a wood log jam, and I mean solid. The swelling make it like a solid piece of wood.

I clean it about every 3-4 cooks. You know wipe down, vacuum the inside, scrape the grill and splash pan, but with the weather we had I haven’t in over a month. Mostly covered too, but it happened. Now I know how to dismantle the hopper and how to drill out the wood

While I keep my Traeger covered I have wondered about moisture getting into the feed tube OR the Hopper.

I used mine just a couple of days ago and I didn't check for water in the barrel, BUT the pellets operated like usual.

Now I need to go out and tear mine apart to see if I can avoid a problem.

Thanks for the tip my brother.

As long as there ain’t no fluid in the bottom of the barrel your golden, but if it gets close enough to the tube, those pellets are a sponge

I started it for yesterday’s cook and it never got to temp and went into error, loss of fuel. That’s when I tryed poking in the tube and found the log jam

Originally Posted by cudarunner

Well---------------Here it goes!

I purchased some of UMAi's 70 mm bags and other supplies to make some dry cured sausage so I'm entering unknown spaces and I'm sharing the adventure here.

NOW it's supposed to take at least 3 weeks in the frig for the sausage to have lost enough moisture to be edible, but it could take more. Seems that different refrigerators draw different amounts of moister out of the interior.

During my online research I found that it seemed like the meat was supposed to be near frozen/or at least partially frozen for the grinding, mixing of spices etc and the stuffing. However the Bactoferm Culture Starter needed to be activated in room temperature Non Chlorinated Water. After the meat was stuffed into the special UMAi bags then they needed to hang undisturbed for between 24 to 72 hours at between 65-72 degs F to get the good bugs working so that bad bugs didn't start.

The sausage is supposed to start turning a brighter color to show that the cure and culture are working, Then it's supposed to go on racks in the frig to start drying.

An oven with some pans of room temp water in the bottom seems to be typically recommended. I tested mine and it was right about 71 degs F with the light off.

SO! Here's the meat right after stuffing.



And here's a picture of them in the oven. NOTE: Once I put the very cold chubs of meat in the oven the temp dropped to 60 degs so I turned the light on. I just checked and the temp in the oven (according to my Smoke Unit) is now 70 degs so I turned the light off.



Once the sausage turns color I'll weigh them and record the beginning weight on a tag and then figure what 35% of loss would be and put that on the tag as well. Then into the frig on a rack they will go.

My frig seems to dry things out pretty quickly so I'll start checking after a week to see how things are going.

Thanks for reading

I am excited for you, I am a fan of the umai bags. I bet the sausage turns out good. How did you spice it, summer sausage, pepperoni, soppraseta ? Fermented sausage is the cats ass.

I have a pork tenderloin in an umai bag in the fridge now, it has a long time to go. I am an impatient person.

Originally Posted by spazola

I am excited for you, I am a fan of the umai bags. I bet the sausage turns out good. How did you spice it, summer sausage, pepperoni, soppraseta ? Fermented sausage is the cats ass.

I have a pork tenderloin in an umai bag in the fridge now, it has a long time to go. I am an impatient person.

I'm attempting to make a sopressata.

I combined the Umai recipe and another that I found online here's the ingredients as the Umai had chili powder in it and that just didn't sound good at least to me.

5 lbs boneless pork shoulder
1/4 cup kosher salt
1 tsp Insta Cure #2
1/2 cup non fat dry milk powder
3 TBS dextrose
1 tsp coarse freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp hot red pepper flakes
1 tsp dry granulated garlic

1 tsp Bactoferm T-SPX
1/4 cup room temperature distilled water

I separated the fattier pork from the leaner and then froze the fat solid and the cubed pork was probably 90% frozen. I ran the fat through a 3/8 plate then a bit of the meat behind it to force the rest of the fat through. I then mixed it all together and ran the batch through a 3/4" plate.

I then mixed the spices (except the dissolved Bactoferm) in to the meat real well then I re-ran the mix through a 5/8" plate to help push the spices into the meat. After making sure I had as much meat out of the grinder as possible I sprinkled the Bactoferm over the mix and gently mixed it in very well.

Then I stuffed the mixture into the 70 mm Umai tubes.

I've peeked in on the sausage and it smells wonderful The meat is reddening up and I'm thinking that it's ready (it's been 24 hours as I'm writing this) but to be on the safe side I'll let it hang to let the good bacterial get well established and then I'll get the chubs weighed and tagged then on some racks in the frig. I'm thinking of putting it in the slide out vegetable tray to keep it out of the way. I'll set reminders to check on them.

While I had written the weight of each chub on the tag attached to each I decided that I'd also write the start date and the weights on a Word Sheet.

163 grams
685 "
738 "
923 "

2509 Total grams

When I was turning the chubs to be able to read the tags I found that even though it's only been a couple of days the sausage had noticeably firmed up. I took the smallest one (that I'd made with what was left in the bottom of the stuffer and the stuffing horn) and the original weight was 163 grams today it weighed 160 grams. So it looks like things are processing nicely.

The chubs are supposed to lose between 35 to 40% of their weight before they are ready to eat. IF my calculations are correct if they lose 38% of their weight I'll be left with about 3 pounds 6 ounces of sausage to share.