Thread: Sausage and Smoke Cooking

Was able to find a smaller container, and with a couple of spaghetti sauce cans, in ziploc bags, acting as rocks in the stream to take up more space I was able to get the eye fully submerged in the brine.
No more flips and just wait till Sunday now.
Already showing it’s bright pink exterior where she was below the brine overnight.
Will net close to 6 lbs of sliced meat when completed I figure.

Mike, even though the meat is covered, I think that you'll find it helpful if you turn it about everyday. That way the brine will get to all of the meat and it will be evenly distributed.

Besides, it's kind of fun to check on and see how it's going.

I'm wondering if this will be the first test of Mike's new slicer??

It will indeed Roy!
Was able to free up my sharpening stones and they worked a treat cleaning up both sides of the blade at the same time.

As viewed from the blade you can see how the slides both were stuck wide open. They should be contacting the lever arm still. Once freed up they move towards each other putting the nice bevel on the back of the blade and removing the wire edge on the front side with the smaller finer wheel.

Not the best pic, but looks like this now..
All in I can take a bit more off but want to save the original blade as long as I can.
They don’t make ‘em like this anymore applies here. The Berkel blade was one of the best I’m learning and why their machines were so highly regarded.
My slice gage is in mm’s and goes from .5 up to 52mm slice thickness.

This reminds me of my meat grinder. It is an old commercail model that went through a flood etc.
When I use it it might run 2 hours a year as fast as I can push the meat in. In a shop that is like 1/4 of a days work. To use it as much as a commercial butcher it would take me 20 years to put a weeks worth of wear on it. Just random numbers but you get my point. You will never wear that one out.

Tomorrow is Sunday and I'm wondering if we'll see any Beef Ham at the end of the day from Mike

Tomorrow will be the 5th day in the brine, so if we assume 3/4” per day saturation I should be good to proceed to smoking and finishing my first attempt I figure.
The traeger is going to be busy tomorrow!

Originally Posted by MikeB52

Tomorrow will be the 5th day in the brine, so if we assume 3/4” per day saturation I should be good to proceed to smoking and finishing my first attempt I figure.
The traeger is going to be busy tomorrow!

I take it that your Traegar is one that allows you to apply smoke without too much heat? Just wondering.

Smokes is 165 on the dial, but realized at 150 grill temp in the winter.. That plus the smoke tube will give me lots at the colder setting I hope.
Figure I will just go with the Montreal steak spice rub and skip the festive ham spice for my first attempt.
Couple hours at 165, then built it up to get to internaltemp of 155-160 before pulling it.

Are you planning on refrigeration after it's done and then slice??