Thread: Sausage and Smoke Cooking

Originally Posted by jfk742

OCDshaver, I’d love to hear what your rub is if you don’t mind sharing.

As far as seasoning goes, black pepper. That's it. The cure contains more. But not much in the way of flavorings. In the end, you want to taste the meat and the smoke. Here is the cure percentages. Measure in grams. For every X number of grams of pork, multiply by percentage to determine the amounts for the cure. Rub it over both sides of the belly and ensure that it remains in contact with the meat for at least seven days. Flip the bellies every day to redistribute the cure. After seven days, rinse it of the cure, pat it dry with paper towels, and allow it to rest uncovered in the frige for 12 to 24 hours. Hot smoke to 150.

Kosher salt .0222222
pink curing salt .005333
Brown sugar .0222222
Maple syrup .0266666
Pork belly 1

All finished. Made my breakfast so much better.

Gents,
This past weekend I decided to make/smoke "French chicken drumsticks" aka chicken lollipops.
I followed Malcolm's recipe:
https://youtu.be/_Jt0c4cMN8o
Two hours on the smoker with cherry wood pellets @ 300F then moped them with bbq sauce for about 15-20minutes. Turned out great, family loved it, especially kids!
Here are a few pictures:

Very nice!

I'll have to give those a go the next time the grand kids are here.

Here's a way to make 'drumettes' also to show how fast some can cut up a chicken. I think he would have made his predicted time but he got hung up on a joint. He'll make the drumette at the end.

I like to give my kids & grand kids home made smoke cooked items for Christmas so I got started a couple of days ago.

While it's not my favorite salmon my local chain store had Keta (just a fancy name for Chum/Dog Salmon) marked down to $2.98 a lb. So I picked up these 3 fillets. I used my dry rub brine and let it cure in the frig for two days.

Here it is, rinsed, patted dry and ready to go into the smoker:



Here it is all cut up and packaged/I figure that I ended up with about 5.25 lbs of finished product/It's kind of a cross between smoked salmon and lox:



The meat manager at this store used to work as a cutter at my old store and he had pointed out that the salmon was on sale so I told him I'd bring him up a few bits to sample so I did some trimming before packaging and here's what he gets.



I'll be hand delivering it to him tomorrow morning as the last time I took something up for him and the crew to sample one guy ate the entire thing/I still give him crap about it.

I did try something different this time. I've always used this product for all of my smoking needs:

https://www.smokehouseproducts.com/p...ant=4958581699

The place I get it at runs it on sale for $2.50 to $2.79. However I've found that I could buy a 20 lb bag of cooking pellets for only $9.00 regular price. Awhile back a bag had gotten torn and after cleaning the mess up the store hadn't gotten all of them so I grabbed a handful to try in my smoker. They didn't work worth a damn. However later I read a question about soaking the pellets and the answer was no you couldn't as they just break down into sawdust. So that got me thinking.

OCD had highly recommended using apple wood chips for smoking (especially fish) as it had a milder flavor than the Hickory so I picked up a bag of apple wood pellets and put a bunch in a container with a weight on top and covered them with water. Sure enough, they broke down so I used them while they were wet for this project and I was very pleased with the results.

I think I'll continue to use the pellets in the future.

Next is the Smoked Kielbasa and Smoked Pork Loins ( Canadian Bacon) then I'll have the presents done for this year.

Thanks for looking

Those look tasty Roy. I had planned to fire up my smoker this weekend but life got in the way.

Originally Posted by Fenster

Those look tasty Roy. I had planned to fire up my smoker this weekend but life got in the way.

Thanks!

I had a bit of the trimmings before I took the picture of what I was going to package up for my buddy the Meat Manager and his crew and I'm very pleased. If I get everything to work right the salmon comes out a bit more like Lox than just smoked salmon in that the flesh in the thicker parts is still a bit moist and very tender.

I've read that 'True Lox' isn't smoked.

Originally Posted by cudarunner

I like to give my kids & grand kids home made smoke cooked items for Christmas so I got started a couple of days ago.

I like to do the same. I don't get to do it every year but when I can get to it, I think its special.

Any guesses what the project for the smoker today is?