Thread: Sausage and Smoke Cooking

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