Homemade Sausage Making

Hi all, here is a tip for your smoker. My smoker is an old fridge with an enamel interior. I was suspecting some cold spots in my smoker during the "cooking time". Some sausage would be cooked and some not. So I put a 4" duct from the bottom front to the top rear with a "duct booster". Takes the hot air off the top and circulates it to the bottom. I can't believe how much faster it cooks at 160 degrees and the product doesn't evaporate nearly as bad. For my cooking time I use a single propane burner with a giant pot of water to keep things moist. Anyone do something like this?

Maneric,
This something new to me, I am willing to learn new tricks and learn from experienced people.
Most Dutchmen, are used to eating smoked/steamed mackeral quite frequently.
I have always wondered how to do that. My all stainless smoker will do nicely.
You have opened my eyes. I will be picking your brains some more in future if you don't mind.
Regards,
Jan.

I will still have to learn a little with my new set up. It cooked so much faster at the same temp I over cooked my hams this year. I would like to do something with my thermometer set up. One of these days I will learn how to load pictures.

sausagemaneric wrote:I will still have to learn a little with my new set up. It cooked so much faster at the same temp I over cooked my hams this year. I would like to do something with my thermometer set up. One of these days I will learn how to load pictures.

If you want you can email me the pics and ill put them in photobucket for you and provide you the links...

Charlie

My son just made 100 lbs. of sausage today. 70 Italian, (Rytek's hot Italian) and 30 lbs of Andouille ( Bruce Aidells). We smoked the Andouille. When we used the smoker with the recent circulation upgrade, wow did it cook fast at 160 deg. The fan circulates the heat from top to bottom. The sausage had risen to 110 deg. while smoking. When I lit the burner and put the pot of water on and turned on the fans, it was finished (152 deg.) in less than two hours and the sausage is nice and plump and moist. Best yet and I've been at this along time.

That sounds great sausagemaneric! May I just throw in a few cents worth of caution? Please don't be in too much of a hurry to get that final temperature up to 152 degrees. Have patience and let it rise slowly. This allows proteins to "adjust" little by little. If cooked to quickly, the texture may suffer. Be careful to keep that final IMT temperature below 160 degrees no matter what the upper target temp may be. Remember to cool them down to room temperature with a bit of cold water to keep the casings from shriveling. Good luck pal. It sounds like you've really got a handle on it.

Best Wishes,
Chuckwagon

But I like my cases to wrinkle.

But, but, but.... Big Guy... You ARE a wrinkled casing!

Oh no, don't get me wrong, I didn't set up the internal blower to make it cook faster. I set it up to take away the cold/hot spots in the smoker. I never raise the temp above 160 deg and make sure it comes to that temp slowly. It just happens to complete the product way faster and way more evenly. I showered them with cold water and there is not one bit of wrinkling. Yeah....I'm pretty stoked!.................And I had Andouille sausage and eggs for breakfast! I came up with the idea when I was at some little mom and pop operation on the upper California Coast. He was telling me how he got is Smoked Chickens done in some ridiculously fast time. I asked him how he could do it so fast and he said they installed fans it there oven and dramatically lowered cooking times. To me the whole thing makes sense from a less cooking time less evaporation stand point. This is the best batch of smoked sausage I'v done, great texture, moisture, taste, appearance and weight. Hope I can do it twice!

( allows proteins to "adjust" little by little.),
I like this quote. Makes sense to my little brain!

...convection oven?

el Ducko wrote:...convection oven?

Um, leave my Easy Bake oven out of this!

Charlie