Greetings all,
I haven't posted much in the past several weeks, but I've been keeping up with my reading, and enjoying the banter between Duk and Chuckwagon! Jean and I have been very busy since early December, processing frozen venison trim into sausages and other products. Of course, the extra pork we purchase for mixing with the venison leads to additional products; pork shoulder bacon, breakfast sausage, bulk Italian sausage. Just since January 1st, we have processed over 185 lbs. of venison and pork products. We keep 100% of the pork products for us and the family, and 25% of the venison product for ourselves, the rest is for the other three hunters in our party!
I've been reading, and re-reading the Krakowska recipe on page 16 of this thread.
Is it really okay to mix, stuff, and cook all in the same day? I feel a little uncomfortable with that process, and I'm surprised no one else has brought it up. Redzed has pointed out that the 2" cubes won't work very well in a hobbyists kitchen, and needs to be modified. I imagine that even 1" cubes will be difficult to push through my 5 lb. stuffer.
I started a 1 Kilo batch of this sausage late last week. I purchased a 5# picnic roast (hock removed at store), and cut out the cubed meat and trim. I no longer remember the source, possibly Rytek,( as he was my sole source of information until this website started talking in English), that
Cure moves through whole muscle at about 1/4" per 24 hours; I'm not even sure I remember it accurately. With that in mind, I mixed the cubes with 90% of the salt and cure required, and into the refrigerator it went for a three day rest. I put the small bag of trim into freezer. On Monday I ground the trim, added the remaining 10% salt and cure, plus the remaining ingredients, and then emulsified it. It was then added to the cubed meat, and mixed for several minutes.
I didn't want to mess with the stuffer for just a couple of pounds of meat, so we stuffed a 3" fibrous casing using a canning jar funnel and a spoon. This was not an ideal process, at all. I found it very difficult to keep air pockets minimized. I found and pierced several, and missed several more.
Up here at the south end of the Arctic Circle, smokers just can't hold a good cooking temperature. After three hours of drying, smoking, and baking it, I moved it to our convection oven in the house. I had preheated the oven, with a cake pan of hot water to provide humidity, and it was finished in another two hours.
This sausage tastes fantastic, and looks very elegant. The seasonings are simple, as was the process to make it. It didn't seem to suffer by my not exactly following the directions. I did forget to mix the cubed meat prior to mixing with the meat paste, and there is a tendency for the slices to pull apart slightly. But, all considered, it turned out great. We both enjoyed it, and will be making a much larger quantity in the future.
Jim