Homemade Sausage Making

Ehh...
Moving back to the point:

atcNick wrote:I know galvenized metal is not safe around food. Im assuming aluminum is.

I have been warned that aluminium is NOT safe. Honestly - I have no idea what exactly could happen when an aluminium flex duct is used, though one of the forum members has warned me not to use it. I realise that beer cans, scout billys and so on are made (mainly) using aluminium. Still - it is not pure aluminium, right?

Here is my smoker. The smoke goes through a flex duct about 10 feet long. Once again: I have been warned that it may be not safe.
The duct is not heat resistant - we (my dad and I) have managed to burn a hole in it, right after the stove.


And here is my very first cardboard box/soldering iron smoker

atcNick, for protecting against bugs when drying, you can use something like this:


more photos here:
http://wedlinydomowe.pl/articles.php?id=1605
or
http://wedlinydomowe.pl/articles.php?id=1557&page=1

Siara, Wow...that's a good idea. I love the pictures of the smokehouse! It looks very nice!

golaszm, thanks for the picture and information. How does your smoker work? Do you have any problems with it? I want to do something similar to this to start.

I will do some research about the aluminum duct and let you know what I find.

Thanks again.

[ Added: Sun Jan 03, 2010 14:41 ]
Can someone confirm that it is in fact safe to dry the sausage (after cold smoking) at room temperature of about 70* F like ChefPaul suggests?

The recipe on this site and in the Polish Sausage recipes book suggests 50*-54*F.

If this is safe, my (current) idea is to put the sausage in a spare room I have in the house and leave the window open to create some air circulation, it may also lower the temperature in the room compared to the rest of the house. (lower than 70)

Input is appreciated. Dzienkuje bardzo!

atcNick
Today Aluminium is considered as metal which should be avoided during food preparation.
Reason is that chemical activity of aluminium is linked with temperature.
In cold condition (75F) aluminium can be safely used for food storing (beer cans) but in 212F aluminium is starting to migrate even to water.
This is reason why in Poland during 1980's was made decision to start to remove aluminium equipment from food industry (and even stop manufacturing aluminium pots).

Additionally, today, aluminium is suspected as metal responsible for Alzheimer's disease, but it is not yet proven, I suppose.

In real even my mother used aluminium pots more then 20 year's and all we are still alive. So I would say -- for usage in temperature up to 212F aluminium is just not recommended.

Situation is much worse with high temperature (like hot smoke with fire). Aluminium is oxidating very quick and oxides are mixing with smoke. This is reason for "burning holes" described by golaszm. For me this is quite dangerous -- there is high risk that a lot of aluminium oxides will go with smoke to your meat.
For such purpose should be used stainless steel or at least carbon steel without zinc coating. As minimum for first 3 to 6 feet to ensure that smoke is cold enough.

Personally I am planning to build smoker for cold smoking and I am planning to build two steps system: in first step smoke will be cooled in steel barrel to temperature below 212F and then aluminium flex pipe will be used to connect barrel to smoker and cool smoke to 70F.

atcNick wrote:golaszm, thanks for the picture and information. How does your smoker work? Do you have any problems with it? I want to do something similar to this to start.

Meaning the stove, flex pipe and wooden box? Works fine for me - easy to set up, easy to hide - only the stove stays outside all the time. Eventually it will be consumed by rust, but then we'll build another one (using bricks).
The flex duct is the main problem - as mentioned, there's a hole burned already plus it might be unhealthy.
Smoking in winter can cause some problems with reaching higher temperatures (for hot smoking), though it's enough for warm smoking. During summer in turn cold smoking is almost impossible.
Stove can be fuelled with a couple of quite big chunks of wood at a time (recently: cherry), so you do not have to throw in another chunk too often.

Initially I have been using an electric grill placed at the bottom of this wooden crate, throwing oak & hicory chips directly on it. I had to cover them with an alluminium foil plate and still they tended to burn with live flame.
That's how it was back then:



As for the cardboard box and soldering iron - it was just for fun You could smoke cheese in it, sausages, maybe a fish - but I would strongly recommend something 'more serious' Still - it works and the total cost is just a few dollars...

Something I just read about today! Trichina spiralis in pork!! According to the book you should deep freeze pork before making cold smoked sausage to kill the worm. I wonder if my garage upright freezer gets cold enough? Another hurdle to kielbasa bliss!

If you buy you meat from the shop, it is checked by the vet, so do not panic
You do this for certainty with the wild animals meet mainly. You deep freeze in -21 ° C for 3 weeks.
Sausage made of the meat which was not frozen is much better and easier to do.
Why you don't choose hot smoked sausage for the first try? Easier, faster and taste similar.

Siara wrote:If you buy you meat from the shop, it is checked by the vet, so do not panic
You do this for certainty with the wild animals meet mainly. You deep freeze in -21 ° C for 3 weeks.
Sausage made of the meat which was not frozen is much better and easier to do.
Why you don't choose hot smoked sausage for the first try? Easier, faster and taste similar.

Good morning Siara (or afternoon if you're in Poland).

Thanks for that information. I think I will definetly try the hot smoked version first. Another question I have: I have an electric meat grinder with a sausage attachment on it. Is it too difficult to use this setup for stuffing? Should I buy a vertical stuffer?

atcNick wrote:Is it too difficult to use this setup for stuffing? Should I buy a vertical stuffer?

Well, it depends, but if you plan to make sausages regularly it is always good idea to buy stuffer. For the beginning you can also use meat grinder, you may just need some help do switch it on/off and refill hopper to avoid air pockets, as you will have 2 hands busy stuffing sausage. Search you tube for sausage stuffing, there's plenty.

Well I just built the cardboard smoker according to the plans on this site. (two boxes connected). I used a 1000w hot plate, put a cast iron skillet on it, a large handful of cherry chips and a metal colander on top of that to difuse the smoke. This was just a test run to see what the temperatures would do.

After about 30 minutes or so I managed to get the temperature about 6 inches from the top to 144*F and then it fell a few degrees. I couldnt get it up to 160-170 for hot smoking. The dimensions of the smoker were 18" square by 48" tall. The outside air temperature is 45*F and wind is calm.

Any suggestions?

On another note, the cherry wood smoke smells great!!

atcNick, A picture is worth a thousand words. Even your description is quite detailed, it will help, to give you advises.

Here are a couple pics. You can see the opening I cut in the cardboard to put in the hotplate/skillet/colander. I measured the temperature about 6-10 inches from the top using a digital thermometer probe.

Hi Nick,
OK, so to my opinion you can do following:
1. Do not use colander.
2. Cast iron skillet is quite heavy, so it absorbs lot of heat, you can use old can for wood chips, or buy stainless bowl. Very cheap one, like this one.

3. Do the test with 1 box only, this should be high enough.
4. Be aware, that when chips will start to burn, temp will go up rapidly.

Dziendobry Siara,

Well I tried it with just one box and no colander. I didnt have another pan to try the wood chips in. The temperature did go up a little bit but only to about 153*F. I tried it in my garage this time because it's about 22*F outside. Tonight after work I'm thinking of buying another hot plate. Maybe if I have 2 hot plates I can get it hot enough, what do you think?

atcNick, consider buying this instead:

you can use it later for your main smokehouse.