Homemade Sausage Making

Siara, I may end up getting one of those. But first Im going to try to line the inside of the box with aluminum foil. I hope that insulates the box enough to bring up the temperature.

Ok I figured out why my cardboard smoker wouldnt get hot enough. The hotplate I was using has some sort of heat sensor or thermostat in it and it shuts off after it gets to a certain temperature and then comes back on. So I opened it up and rewired it to bypass the thermostat control knob. Now when I plug in my hot plate it stays on constantly - full 1000w!!! The temperatures when up up up!!!

So now you need to watch out for flames

atcNick wrote:constantly - full 1000w!!!

atcNick, Now you may have opposite problem with temperature

This is my first try at sausage making. I made kielbasa biala surowa.

It turned out great. The first hank (I think that's what its called) came out a little uneven as you can see in the pictures. The second one came out just right I think. I bought two pork butts, but I only made about 4 lbs of sausage. Im curing the rest of the meat right now for polska kielbasa wedzona.

I used salt/pepper/garlic. Didnt have any marjoram. I'm not sure if I should use it for the smoked version? What is your opinion? Is it better with marjoram or without? Should I use fresh or dried marjoram?

You can click on the photos to enlarge.

Very nicely.

Well done!

atcNick wrote:Should I use fresh or dried marjoram?

I recommend to use dry, it's more intensive.
Split your meat in 2 after mixing before stuffing, and add marjoram to one half.
Remember to add just half portion
This way in one go you'll have both versions to taste and choose better one.
I prefer with

Thanks Siara. Do you know if the recipes listed on this site assume dried spices are used?

atcNick wrote:Do you know if the recipes listed on this site assume dried spices are used?

Most of them should be dried dried.
We tend to use fresh garlic and - well - freshly ground dried pepper

There are some recipes that use fresh herbs, like BonAir's 'Four Herbs' sausage

BTW - nice work!

Thanks for the help guys. Im going to be making the smoked sausage tommorow. I have hickory, apple, and cherry chips. I also have oak chips made from oak barrels that were used to make jack daniel's whiskey. I cant seem to find any plain oak chips.

What is the best wood or combination to use for smoking this sausage?

Every single one will be good; considering this is your first attempt, I would use hickory leaving apple and cherry for your future attempts.
That's because - in my sole opinion - they will give you better results (better smell and taste) and as such I would keep them ie. for a ham.
And the best one is whiskey flavoured oak. Keep it as a treasure for a special occasion

Just to make things clear - hickory or regular oak are good.
Wood of any fruit tree should be even better.
Chips made of oak whiskey barrels are the best ones.
And all of the above is my own opinion. I'm almost sure that each and every one of us has his own taste and could argue about the mentioned ranking.

(translated from this article):
* Apple wood - a very mild smoke with a subtle fruity, slightly sweet taste. Can be used for smoking poultry, giving dark brown colour.

* Cherry wood - very similar to apple, slightly bitter

* Red Oak - one of the fastest burning wood, honey taste and earthy flavor, a little bitter. Gives a brown colour.

* White oak - is a bit milder, recommended for smoking beef, fish and poultry. Gives dark-yellow colour.

golaszm, Thanks for the tip. Greatly appreciated. If you think oak chips from whiskey barrels is the best I will use it. I was leaning towards using that anyways. It's easy to get that here and cheap.

This is the stuff: http://www.basspro.com/webapp/wcs/store ... erralID=NA

I will take pictures tommorow when I smoke the sausage and will post.

Good luck then

By the way - any chance you could tell us the weight of JDs oak chips? I can see in the product description that a 5$ bag contains 210 cubic inches (which would be 3,4l/3441cm3 volume), but there's no information about the actual weight.

golaszm, it was 2 pounds.

Ok, finally!!! Here are the pics. Smoked these bad boys yesterday. I'm a little dissapointed, they didnt come out the way I wanted. The smoker only got up to about 130*F(my hotplate got fried so I had to replace it) and I smoked them with 3 parts oak, 1 part hickory for two hours, heavy smoke like the recipe suggested. Then I finished them in the oven at 170 and then 180 to bring them up to 156* The smoke flavor seems way too strong, and the texture is not what I had expected. Please share your opinions and advice. Thanks.

First, congratulations on you fist smoked sausage.
I have to be honest and tell you, that the recipe you have selected for your first attempt is not easy.
You need to gain some experience, so to my opinion you should go with small steps.
There are may factors which may impact both taste and texture of you product, so let me mention just a few , which are absolute basic.
1. Meat quality
2. Curing
3. Preparation
4. Smoking
5. Hot processing
6. Cooling

So as you see, there is a possibility to do an error on each step
Don`t worry, just for your next try select something easier. OK enough "smart ass" talking, moving on:
I think that you did not dry the sausage before you started treat it with smoke, this is very important step.
What I mean by dry is that the sausage ( and all other meats ) need to be dry to the touch.
Any moisture on the surface works "glue like" for the unwanted smoke particles. When this happens, the meat or sausage can be a bit bitter, or very strong tasting.
Another reason temperature. I see on the photo, that the inside of the sausage is less colored then outside.
You may need to hang a little computer fan inside your smoker to force smoke and temperature circulation.
Keep it running for all smoking process, from very beginning when you load the smoker, just switch the hot plate on and let it run for 40 min, then check if sausage is dry.
If yes, start smoking with smoke, if not keep on drying. Finally, why you dont use your Weber 18" WSM for soking?
Well, later on I`ll translate for you recipe for "Farmers sausage" which I hope will compensate you disappointment.