Homemade Sausage Making

Ran over schedule today on processing. Happens when two people drop by and you are attempting to classify meats for the first time. Let me say intuitively I know it's easy but when doing it your first time what's a true I vs II, etc. I'm sure once I make the sausage I'll learn if I was too loosey goosey or too anal. Any way I have a few Polish sausage recipes I'm hoping to make over the next few days but I can't get it all done between work hours so I'm planning on grinding and stuffing over the course of a few week nights.

My question is cure time. I separated out my I, II, and III's for each sausage and added salt + cure #1. The total cure for the sausage was subdivided proportionally ( i.e., 100 g salt + cure, 80% Class III got 80 g of salt cure combo) and everything separately ziplocked and set in refrig. What if I take longer than 24-48 hours to get to it? My brain tells me it is similar to an equilibrium cure meaning it will not get saltier the longer it sits. But I do have soft brain disease from my college rugby days. Is there a limit to time? 48, 72, 96 hours etc. I mean within reason I'm not talking a few weeks

Scott

Hi Scott - from my experience - 48 hours is basic, if zip-locking up to 5 days is ok, if vac-pack one week is ok. If longer - freeze meat and add mix of salt and cure after thawing (in refrigerator).

Thanks StefanS...was hoping and expecting there was a reasonable amount of flexibility

You are good. I believe the longer is better as this will give the cure more time to work and your sausages should have a much better color in my opinion if you aren't using a cure accelerator. Only problem I've seen in doing it this way is when you salt/cure the meat and grind then let the mince cure for a few days. I've sometimes done this and find the mysosin setting the mince and making it harder to run through the stuffer and its firmness makes it more prone to hold air pockets as compared to a fresh grind.

Interesting. It's looking like things definitely need to wait until Thursday, rolling into Friday that way I can smoke everything over the weekend. So I guess we'll see, but to be clear I haven't minced anything yet. It's curing in chunks right now. I expect to grind, mix non-salt spices into mince and stuff immediately. Hopefully dry in basement or refrig depending on where I land on the weekend timing for getting smoke on

Non-ground and in chunks is my preferred method but life gets in the way sometimes and I sometimes stray from the path I know best. In a perfect world, I would use the process you are doing every time because in my view it simply makes for a superior product in many ways.

Here are some I spent two days making. Due to time constraints, I cheated and used sodium erythorbate to speed the cure and pre-ground the meat before letting it sit for a day in the cooler to cure. This is not my preferred method but time was not on my side due to this pesky thing called work.

In the end, I feel I got a good cure on the meats and I think the color was lovely but I did have some issues with a few air pockets I wouldn't have had if I'd had the time to properly cure the meat in pieces before grinding. I don't think it can be understated how these little things in procedures can make the difference between a good sausage and an excellent sausage. JMO