[USA] Lodgepole Canyon Links

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Chuckwagon
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[USA] Lodgepole Canyon Links

Post by Chuckwagon » Tue Feb 22, 2011 05:02

"Lodgepole Canyon Links"
(Chuckwagon`s Dry-Cured Venison Ranch Sausage)

8 lbs. lean venison
1-1/2 lbs. lean pork
1/2 lb. pork backfat
6 tblspns. kosher salt
2 tblspns. rubbed sage
4 tspns. onion powder
1 tspn. ground nutmeg
2 tblspns. ground black pepper
8 tblspns. corn syrup solids
2 level tspns. Instacure #2
1 oz. powdered dextrose

After freezing your fanny off in the snow, carefully aim and shoot a 4-point buck whitetail mule deer, (our Rocky Mountain western measurement is four points on each side), field-dress and clean it, throw it over your saddle, lug it back to the ol` ranch house, hang it up, allow it to cool overnight, skin the danged thing, then grind eight pounds of its best meat through a 3/8" plate.

Chop some creamy, "select" pork backfat into very small dice using a knife and then freeze it. Grind the pork and mix it with the venison. Add the remaining recipe ingredients to an ice water solution, distributing it well throughout the meat. Regrind the venison through a 1/8" plate with the ground pork. Add the frozen "small diced" back fat, and then mix the sausage well with your hands. Process the meat in small batches and never miss a chance to refrigerate it! Finally, stuff the sausage into large hog casings or smaller synthetic fibrous casings and make links, hanging them to dry at room temperature for two hours.

Preheat your smokehouse to 120 degrees F. with dampers open, hang the sausage on smoke sticks, and dry them another hour. When the casings are completely dry to the touch, close the dampers to 1/4 open and apply heavy hickory smoke. Monitoring the smokehouse temperature carefully, raise the heat slowly, only five degrees every fifteen minutes or so, until the internal meat temperature reaches 152 degrees F. Next, shower the sausages in cold water, pat them dry, and then place them inside a drying area at room temperature with a relative humidity of 75% for twenty - four hours. Remove the sausage to a 38-degree F. refrigerator at 75% relative humidity for twenty days. If you prepare this sausage carefully, its flavor will absolutely knock your socks off! If you don`t have access to venison, don`t give up. Try it with beef.

Best Wishes,
Chuckwagon
Last edited by Chuckwagon on Sat Mar 12, 2011 07:15, edited 1 time in total.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it probably needs more time on the grill! :D
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CrankyBuzzard
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Post by CrankyBuzzard » Wed Feb 23, 2011 01:43

This sounds GREAT! BUT, I'll have to do it next winter... All out of deer here, dear! :lol:

Although, beef is an option, but I hate grinding beef since I can put it on the smoker! :grin:

Charlie
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