Your canner looks similar to mine but mine sits on a burner and you add water to the canner itself. Could you do that with yours? The reason I ask is I think water inside the canner itself helps to stabilize the temperature and often times its the instability in the heat that causes vacuuming. I mig...

Sounds reasonable but I don't know. I see a lot of people who use the pasteurization method like Stefan describes but I've never done that but have thought of it similar to how the USDA recommends you cooking chicken to 165F. While this is correct in a sense and it will kill the salmonella in one se...

I've had this on my bucket list for some time but have been hesitant about making it because I didn't want something that tasted like those tinned Vienna sausages you find in the store. However, the ingredient list in the recipes I've seen has alway made me think real Vienna sausages would taste muc...

So, if I put all the jars (closed as I would normally do) in Boling water for 20-30min (enough for the meat to heats up) and then move them all into the boiling pressure canner, it should minimize the siphoning, right? I guess but I don't know why you'd want to do it that way when you can do the sa...

I agree with what Bob said but would like to add (this touches on what Stefan said) bring your canner up to pressure slowly allowing the contents to come up to heat. If you do this you will avoid a temperature differential between the contents of the jars and the inside of the pressure canner. I do ...

I'm in a hot climate as well and don't have this problem so I don't think it has anything to do with your climate. My suspicion is you are stuffing your casings to tightly. If they are to tight to link easily then they are to tight which I found can cause them to burst. Either ease up on this or you...

That looks and sounds delicious. Don't think we have chanterelles here. Have plenty of oyster mushrooms but I think they would be too chewy for sausage but I've never tried it so I don't know. I got my hopes up last year when I discovered we have native truffles which grow in old pecan groves. A fri...

I've found and storage is the key and keeping the tip submerged in the storage solution is key. If you forget or neglect to do this - as I have done - they don't last very long. Another thing to remember is to replace the batteries every year. I neglected to do this on my favorite meter and found a ...

I agree with what Indaswamp said. You just don't know what might be in pre-ground meat or how its been handled so the possibility of it causing problems is real.

As long as the meat is cold it would be hard to overwork it. The problem with hand mixing is you either don't do it long enough because you should near about be in tears from frost bite or your meat warms up and the fat begins to smear. I'm usually working with a mixer grinder and I keep mixing unti...

If I follow you right it would seem to me the second batch had a better bind but due to the high amount of beef and lower fat the sausage was "tougher" or more chewy. I think a more meaningful comparison could have been drawn if you used the same mixture to compare the difference mixing makes with g...

In short, yes, just cut it into pieces and grind however it really depends on what type sausage you are making and your desire to replicate it as genuine as possible. For most fresh sausages a butt offers the perfect balance. However, there are some sausages which get their uniqueness from the vario...

When rubbing the cure into the meat i notice a flap meat between diff muscles. If I cut it off it would prob be 150-200g I think to much to cut off. If I put pepper under the flap then truss tight will it be ok to dry? When I cured I packed a good handful cure into it... bout another 7days till I p...

Productive day yesterday as I had some good help modifying my smokehouse. I had designed and built this myself and though it worked like a champ there were a few things I thought could be better. I sought to increase the draw through the house so I did this by raising the roof some and then adding m...

Welcome to the forum Bluc, can't wait to see your finished bresaola, that's one of my favorites.