Homemade Sausage Making

I have been making sausages for a year. Usually using cure#2. More or less similar recipes. Always 100% beef.

I always have a simple but annoying problem. When I remove the case, the surface of sausage is greasy.

I must be doing something wrong consistently. What could be wrong ?

Some of the possibilities I can think of:

- I don’t mix well ?
- don’t mix it when it is ultra cold (I don’t have equipment for mixing and with hand it gets warm or if too cold I cannot mix well if I don’t risk frostbite)
- fat I use (beef fat) is wrong. I should use pork fat
- others ?

Greasy, there is a lot of info these guys will need before you can get a definitive answer. To start you are saying you use Cure #2. If that's the case, you are making dried type or certainly aged sausages. The guys will want to know about your grinds, the temps you process, cure, age, smoke, etc. the sausages. More info will certainly be needed...there's a lot that can lead to greasy sausage, esp heat related and fatsmearing

Dry cured sausage - Its really not abnormal to have a greasy surface especially if you vac seal and refrigerate after peeling the casing. Paper towel will solve the problem, just dry the surface before slicing.

Can you provide a bit more info as to what types of sausage you are making? Your process and type of casings?

Here are my details.

I use 70/30 beef fat ratio. beef and beef fat. I add spices and mix. I use T-Spx and 600 mold so I get nice white power around the casing eventually. I use a Ph meter to ensure fermentation is done properly. (4.9-5) I stop and move to curing chamber. I keep around 80-85 range with 12 degrees (c). I add a bit of olive oil but really small amount.

The casing is collagen based, it is not protein lined but I get relatively good adherence. I get some level of case hardening but I could not resolve the issue, I guess I have too much air flow.

The cases I used are 40mm diameter. It takes about 4 weeks to loose 35% water.

At this moment I really suspect it is the mixing and me not using almost frozen beef.

The olive oil stands out as a possible number one cause. Where did you come up with a recipe that calls for it in a dried sausages? Number two reason might be in the beef fat which has a higher melting point temp and also your ratio. 30% beef fat is quite high. Most beef salami products that I have seen are actually quite lean. When I use beef middles in making all pork salami, it's often a bit greasy when I peel of the casing just from the beef fat that is still on the inside of the casing. So what I would do, is drop the olive oil, and if you are unable to add hard pork fat, reduce the fat ratio to 20% or even 15%. The cold temp during the processing is crucial of course. Commercial dry cured salami is made from meat and fat that is frozen solid and cut with a powerful bowl chopper. Try slicing the salami when at fridge temp. Can you post a pic of your products?

Ba275 wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 04, 2021 15:11

don’t mix it when it is ultra cold

Adequate mixing at cold temperatures was one of the things that took me a while to get my hands around so to speak. I mix by hand and I solved the cold hand problem using a pair of nitrile gloves over cheap cotton gloves of the type used to handle film negatives. I've used garden gloves too, but its not easy to stretch the nitrile gloves over them.