Homemade Sausage Making

Here's a recipe I used for drying Italian Sausage. It worked and tastes great.

The only thing I questioned was whether I should have used cure #1 or cure #2 due to the curing time. Evan said no issue using cure #2 even if the curing is less than 30 days

Meat 6733g 100.00%
Ground Fennel seeds 13.4g 0.20%
Cure #2` 16.8g 0.25%
Sea Salt 168.3g 2.50%
Dextrose 40.4g 0.60%
Crushed Black Pepper 13.5g 0.20%
Red Pepper Flakes 20g 0.30%
BLC-007 3.4g 0.05%

I coarse ground the butts, then added all ingredients. Mixed well and stuffed into regular sausage hog casings. Prick the casings. Ph was 5.73

I let them ferment at 73 degrees, 85% humidity until PH reached 4.9
Once 4.9 was reached, I dropped the chamber to 54 degrees at 80% humidity, dropping the humidity to 75% after 1 week. Curing time was roughly 17-21 days. I let them reach between 43-50% weight loss. This has now become an argument in my house. My one child likes them softer and the other child firmer. I did remove the casings and vacuum packed them, which makes them not so enjoyable to grab in your hand a take a bite,,,,,,,so we usually slice one up on a plate. They work out great and very quick. They prefer the taste over the soppressata I made, I disagree,,,,but next time I make the soppressata, I may add fennel to half the mix, because other than the fennel, the recipe is quite similar.

BLC-007 probably does better with #2 since it contains nitrate which works with the cocci bacteria to produce flavour, aroma and colour. .25% is not that much and actually way below the amount allowed by the USDA.

In your other post you mentioned that you would have prefferd to keep the casing on the sausages when vac packing them. Beacause your sausages only had a vey small amount of mould on them, I think that you could have easily brushe the mould off and then wiped them with a cloth slightly dampened with salt water. Then pack them when the surface was dry. Maybe give that a try next time.