smoking sausage

[horn section]

This past weekend me, my dad and uncle made our deer sausage. We ended up with about 80 links and 10-15 pounds of pan sausage. This years turned out extremely well. We don't really have a set recipe.

We usually mix 60% deer and 40% pork (this year was closer to 50/50). Season with salt, fresh cracked pepper, garlic, and a little cayanne (all to taste, no real measuring). We then stuff, tie, and hang for about an hour. My dad says to let all the water and liquid drop from the casings. I think it is just to take a break and drink some beer, which I have no problem with. This also give us (me) time to get the fire going, so that we can transfer the coals, and soak the wood chunks. We then smoke the links for a few hours and leave hanging overnight to chill out. (usually try to do this when it's pretty cold overnight). THe next day we take them down and vaccum seal them individually and disperse amongst us.

I was curious if anybody else made their own sausage? If so what do you do?

 

[IRC]

In reply to:

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[flaco]

Hi.

 

[horn section]

THanks for the link, hadn't seen that before. That's pretty awesome. I didn't think about pictures until late. Next time I will take more pictures.
We built a new smoker last year because our other one was too short and I kept hitting my head on it. It is just a 3 1/2 X 3 1/2 frame with tin around it. We have an cut off top of a barrell with a lid and holes drilled in it that we but the coals in and put the soaked wood on that.

My dad just beat cancer this year, so him just being able to hunt and do this is awesome. It's real special to be able to do this with him and his brother. Hopefully I will have kids before they go and will be able to join them in the process.

 

[hook1997]

We made about 140 pounds about a month ago at a friends house back home (in the sticks) and he has big smoke room he made. We loader ours down with Jalapanos and cheese. Ill get the pics up asap.

 

[CanaTigers]

That thread title is pretty gay sounding.

 

[Wishbonemac]

I'm wondering about the pork:venison ration, horn section's is 60-40 venison/pork. flaco's is 3:1 pork butt/venison.

I always thought you added pork fat to venison make a 50-50 ratio but apparently it can be anything. What's the general rule of thumb?

 

[flaco]

To keep things more simple while undertaking the chore of making 300 lbs we make our pan and link out of the same mixture and just add different seasonings - so it is the pan sausage that drives our ratio. Too little fat and it burns in the pan. We trim a lot of the fat off of the pork shoulders too so that adds to the leanness.

Also, we make sausage just once a year and don't always have enough venison to make a whole years worth but can always buy enough pork to fill out the freezers.

 

[flaco]

We are making sausage weekend after next. Will try to document.

 

[nativeaustin]

We made 143 links last weekend with some top secret German recipe. It is not quite as top secret as they think because they gave us the recept for the spices.