Summer Sausage - Eating

I cut up one of the sausages, put it on a plate with some cheese and crackers. When the kids came home they were very excited and asked, "Is this snack for us?" I told them it was and the plate of food was gone before I got to snap a picture. Success. I brought one over to my neighbor. I hope to get a review tomorrow morning at the bus stop.

I'm pretty happy with the sausage. I might go a little heavier with the seasonings and possibly a tick heavier with the smoke. All in all, a good batch of sausage. Good thing because there are still 4 pounds of it to eat. If I make another plate up tomorrow I'll try to get a picture before the kids get to it.

Summer Sausage still continues

Fired up the offset smoker tonight. I put the skewers of summer sausage on some positioned fire bricks and used the thermometer from my turkey fryer to monitor air temperature. The sausage went in around 5 and came out at 9. I didn't use any wood chips, just a hardwood charcoal heat.

Here are the coals firing up and the sausages waiting for some heat.

The stacked bricks maximized the length of the sausage (less string to tangle myself in) plus the ones of the left shield the sausage from the radiant heat coming of the coals in the firebox. I also had a thermometer in one of the links. I pulled them when the got to 150 degrees F.

I did my best to keep the air temperature around the sausage at 200 degrees F. Worked for most of the time. I did have some spikes and one pretty good dip.

Ta da!

Pretty good. I think they will be better tomorrow after some time in the fridge.

Summer Sausage continues

Last night I ran the seasoned beef/pork mixture through the grinder again. This time with the fine plate. Earlier tonight I stuffed the re-ground mixture into some hog casings and tied them into 9 inch (or less) links. I have the links tied to old metal kebob skewers that used to go with an indoor charcoal grill (yes indoor) that used to be at my parents house. No wonder I'm a grill nut. Anyhow, the skewers are hung from S hooks in the little basement fridge. Tomorrow night I will transfer the skewers to the smoker for a few hours. I already have the the weird combination of bricks I am going to use to hold up the skewers set up. Anything much longer than a 9 inch link was going to hit the bottom of the smoker. I am clearly getting older and/or wiser. There is no way I would have measured that a few years ago.

New Shop Rite Coming

The new store is opening soon and I just got invited to a preview. Surprisingly cool. Plus I'm writing this on my new phone. So far this is looking like a good week. Hopefully I'll get to the summer sausage tonight.

Summer Sausage

I made this once before and remember it being pretty good. The only modification that I made to the recipe was to actually use Fermento since I have some now instead of dried milk. I also forgot to dissolve the Fermento in water and just added dried with the spices. So much for reading the recipe a few times a day this week.

I started by cutting up a rump roast. This beef is from steers raised in my in-law's back yard (it's a pretty big yard)

To the beef, I added a pork butt that I had picked up earlier in the week. The recipe calls for half as much pork as beef. I went a little over that ratio because there wasn't enough pork but left over to make sausage.  It would have make just under 100 grams (little less than a quarter pound) so I just kept in in the summer sausage.

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All the meat went through the coarse plate of the Kitchen Aid grinder attachment. Et voila - ground meat.

I put the meat in the fridge and put weighed out all the spices. It's nerdy, but I use a spreadsheet to adjust the original recipe spice weights to the weight of meat I am currently using. Here are the spices getting weighed out - salt, pink cure#1, dextrose, Fermento, Coleman's, granulated garlic and ground coriander.

Got the spice combination and some diced fat back here.

I didn't add any water to the spice mixture turning it into a paste before adding it to the meat. Forgot that step. I just mixed everything together and it smelled good.

The seasoned meat goes into the fridge for 2 days. On Sunday, I'll run it though the grinder again and then stuff it into casings. Maybe I can smoke it on Monday.

I've been lazy

Been reading more instead of posting. Plus I've been listing to a few books on an MP3 player. It is strange because the guy reading the book is doing more of a performance than just a read. I'm almost through listening to my second Jonathan Kellerman novel. The novel in the background helps pass the time making spreadsheet charts. There have been a lot of charts lately. I can't read and listen to the story. No problem mindlessly formatting charts and listening though. I'm not sure how you return an audio download to the library. I guess I'll find out when one of them is due next week.

But hopefully the laziness will slowly pass. I took out some beef to thaw, picked up some pork butt and I think I'm going to have another go at Summer Sausage. That's one that takes a few nights to put together. And at some point, I have to tile the kitchen. That is getting to be embarrassingly delayed.

And my oldest has just started playing softball. She might even be a pitcher. It sure would be nice if I could live my failed gold medal Olympic dreams vicariously through her...no pressure though.

Ballot Stuffing

Every year the Times Union does a "Best Of" poll. And just about every year the results are offensive. Subway does not make the best sandwiches. People seem to like 5 Guys burgers, I ate there once a few years ago and never went back. A long time ago, I specifically made a trip to Smith's Tavern because their pizza was voted to be the best around. It's not good.

Daniel B. over at the Fussylittleblog has been trying to change this. Over the past few weeks, he has been seeking input some up with a consensus of places to select in food related categories. I don't agree with every selection on the list (such as preferring Empire to All Star) and there are others that I am without an informed opinion (like Cafe Vero). But I agree with the premise that the places populating the list are better than the places that typically end up winning the title "Best Of."

So go out there and rock the vote. Here's the list of places to enter on the ballot and here is a link to the ballot itself.