Problem smoking summer sausage


 

Tim Heutinck

New member
Hi All,

I have smoked ribs and chicken for a while now, but this year I just purchased the Weber Smokey Mountain and now that I have a smoker I can control properly I am trying to do more. the Issue I have is when I try to smoke summer sausage the fat all renders out before the sausage is done.

I am using a pork shoulder and grinding everything but the skin, along with a striploin roast. everything works fine until the smoking stage. I start smoking at 125 for an hour and then every half hour I increase the temperature by 10 degrees until I hit 170. I have a temperature probe on the rack and 1 in the summer sausage. I have also tried putting another probe in the summer sausage from a different digital thermometer. all three probes have been tested in ice water and boiling water and are within 1 degree. the internal temperature of the summer sausage never gets above 135 degrees but the fat still all renders out.

I have been trying to make only about 5 lbs at a time and plan to make about 40 lbs once I am sure I wont ruin it. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks
 
Admittedly, I don't currently "do" charcuterie

That being said - I AM a member of the "Old School, German Heritage, country boy at heart" club and have seen SS made commercially and have eaten my fair share and then some of this stuff (day trips to local farm community markets that make their own with Gramps and Dad since I was about 5....)

From what I've seen, it appears that the problem you are having is that SS is traditionally cold-smoked in a Smoke House or commercial smoker that gets lots of smoke but mainly gets "Warm" and never really goes into the "hot" (cooking) zone.

Maybe a REALLY thin snake in the bottom of your WSM or using an external firebox with smoke ducted-in somehow would work for what you are trying to achieve.
I think that I saw somebody rig-up an electric hot plate in the firebowl to work as a minimal heat source, and then put wood chips on top of it
 
Admittedly, I don't currently "do" charcuterie

That being said - I AM a member of the "Old School, German Heritage, country boy at heart" club and have seen SS made commercially and have eaten my fair share and then some of this stuff (day trips to local farm community markets that make their own with Gramps and Dad since I was about 5....)

From what I've seen, it appears that the problem you are having is that SS is traditionally cold-smoked in a Smoke House or commercial smoker that gets lots of smoke but mainly gets "Warm" and never really goes into the "hot" (cooking) zone.

Maybe a REALLY thin snake in the bottom of your WSM or using an external firebox with smoke ducted-in somehow would work for what you are trying to achieve.
I think that I saw somebody rig-up an electric hot plate in the firebowl to work as a minimal heat source, and then put wood chips on top of it

Hi Ron thanks for the reply.

I had no knowledge of smoking summer sausage so I googled it and followed this link as far as the smoking temps. everything I found was roughly the same procedure for the smoking.http://www.meatprocessingproducts.com/how-to-make-summer-sausage.html

according to everything I read the internal temp had to reach 155 to make the meat safe. that's why I'm puzzled when my internal temps never reached that and the fat still rendered out.

Tim
 
By putting the beef in, you need to add more fat than what the butt will provide (butt by itself is ok but you've reduced the % of fat by adding the beef). This is an assumption on my part as you didn't post the recipe you used.

You gotta add some hard fat and that should help.
 
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For example, I've got a recipe for "dry-cured old-style summer sausage". Meat component for 10 lb is:

6 lb butt
3 lb lean beef
1 lb back fat (not the soft mushy stuff but solid--like you'd get off a t-bone steak)

If I remember correctly, butt usually comes in at 80-20 fat ratio. Beef is always leaner so that's why a 75-25 ratio.

BTW, nice to see another Canuck on this site ;)
 
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Hey Len,

we are even pretty close together.

So what you are saying is the fat from the shoulder/butt is the wrong type of fat. it needs to be back fat and this should prevent it from rendering out?
 
No, the butt fat is fine. There's just not enough fat in the butt to handle the butt AND the leaner beef. You could use more pork fat but IMO I'd prefer the hard beef fat (after all, it is beef being added).

You've still got the fat (whatever would be there after your normal smoke) from the butt in there but because of the added (leaner) beef, it is drier.

Think of it this way: you've got a cup of sand (the butt) with 1/4 cup of water (butt fat) in there.

Now add dry sand (THE BEEF).

Same amount of water (FAT) but now the whole mix is a lot drier.

The (butt and beef) fat will still render out as it should. But because now you've got more (added beef) fat in there, you'll end up with more fat in the final product.
 
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Ok I get that. My problem is that during the smoking process all the fat melts and congeals around the outside of the summer sausage. I would have thought the temp was too high, but my temps never got above 130 internal temperature. Its not that its dry, its just basically ruined.
 
Tim
I just posted pictures of my Venison Summer Sausage in the "Photo Gallery" under the last picture I named where I got my Ingredients. I used an 80/20 mix of Venison (well trimmed) and Beef fat. It was the best I've ever made.
IMG_20170902_094203.jpg
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Tim
I just posted pictures of my Venison Summer Sausage in the "Photo Gallery" under the last picture I named where I got my Ingredients. I used an 80/20 mix of Venison (well trimmed) and Beef fat. It was the best I've ever made.

And that's what he needs to do: bring the fat level back up to the 20% by adding hard fat.
 
Hey Dan,

That's some nice looking summer sausage. I am a total noob when it comes to summer sausage and I have so many questions. so you said you used 5lbs of beef fat, does that mean you used 5 pounds of beef with fat or just the beef fat? I have recently read (this morning) that some people are smoking the summer sausage at 130-140 and then they are poaching it in a water bath on the stove to finish it off saying they can control the temp better. do you do anything like that or is it all done in the smoker? I also read about adding powdered milk and a meat binder. all the recipes I have read never mentioned anything about that, are they needed? how do you smoke your summer sausage ie temps and times?

Thanks
 
Tim
1; 5 lb. just beef fat from US wellness meats delivered frozen $6 lb. they have a minimum order so I bought 15 lbs.
2; https://tvwbb.com/showthread.php?71757-Venison-summer-sausage
click on link to see picture of snake method I used. I lit the end under the pecan chunk with about 6 pieces of charcoal lit in a chimney on the gasser. the smoker ran at about 125 for about 3 hours (1 bottom vent full open the other 2 closed) then added another 6 lit to the other side, opened the other 2 vents that brought the temp up to the 170 range and ran about another 4 hours. then added about 1/3 chimney of lit coals to bring temp up to about 225 and pulled the sausage off when the Maverick read 152 degrees in the meat. at that time I had a cooler filled with ice water and dropped them in for about 15 minutes.
3; the cure/seasoning mix was purchased from Southern Indiana Butcher Supply It does have a "binder" in the seasoning mix.
I believe it was the binder that made it so difficult to put the meat through the grinder for the second grind (per instructions included with cure/seasoning kit) the next time I make it I will put the meat through the grinder 3 times then add the seasoning and mix longer by hand .
 
Ok maybe I will need to try using a binder next time. So was the second body section just to raise the sausage higher up? I thought that was a good idea.
 
The 2nd second body section allowed me to hang the full length of the filled sausage casing. the last (first) time I made this I had to cut the casings in half to hang them.
I have 2 sons I have given both of them an 18.5 WSM. The older son lives just a couple miles away so it was an easy grab.
 
My question is the same as Len's: What casing are you using?
Summer sausage is typically fermented. You need a culture for that. Bactoferm F-LC meat culture is typical. Curing salt is also required. (You can use curing salt alone but then you lose the tangy flavor of fermented sausage.)
Summer sausage is typically smoked a bit higher than what we consider "cold-smoked" - 110-120 for a couple or three hours (or longer) till good color is achieved, then a slow bump up in temps (an increase of 10˚ or so every hour) till the sausage hits 155˚ (although if you stretch theme you can go to 140-145˚) internal. Then a cold water bath to stop the cooking, then dry.

It's essential to have the sausage well cased when smoking at higher temps than cold-smoking.
 
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Hi K Kruger,

I used Weston Mahogany 20" fiberous casings.
Ingredients

15 pounds coarse ground beef
10 pounds 50/50 (fat/lean) coarse ground pork trimmings
2 cups water
5 teaspoons InstaCure No. 1
2/3 cup salt
1/4 cup whole mustard seed
1/4 cup coarse ground black pepper
1/4 cup sugar
3 tablespoons garlic powder

but adjusted for 5lbs. I wanted to make sure that it worked before stepping it up to the larger quantities.

smoking temps I tried to follow where 140F for 2 hours, then at 160F for another 2 hours, then at 175F until the internal temperature of the sausage reaches 155F. If your smoker temperature can't reach that low, smoke as close to 175F as you can until the sausage temperature hits 155F.

I actually started out around 125 for a couple of hours and then started bumping up the temps about 10 degrees an hour. I never actually made it all the way to the 175. got to 165 and ran out of fuel, so I was going to throw them in the oven to finish them off and noticed all the fat had rendered out even though the internal temp only hit between 130 and 135. the sausage had a nice red colour when I cut it in half. I never did finish them as the fat was all gone and it was getting late / I was disappointed so I don't know how they tasted.
 
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Make sure your meat, grinder, bowl, etc., is very cold. You want a very clean bind. I would decrease the water (and quite possibly eliminate it all together) and add nonfat dry milk powder, probably 1/2 cup or so for a 5-lb mix. Also, make sure your smoking temps are accurate. Shoot for a lower temp for the first few hours then gradually bump (although 125 isn't bad). Cold water bath when 152-155 target is reached.
 

 

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