Not sure where to start... This was my first sausage attempt. The recipe was my own creation, created from looking at a lot of recipes online. Overall, the finished product was a lot juicer than what I am used to with summer sausage I purchase. I used 2 ounces of hickory which seemed to be the right amount of smoke. After peeling off the mahogany fibrous casing, there seemed to be a hard outer layer on the sausage, again not what I am used to when I purchase summer sausage.
I ground, mixed, and stuffed the casings yesterday. I let them hang in a refrigerator overnight at around 36 degrees. I hung the sausages in the smoker with the door cracked open for hour at around 100 degrees until the casings were completely dry. The second hour I increased the temperature to 150 and added smoke for another 1.5 hrs. Then I increased the temperature to 170-180 until the sausages reached 150 degrees. Once they reached temperature, I put them into a ice bath until the temperature lowered to 120 degrees.
Maybe one of our sausage pros can help with anything I may have done wrong. I know I used soy protein in my recipe, which I think I will remove on my next attempt. Anyway, here are some pictures of the process.
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