This is a great, all around sausage for all occasions. Great in sandwiches, with pasta, in a pot of beans, or grilled or fried up with a plate of eggs for breakfast.
Here's how they're made:
10 lb Country Style spare ribs, ground with the small plate;
2 big onions, ground with the same plate;
30 cloves of garlic, also ground;
1 C chopped parsley
3 tsp thyme
3 T fennel seeds
3T Kosher salt
1T black pepper
red pepper flakes to taste
35mm hog casings
This is how I did it. There are probably other ways that could be better.
Stuff the sausage into the casings and hang to dry in a very cool place (I used the front of my frig) overnight. I hear that to smoke properly the sausages should be nice and dry. Some people hang them in a cool place and put a fan on them for a few hours or over night. I don't have that kind of luxury, since our weather isn't often below 40 degrees so my attic, for example, is too warm.
Prick the sausages 5-6 times with a tooth pick or fine pointed skewer (the bamboo ones used for grilling shrimp etc work great. Smoke for an hour or so on "smoke" then crank it to 275 until the sausages reach 155 degrees. (I fed the sensor thru the exhaust and inserted the probe into a middle area sausage.) Having read about "showering" to cool them down to prevent wrinkling, I took them immediately into the freshly cleaned kitchen sink and turned on the hose-end sprayer and doused them until they cooled off a bit (somebody said 120 degrees---I didn't measure). I blotted them dry, cut them into individual links and vacuum packed them by 4s and into the freezer. Kept out a meal's worth and had them that night. VERY good with a side of Dijon mustard.
Original Post