The top candidate was the 22 pounds of Tamworth Italian sausage which had begun to turn a little brown from being in the freezer for six months., the goal was to precook and store it all for Italian dishes, to alleviate my wife from dirtying up a frying pan every time she makes her wonderful spaghetti, lasagna or other Italian dishes.
Unwrapped all the sausage and loaded the FEC 100 with three racks ensuring I spaced out all the sausage. Much of it was still frozen, but I put it in anyway, didn’t seem to make a difference.
Set the smoker to 180 and let it roll. After four hours the internal temp of the sausage was 140,
I boosted the temp to 190 until IT of 150 then 205 till IT of 160. The FEC managed the grease real well. I even felt confident enough to leave for three hours during the cook.
Pulled the sausage at 160 and let cool in the fridge overnight.
I sealed the fatties using the VP 215 into one or two pound packs.
Mission Complete. My wife nicely pointed out that reprocessing and packaging the sausage did not save any freezer room., but hey, it was fun and will save some more work later.