sausage; can I use?????

Butts have about the fat level most folks use.

I suppose you could ask the meat dept for fresh pork trimmings.

thanks tom, happy new year to you and yours..........

Tom is right. If you are using 100% pork then butts have a good fat to meat ratio.

You have to start adding pork or beef fat when you are making sausage from wild game.

When I make venison sausage I will use 1# of ground pork butt to 9#'s of venison. It works for me.

Hey Dave -- Good question. A lot of the Pork Butt I see is trimmed -- they take some, or a lot, of the fat off. I was told they sell the fat to bakeries for baking. When you buy one, take a look to see if there are knife marks where they've removed some of the fat. I finally found a real butcher and I purchase the pork butt "untrimmed" and there's a beautiful fat cap on it and the whole thing weighs anywhere from 6 to 10 pounds. Also, the sausages and brats we see in stores have a lot more fat (30 to 50 percent) compared to home-made sausage, so our tastebuds are trained for a higher fat content and softer texture. I like Bruce Aidell's "Complete Sausage Making" book --good instructions and a lot of great recipes. I get sausage supplies online at Butcher & Packer, or Eldons Sausage and Jerky supply.

Have fun!

Beezle

I've been making my wife's uncle's Kielbasa recipe for more than 30 years, and I continue to trim more and more fat from the butts I buy. I find that I just don't need it for flavor and when my wife attests to the lower fat content, a lot more people (the ladies) will try it. Once I get them to taste it, they're hooked. And let's face it, we don't need all that fat in our diet. One of the reasons I smoke meat is to melt much of the fat away.

Believe it or not, I have made Polish sausage using pork tenderloin without additional fat and it was a hit -- expensive, but good. As GeiyserQ illustrates, one pound of pork but is enough to flavor 9 pounds of wild game. You do the math -- if the butt is 30 percent fat, you're only adding 2 percent fat to the content (by weight) of the game.

FL Crackers.

Any chance you'd share the Kielbasa recipe ??

So sorry about not getting back here. I;m going to try to give the recipe as it was given to me so many years ago. Good luck making it to your liking. (Hint: there's not a whole lot that can go wrong here.)

I've used fresh marjoram and dried. Can't tell any difference by the time I smoke it, boil it, grill it, or broil it. The Polish way is to boil till cooked through. At this point you can chill or freeze until ready to prepare.

Most will cross cut into 2 inch pieces, place on cookie sheet and bake till warm and casing in crispy. It also works well in stuffing mixes, as a breakfast sausage or with onions and peppers on Hogie rolls.

FRESH POLISH SAUSAGE
(KIELBASA)

INGREDIENTS FOR 100 LBS. INGREDEDIENTS FOR 10 LBS

2 lbs. salt 6 tbsp. salt
8 oz. fresh garlic 6 larg buds fresh garlic
4 oz. coarse black pepper 1 tbsp. coarse black pepper
1 oz. marjoram 1 heaping tsp. marjoram
5 lbs. water 1 lb. ice water (1 pint)

MEAT IN POUNDS

100 lbs boneless pork butts

GRINDING & MIXING

Grind all the pork butts thru a 1/4" of 3/16" grinder plate and place in the mixer. Add all the ingredients and mix well, until all the spices are evenly distributed. Deliver to the stuffer using 40-42 MM hog casing. Hang on smoke sticks spaced properly and let dry in cooler.

NOTE:

Be sure that meat has been chilled between 30-34 degrees F before starting. All blood clots, bones, cords, etc. must be removed and trown out. Do not keep sausage at room temperature any longer than necessary.

2 - Tablespoons = 1 oz. or 1/8th cup
3 - Teaspoons + 1 Tbls. 8 ozs. = 1 cup

_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Lbs. 10 20 25 30 40 50

Pepper_____________________________________________________________________________________________
TBLS 1 2 2.5 3 4 5
OZs. 1/2 1 1.25 1.5 2 2.5

Marjoram________________________________________________________________________
Tsp. 1.5 3 3 4.5 6 7.5
Tbls. 1 1.5 2 2.5
_______________________________________________________________________

SALT
Tbls. 6 12 15 18 24 30
Ozs. 3 6 7.5 9 12 15

Garlic Buds ___________________________________________________________________
6 10 14 18 25 28 or to taste - garlic only

Well, that didn't post as I had layed it out. If you can't figure out where the spaces and columns were supposed to occur, e-mail me and I;ll try to send a Word or Excel doc.

I'm moving this to the new Sausage forum

from top to bottom of list; THANKS!!!
this is the kind of help i need, like i said
i just started making sausage. i have been smoking about 30 years. now that im retired im starting to spread out a little. cowboy action
shooting, smoking,and now sausage!!!!!
thanks again everyone
semper fi dave

Wheelz has asked me for other information re: time, temp, wood and internal temp when cooking my sausage in the casings. My experience is somewhat limited as I have had my 008 for just 13 months. I've probably only made and smoked three batches in this time.

I generally make batches of 8 to 10 pounds, depending on the butts I can get and the trimmed weight when I'm ready to stuff. I rarely smoke more than half of a batch, however. I usually keep the other half "fresh" as many people call it. I will usually par boil the fresh half (5 lbs.), freeze it and when needed, bake/roast it in 2 inch cut pieces. Sometimes you just can't use smoked sausage in a recipe. The old Polish recipes I have call for fresh most of the time.

When I stuff sausage, I'm aiming for around 8 oz. in a 6 inch link; therefore, 1 foot = 1 lb., more or less. If I'm smoking 5 pounds I'm usually looking at around 10 links of sausage which easily fits on one shelf of the 008. I try to coil it with space around each link.

Given that it is only one shelf and I'm mostly a weekend-only smoker, I try to fill the other shelves with additional meats that will fill menus for the next week or two. Guess, I'm suggesting that time and temp is relative to what you might use if it were only sausage. I tend to go with max temp (e.g., 225 - 250) for the first part of a cook to get the smoke going. I find that if I start at 200, I can't get enough smoke before my product is cooked, unless I'm cooking for more than 4 hours.

For sausage, I usually put it in early -- hot and smoky. Then I resist looking at anything for two to two and a half hours. I'm looking more for color in sausage than I am in temp or doneness (is that a word?). If you're like me, you're rarely going to eat five pounds of anything in one sitting. I usually freeze most of it for later. Then later, it usually goes into another recipe (gumbo for example) or I roast it, grill it, or pan sear it before eating which finishes it off (if necessary). Even if I'm serving some the same day I smoke it, there's nothing more likely to get my guests salivating than to smell some smoked sausage finishing off in the oven or on the grill, just prior to their meal.

Probably much more than anyone ever wanted to know about my technique. I'm still learning thru experimentation, so any of your tips and trick will certainly be appreciated as well.