Smoking Sausage

Hi nichboy,

What kinda sausage are you making? Summer sausage, smoked brats, polish?

Are you putting a cure, such as TQ, in it?

Need some more info in order to advise 1 way or da udder.

I guess you would call it a polish sausage. It has ground pork shoulder and spices inserted in casing. Doesn't call for any cure.

Nichboy

If you are planning on making fresh sausage, then freeze after stuffing into the casing. If you plan on cold smoking (i.e. smoke cured) then you need to use Tender Quick mixed in with your meat and seasoning mix.

You can always hot smoke your fresh sausage to fully cook it either before freezing, or after thawing hot smoke to go direct to the table.

That sounds like want i want to do, hot smoke to fully cook before freezing. How long, what temp and amount of wood.

If you are going to smoke it....use a cure.Otherwise you are looking at conditions condusive to food poinoning.If you use Tenderquick then cut back on the salt since it has salt.

I would use Modern Cure,available from a butcher shop.Add 2 tsp. for every 10 lbs. of meat.

Set the smoker at 175 degrees....put in sausage for 1/2 hour,no smoke until casings are dry.Smoke will not penetrate wet casings.I smoke for 1 hour2-3 ounces of wood is plenty.Any longer and you will be burping smoke.Leave in smoker till temp hits 150 or transfer to your oven.

Here's a link for you nichboy. Its pretty good instructions to follow until you tweek your own method and recipe. Just hit the "pol/kielbasa" button or scroll down to it.

recipe/ method

You can omit the 2 tsp of curing salt and use 1 1/2 tsp of TQ per lb. of ground meat. But like Ken W says, do the math and readjust the amount of salt called for. The recipe shown calls for 2 tsp of curing salt and 4 TBS of salt. For TQ that would be 15 tsp (or 5 TBS) so you would refrain from adding the table or koshar salt to the recipe.

That's the route I have taken when using TQ and havent killed anyone yet!

NOTE: if you have no intentions of using any type of cure then my suggestion would be to stuff and freeze. Smoke it after thawing as you need it.

The reason for this is that in order to keep the sausage from being in the danger zone too long you'll have to smoke at a hire temp such as 200+. This will render alot of fat. When you go to freeze, thaw, & reheat you will have a dry product. Also, by not using a cure you wont get that pink look people associate with smoked sausage. It wont be as eye appealing!

My opinion......any smoked sausage should be cured in order to do the job right and produce the tastiest product.

Hope we helped a little!