Summer Sausage Yesterday

[lkrfletcher]

Tried my hand at summer sausage yesterday.
I ran into a long stall, so decided to finish them off in the sous vide - That worked pretty good, but I think the volume of water was at the limit of my sous vide capability. It took at while to reach the 160 internal temp. It finally made it though, and I think it came out spectacular. Excalibur H seasoning is pretty tasty. Anyway here are a few pics:

[Fat_Bob]

Looking good there Lyn. When should I come take those 3# logs off your hands? LOL

[lkrfletcher]

Fat_Bob

[Fat_Bob]

You just love to torturer me don’t you? LOL New grinder gets here today so will try and break it in Saturday.

[akdave]

I use a deep stainless steel steam table pan on my double propane cooker and have had great results with doing a hot water bath to finish cooking snack sticks and summer sausage. I fill the pan with enough water to cover the product and bring the water to 165 degrees and insert the product. I can get snack sticks from 140 degrees to 165 in 10-20 minutes. The larger the diameter of the product the longer it takes but it is much quicker than in the smoker and you ensure even heat distribution and no burnt/wrinkled areas…

I am also a big fan of putting a large area pan in the bottom shelf of my smoker after the product has reached about 140 degrees and has 3 hours of smoke time and adding 1-2" of boiling hot water in the pan and floating big sponges in the water to raise the humidity and bringing the smoker to 180 degrees and finishing the product in the smoker. This also reduces cooking time and burnt ends on the product but is not as fast as the water bath but is a lot less hassle.

[lkrfletcher]

Fat_Bob

[keend0]

Looks great! I love the idea of smaller diameter casings to better fit crackers.

[Chef]

lkrfletcher That looks amazing. Too bad I’m not on your Christmas list.

[TexLaw]

Those look mighty good. It’s about time I made another batch of Summer sausage, but something keeps getting in the way of my plans.

I let my last batch go pretty slowly. It was something like a 12-14 hour cook, slowly raising the temperature. Since it’s supposed to be a semi-dried product, I was happy to give it a try. In the end, I popped it in sous vide once it hit around 150 or 152. It took all of a half hour to get up to 160. I very much liked the texture and flavor of the final product!