To cure or not to cure?
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I have been making link sausage for about 8 years and decided to add summer sausage and snack sticks this year. I’ve never used pre-made seasoning.
I ordered willies snack stick seasoning, German sausage seasoning, and H summer sausage seasoning; any tips? Do I need to add cure to the sausage? We will make German sausage, summer sausage and snack sticks then cold smoking using oak.
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Rafter3 That all depends on how you are going to cook it and what you want it to be like. Cure is added for a few reasons but the #1 i too keep your meat safe through the smoking process. When we smoke sausage we are creating the perfect environment for Botulism. The meat is going to be in the danger zone (40-140°F) for hours, so not curing it is a bad idea. However, you mentins link sausage. If you are going to treat your product like a fresh/breakfast sausage then the cure isn’t necessary. Cure also is responsible for helping set a nice pinkish red hue to the meat and gives meat a cured meat flavor.
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Jonathon
Thank you for your reply, you answered my question.So there isn’t cure included in the seasonings I mentioned? I’ve always added cure to my sausages, I just was unsure if this seasoning had it included.
Any tips on making summer sausage? This will be my first time making it.
Thanks
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Rafter3 There are only 1 or 2 seasonings that we sell that actually have the cure mixed in, the vast vast majority of them have the cure in a separate package that will be included but is in its own small bag. The exceptions to that rule is some of the fast pack stuff and honestly that is almost exclusively bought by commercial processors.
For summer sausage the best thing to do would be to watch all of https://meatgistics.waltonsinc.com/category/40/cured-sausage if you have time. If you don’t then watch/read:
https://meatgistics.waltonsinc.com/topic/765/cured-sausage-104-casings-for-summer-sausage
https://meatgistics.waltonsinc.com/topic/762/cured-sausage-107-basics-for-making-summer-sausage
https://meatgistics.waltonsinc.com/topic/1099/cured-sausage-205-advanced-thermal-processing
https://meatgistics.waltonsinc.com/topic/1108/cured-sausage-206-advanced-cured-sausage-processingPay special attention to the 205 thermal processing. Pulling it at 130° and finishing in 177° water is going to cut hours off of your processing. It can be a little intimidating to try on your 1st batch though. If you want to get comfortable with the process first then just watch the 104 and 107.
Quick tips would be, use sure gel meat binder, use Encapsualted Citric Acid as a cure accelerator and tang adder (if you don’t like tang then stuff before holding overnight) and finally be patient with your smoke schedule. It is easy to get frustrated during the stall and just up the temp on the smoker but that can cause issues.
