1oldfart Don’t worry about that. Part of that could be how much water (if any) the belly was pumped with before you got it.
Is the cured meat I have safe to use?
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Several weeks ago, I mixed some venison, pork, and fat for snack sticks. I added the seasoning and curing salts. About halfway through stuffing the casings, I ran out of casings. So, I bagged the cured meat and put it into my freezer. Can I warm it up and finish stuffing the sausage casing with that meat?
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KS deer hunter Your biggest issue is going to be that the meat will have set up during that time. Once you start mixing the proteins will start to bind together and if you let that sit for any amount of time they will be very difficult to stuff. Yu can try it, it isn’t going to hurt anything as long as you stop if the meat just will not stuff…so I take that back, you could hurt your stuffer! From a food safety standpoint though you should be good to go.
if you cannot stuff it then just use it as a loose sausage, no need to toss it. and welcome to the board! *** edit, welcome to the community, sorry PapaSop
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As Jonathon says, I would suggest thawing in the refrigerator and then stuffing. It should be perfectly safe to consume after normal smoking. What you may find is that the thawed meat is pretty firm though, and may take extra effort to run through your stuffer.
To make stuffing easier, you could stuff with a larger tube into a slightly larger casing and make fatties. -
I know snack sticks are thinner, but one thing I always do if I run out of casings when making summer sausage (mahogany casings) or kielbasa (with hog casings) is simply make the rest into loaves and smoke them right along with the cased product. They always turn out great and often have me second-guessing why I’m even casing anything.
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I don’t have answers for your question but welcome there is allways answers here and good reliable ones so welcome to the community and go blue
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You can use a jerky gun for the rest.
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Thank you for the quick answers!!! I appreciate it. Could adding more water help with the consistency?
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KS deer hunter
Welcome to the community. I’m not sure if adding water would help but if I was having trouble stuffing, I would take a 1 or 2 pound sample and add a 1/2 to 1 ounce of water and try it. Worse case scenario, would be I form it into a loaf and have to try and cook the extra water out. Definitely thaw in the fridge. -
bocephus Team Orange Power User Canning Masterbuilt Regular Contributors Veteran New Mexico Sous Vide last edited by
KS deer hunter Welcome aboard. If this ever happens again, you could try running it out of your stuffer without casings and smoke that way much like extruded jerky.
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I did the same thing and wound up cutting the “meat blob” into patties and frying them in the skillet…470
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Denny O Iowa Regular Contributors Cast Iron Sous Vide Canning Green Mountain Grill Power User last edited by
bocephus OR even as a round shape and fry them as a caseless little sizzler sausage too just in a larger diameter casing.
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cdavis Team Blue Masterbuilt Canning Kamado Joes Regular Contributors Power User Sous Vide Oklahoma last edited by
KS deer hunter welcome aboard
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As an epilogue, since that batch of meat was my very first try at sausage making, that batch of meat was not very well mixed. Hence, after full defrost, I was able to mix it better, add some more water and I was able to stuff it in snack stick casings. It all turned out great. Yesterday we smoked it. It was not bad for my first try. Now I have to wait for the fall deer season…
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KS deer hunter Awesome job! Glad you are pleased with your 1st try, it’ll get better/easier and eventually it will be like second nature.
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KS deer hunter Good job on staying with it and finishing your first batch.
Like Jonathon says, it will just get easier from here on out. -
Sausage maker’s, old school, has been using finished sausage temperature to be 152-155 F for years. Where did the magic number 160F come from?
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Fred Jensen said in Is the cured meat I have safe to use?:
Sausage maker’s, old school, has been using finished sausage temperature to be 152-155 F for years. Where did the magic number 160F come from?
Safety margin for all the amature sausage makers with inaccurate thermometers and inconsistent temperatures in their smokers.
I test my thermometers and smoker, so I go with the temps you listed. -
Fred Jensen It is the moment of what is called instant lethality, where the very second it hits that temperature everything we are concerned about is dead. Like posted above the time/temp (also know as appendix a) is what a lot of people use. Now, it also depends on how much moisture you want in your product, if you like a semi-dried sausage then cooking all the way up to 160 will also give you a drier product.
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processhead Checking calibration of your probe temperature gauge. Boilng water is about 212F and freezing is about 32F. I take my gauge by putting it in boiling water and then in ice water packed with ice cubes. If your really fusy buy an ASTM thermometer. This is a universal thermometer used to check all thermometers. The high-end thermometers can be calibrated. If you can’t calibrate your thermometer and it’s out of range throw it away.
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Jonathon thank you for your expertise. I’m looking back in time to before the German war when sausage makers choose the best temperatures for their sausage meat and their spices. Then came the war. Polish people, Jews, and others were terminated. We almost lost the sacred recipes of the past. Government agencies were in charge of what meats, spices, and temperatures were allowed. For a long time, you were only allowed pork in making kielbasa garlic sausage. Later you were allowed some beef as the story goes. If you added other ingredients it was not considered a certain sausage type. You could rename it like “Jon’s Sausage” for instance.
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