Cellulose Casing Question

[TCost]

This is my first time using cellulose (made 10lbs of hotdogs), I’m just wondering if they’re safe to smoke on my weber kettle? Has anyone here done this before? Ive seen people say they smoke hotdogs anywhere from 170ish-225ish, but Im not even sure I could hold lower than 200 degrees on the kettle and the I’m worried the casings would fail at the higher end of that range?

[Denny O]

Cold smoke for a bit then use your kitchen oven to achieve a lower temp if you cannot keep the 22"er that low.

[Jonathon]

TCost This is a good question! Yes, they have a max cooking temp of 180° and will NOT be suitable for your Webber if it can’t stay in that range. I don’t know what would happen above that range but this is why we point out the max temp on the product pages at waltons.com for cellulose casings. Do them in your oven, or something else that will stay in that range.

Also, welcome to the community, good 1st post!

[cdavis]

TCost welcome aboard.

[calldoctoday]

TCost It can be done, but it would be a pretty athletic endeavor. I have done it with something very similar, a long, long time ago. I have really messed some stuff up at times when doing it too. You will never want to use any direct heat from it, which then leaves you with limitations on how much room you have to smoke. Then for some of the initial very cool smoke, you may want to just use a very, very minimal amount of hot coal & probably a smoke box of some sort. You will be doing a lot of moving around, making hot coal outside the unit & adding it in, smoke box firing, etc. Controlling your temps & finding room for your product at the same time will be your challenge. PS: Welcome aboard & welcome to the neighborhood.

[TCost]

Hey thanks everyone! I thought I posted an update already but mustve misclicked haha. I ended up doing them for about 2 hours on the kettle, but I found it tough to get them over 150° without getting too hot. So it was a decent amount of smoke around 150° then switched to the oven as Jonathon mentioned! They came out having a really good flavor and colour, but soooo dry!! I think I messed up with my mix (80/20 Venison/pork belly), and shouldve had alot more fat in there I guess. I tried to keep it lighter on the pork because I always rather the wild meat stand out in sausages etc…but it probably wouldve helped a lot. Oh well, a solid learning attempt! Now I have 60 dry hotdogs to eat for a few months hahaha

[Jonathon]

TCost Yeah, if you were 80% venison and 20 % pork belly then you were down in the 6% fat range which is pretty low. It can still taste ok at that level but it is going to be very dry. Glad you saw it through and thanks for the update!

[bocephus]

TCost That’s the nice part, we usually get to eat our mistakes and learn from them and try again til we get it right.