Summer sausage casing

[Big Mike]

Hey I made a 10 pound batch of summer sausage using a 70/30 mix of buffalo meat and bacon ends. I tried Walton’s H summer sausage seasoning with 2.5 Tbsp mustard seed thrown in. I stuffed the Walton’s 12” mahogany casings tight and because I didn’t use ECA I refrigerated the sticks overnight. Using a Masterbuilt 30” digital smoker I followed Walton’s guidelines on slowly heating/smoking them. First the good news, they were perfectly cooked from edges to the center and the flavor was so good I will be hard pressed to try anything else! My only issue was in ice bathing the sticks. I got a fair amount of meat shrinkage away from the casings. Any advice would be greatly appreciated! And fear not; I will suffer through eating my “mistakes”.

[Jonathon]

Big Mike There are a couple of things it could have been, all the 12" Mahogany Casings are all prestuck so it’s not that you were using non stuck casing. Were the casings soaked for 30 minutes in warm water to where they became pliable before you stuffed them? The only other thing I can think of would be fat content of the meat or not enough protein extraction but with either of those probably would have caused fatting out and you would have noticed that on the outside of your meat.

How much Ice did you use and how long were they in there for? If the water wasn’t really cold or if they were only n there for a few minutes then maybe that could have contributed.

[Big Mike]

I soaked the casings for 50 min in warm water, mixed the meat 8 minutes (4 min in each direction) using a mixer then sprinkled the mustard seed in and hand mixed for 2-3 minutes more. I got excellent protein extraction. The sticks were soaked in ice cold water (1/2 ice & 1/2 water) for 30 minutes then patted dry and placed on racks to air dry for one hour. Cases were all nice and tight prior to the ice bath but were wrinkled after the ice bath. Jonathon

[Jonathon]

Big Mike I’m stumped on what could have caused it. Give me a couple of days, I want to talk to someone here but he is out of the office and out of reach for a couple of days.

[Jonathon]

Big Mike Can you send me a picture of the product or are they already all gone? I spoke with someone here and they thought cook schedule and fatting out but your process doesn’t indicate to me that either of these was the issue.

[Parksider]

You may not have stuffed them enough. Sometimes it hard to stuff the larger casings and if it’s not tight the may cause the shrinking during the cooling process. Those cases are extremely durable don’t be afraid to stuff them.

[Parksider]

Sitting at the beach on vacation my mind has time to wander…when you’re done stuffing give them a good twist to compact the meat. I’ve also give up on string tying I use zip ties and yes I wash them most of the time. We have zip tie loops that we’ll zip tie to the casings, makes hanging so much easier then just reuse the loops. That should help with the shrinkage issue.

[Big Mike]

Parksider Thanks. I did all that. I stuffed them tight twisted the tops down tight and secured them with twist ties. I’m going out right now to try again. Thanks for the tips!