Lebanon Bologna Recipe - Specialty Sausage 102

[Jonathon]

Lebanon Bologna Recipe

What Is Lebanon Bologna?

Lebanon Bologna was originally made by the Pennsylvania Dutch in the 1800s. Traditionally it is a dark bologna, similar to salami in appearance and texture, and it has a tangy flavor. It is often eaten as cold cuts, and it can be slow cured and cold smoked or smoked using more modern methods. We are going to be making a version today that will not be slow-cured or cold-smoked, as that makes it more difficult for the average home user.

Meat Block

7 lb of Untrimmed Pork Butts
3 lb of Lean Beef
1 Bag of Lebanon Bologna Seasoning
1 10 lb Capacity Bologna Casing
1 Bag of Sure Gel
Sodium Erythorbate

Equipment

Walton’s #12 Meat Grinder
Walton’s 11 lb Sausage Stuffer
Walton’s 20 lb Meat Mixer

Process

If you can, you should cut the fat off of your pork and grind your pork fat separately through a 3/16th plate twice. Then, grind your beef and lean pork through a 3/8 plate and then through a 1/8 plate. Keep ground pork fat separate. Making sure EVERYTHING, but especially your pork fat, is cold before you grind it is very important here for particle definition.

Meat Mixing

Place lean meat in the mixer. While mixing, add Lebanon Bologna seasoning, Sure Cure, and Ice Cold Water. Mix for 5 minutes. Add ground fat trim and sodium erythorbate and mix for 3 more minutes. Lastly, if you are using Encapsulated Citric Acid, add it during the last 60 seconds of mixing. If you add the Encapsulated Citric Acid too soon, you could break the encapsulation and release the acid into the meat too soon.

Sausage Stuffing

Stuff your meat into fibrous casings that have been soaked for at least an hour in water that is 80 - 100°, so the casings are pliable. These casings are tough and durable, so don’t worry about blowouts; just stuff them fully but make sure to leave enough room to get a hog ring on the open end. When stuffing larger diameter casings, it is important to choose the largest of the stuffing tubes that your casing will fit over and make sure you are gripping it nice and tight; we want these casings packed nice and solid.

Note

You can also use Non-Edible Collagen casings; we chose this as it had the capacity we wanted, and it presented the product well.

Thermal Processing & Smoking

To smoke, start them out at 125° for 1 hour, then 140° for 1 hour, then 165° for an hour, and finally at 180° until the internal temperature reaches 155°.

Cooling

Place in an ice bath or shower for 20 minutes to bring the temperature back down and then hold at room temperature for 2 hours, then move to a cooler or freezer before vacuum packing. I let this sit in a refrigerator overnight before slicing it to make sure the temperature was brought all the way down.

Wrap-Up

All in all, this is very similar to making a salami or even a summer sausage; the main differences are separating out the pork fat from your lean and using the correct ratio, seasoning, and casings. The fried Bologna sandwiches were very good!

Additional Tips

• Removing the fat cap before you break down your pork butt is easier sometimes; it all depends on how it looks before you start cutting into it.
• I put very little smoke on this as I didn’t want that to dominate the taste, so I filled my smoke tray about 1/4 of the way full. I am glad I did it this way, as it allowed for the Lebanon taste to come through more.

Other Notes

I added X-Tra Hot Red Pepper to this to help give it a nice zip and to cut some of the sweetness. I used it at a ratio of 3 oz per 100 lb of meat, and since I was doing 10 lb, that means I used .3 of an oz.

Watch WaltonsTV: Specialty Sausage 102: Making Lebanon Bologna

Shop waltonsinc.com for Cured Sausage Seasoning

Shop waltonsinc.com for Meat Grinders

Shop waltonsinc.com for High-Temp Cheese

[woodduck]

A suggestion for all the recipes you post.

In this case you are making a 10 lb Lebanon Bologna.

Please include in the directions the correct amounts of Seasoning, cure, etc for the size being made.

The listing above of needed material lists the Lebanon Bologna seasoning pack, but this pack is for 25 lbs meat. It would be extremely helpful to include this information in the directions that accompany the posting/video.

I know that there is a chart for breaking it down, but why have to go to another spot for that information.

Thanks, great job.

[Jonathon]

woodduck We did that on a few of the smaller batch videos we made but that caused some confusion. Maybe I can come up with a separate section within the posts that shows the divided out amount of seasonings and additives I used for that video. I’ll play around with it and see if I can come up with something!

[woodduck]

That would really help, possible make it show 1 or 5 lb batches.

I think that is what most of us will be producing, Not sure what I would do if I made a 25 lb batch of anything.

[Parksider]

woodduck That’s what I said a few years ago when I bought a 5# vertical stuffer…we’ll never do that much to need anything bigger. Next thing you know you find some more friends and we don’t make runs less than 25# now other than to test new flavors…Biggest batch ever was 200# of chili dogs! Typical is 25#-50# batches of whatever we’re making. It’s a slippery slope my friend, be careful!!!

[jeb37355]

Why do you use a majority of pork in this video? Lebanon bologna is a beef bologna.

[Jonathon]

jeb37355 That is a personal preference honestly, I am way happier with sausages of any kind that are made of at least 50% pork, but honestly 100% is more what we do. Pork fat has qualities such as creaminess, appearance, and low taste that beef fat can’t match.