Canadian bacon ham, brown sugar clove allspice cure

Reuben with my 1st pastrami for dinner! Everyone loved it.

Salmon, salt and sugar brined then hot smoked.
Dill Hollandaise sauce with my lemons.
Grilled asparagus and zucchini with lemon and garlic.
Sushi rice, dill style: sprinkled with coriander salt, sugar, vinegar, with turmeric and fresh dill.
Pink Moscato sparkling wine in honor of tonight’s “pink moon”.
Lemons and oranges from my trees.

My polish sausage, hot smoked. Quick seared.
Marianski recipe, 32mm hog casings, frozen pork stock instead of water, 1.5x garlic. Served with Colman’s English mustard.

Brussel sprouts, blanched then face fried in oil til crispy, tossed in balsamic vinegar/brown sugar/coriander-salt syrup.

Mac and cheese: Kraft, but reheated with Queso, cream, truffle salt, cayenne.

Cheery tomato salad with pickling cucumbers and sweet Maui onion with a vinaigrette.

… I was supposed to make Canadian bacon today, bought the loin, then got hungry.

Terry Kostiw
TOO LONG, DIDN’T READ answer: use nonfat dry milk, not whole.

I did a bunch of reading on dry milk over last 2 weeks. There is not much hard data… a LOT of internet posts by folks following recipes, but very little if any I could find from meat scientists. Data from recipe makers is fine, if they ever once ran a test of “make one with dry whole, one with dry nonfat, here are results”, or even just allude to past experience saying they HAD made such batches. But that believable post from a reliable source didn’t exist in the top 500 google hits under various searches (<<turns out google prioritizes general reader content, only once I got links for Dairy Science journals did I find good info). I’m sure many experienced sausage makers have done it, they just aren’t posting about it much. Maybe because every recipe already directs the use of non-fat, so they figure it’s covered? Don’t know.

Here is what I found, reading posts on the chemistry.

1. Dry milk, while vs. Non fat-- USE THE NONFAT. The binding comes from the sugar lactose, which in nonfat makes up 50% of the product. Other components can be milk are 35 % proteins like caseinate, also a good binder and emulsifier.
   The “binding” comes from ability to hold water without it breaking loose at cooking temps. The fat binding comes from fat being coated in these protein water structures and held in place, apparently by a loose bond to the lactose-water structure and milk proteins, though this bond was just referred to, I haven’t seen any writeups on the molecular structure or bonding sites.
   –the two references I read on milk fat said the included fat took up bonding from the meat fats, and reduced the efficiency of the meat fat bonding
   – also mentioned, milk fat soft at room temps, did not survive the bond at cooking temps. No chemistry shown for that one.
   – lastly was the rancidity issue, apparently granulating and drying milk fat massively exposes it to O2 and leads to easy oxidation, and difficulty of storage in normal bags and for lengthy times.

2. My main interest was actual data showing a difference between “hi temp dry milk” sold by sausage makers, and “low temp dry milk”, normal stuff sold in all stores. Difference being production temperatures of 130ish vs. 160ish. It is said the low temp common version doesn’t bind sausage as well, leading to some posters saying not at all. Apparently preheat temperature prior to spray drying process changes the product protein structures, or nature of lactose. I’m sure there is a study in the meat science literature but I haven’t found it yet… (edit, found some good research, will post below)

Anyways, sorry for long answer, your question just happened to coincide with a curent research interest;) I use a lot of dry milk for weekly yogurt, like you I’m wondering if I can just stock one version.

Cinco de Mayo!
Pork Butt on smoker, brown sugar/cumin/garlic rub, half for pulled pork and half diced up for carnitas.
Corn tortillas, guacamole, fresh pico de gallo, queso fresca. White sweet corn. Bud Lime with limes. Lime cilantro cole slaw.

Made some Branston Pickle for Christ.as gifts this year. If you’ve been to England, you’ll recognize this ubiquitous brown vegetable chutney that is served with sausages, cheese, meats etc. Indeed, if you ask anyone for a pickle in the UK, this is what they will hand you. I will post a full recipe and notes in a separate thread sometime soon, but saw this thread and wanted to share my most recent canning / pickle project.

Started a pork loin for Canadian bacon today, 7lbs. My first try at this.
Read a ton of different recipes. Was going to go with the pumped brine method in Marianski’s Home Production book, even bought a good injection pumper from Walton’s. That is a liquid brine, pump meat to 110% it’s start weight with brine, and soak in brine. But it is done brining in 5 days, and keeps getting saltier after that… and I will be on a trip unable to finish it then.

So I went with a dry rub or dry brine, using just the correct amount of salt etc, an “equilibrium brine”. Eric at 2guysandacooler youtube channel uses that method almost exclusively. Since I had a video of his to reference for good results with the recipe, I used his.

Read some outstanding dry brine research by former Bell Labs director Greg Blonder on rates of salt and nitrate penetration, final chemical distribution, etc, at genuineideas dot com if anyone us interested in some clever science, processhead mrobisr .

In 14 days or so I will smoke to 155 IT and see how it is!

Made my first smoked sausage after doing breakfast and Italian. Couple weeks ago. Have made various fresh chorizo and Italian mixes before with food processors.
Went with the hot smoked Polish sausage from Marianski book, 5kg/11 lbs, 12 lbs after water. Turned out fantastic, awesome authentic taste. Zero problems.

Ground meat with my 1hp Meat! #22 grinder, 10mm plate for meat and 4.5mm plate for fat. Used pork butt, but cut off most fat for separate grind. It was 4kg meat, 1kg fat. Mixed in 20lb mixer from Meat!, exact same as Walton one just different branding, 10 min or so to excellent protein extraction. Used vitamin c ascorbic acid as accelerant.

I used hog casings on sleeve from LEM. Used my grinder to stuff the 32mm cases to 12-14 inch. That wasn’t as easy as it could be, grinder came with plastic tubes with cone shape, made getting cases onto tube difficult. I also linked as I stuffed, next time I will stuff one rope then link after, would have been much faster.

Living in AZ, sausage was pretty dry to start. To achieve temperature schedule with my Traeger I did this:

1. Dry. I tossed links in convection oven on proof setting, around 120, with door open, for 30 min to dry. Could tell meat was really cured nice at end, I checked a couple and retied ends.
2. Smoke. Put all 12 lbs on Traeger on 2 levels, main plus a rack 2in higher I use for jerky. Turned on “smoke” start setting, lots of smoke generated and temp gradually rises. Average is 140 for 45 min or so, then rose to 160 to 180 after it began heating up metal.
3. Cook, on lowest setting after Smoke, which is 180f. Luckily it was a cold evening and smoker held 175 to 180f. About 90 min, total time 2+15.
4. Tossed in ice water to stop cooking and chill, 10min.
5. Storage. Bagged in gallon ziplocks bulk, froze. Vacuum sealed next day in smaller quantities of 4 or 5.

Lessons Learned.

1. Grinder stuffing is poor. Your wonderful texture and fat chunks get a bit smeared. Doesn’t feed much and gets smeared by worm drive, if you’re not pressing down on pestle. This makes one man stuffing very hard. I ended up turning grinder off after every link so it wouldnt smear while trying to get more meat into feed tube. So I did a link, off, made link, filled feed with sausage mix, grinder back on… yeah it worked but…
2. You guessed it, I immediately bought a 15 lb sausage stuffer. I liked design from Meat! Better than anything from LEM or here. No vertical feed pipe to hold a lot of meat, 100% steel gears, rated for small tube 10mm and snack sticks, wider than others so not as unwieldy tall, better hydraulics on area ratios.
3. I can only do 1 batch on Traeger then off and cool down. This time, I also made German brats while this was smoking. Unfortunately I put them on after Traeger had gotten up to 180, think I ended up with a bit of fat out on that 2nd batch. I will write that up separate, it was also a bit of a Hunter brat with 2 parts pork to 1 part venison to 1.6 parts pork fat.

So now I’m looking for a lower temp smoker
Sausage was great, have used for gumbo and cheese trays, kids love it!

First try of Willies seasoning, snack sticks. I really love the flavor, I’m a huge pepperoni fan and this is dang close. I think this may be my keeper flavor!

7.3 lb meat block of which 1480g venison, 400g pork fat, 900g ground beef 80/20, and 650 ml or so ice water. I ended up using more water than expected, 23%.

processhead calldoctoday
He said the f***m softeare guys had a filter in to disallow “asp” which is a file extension for an active html document that can allow scripting from another server. They should have been filtering for “.asp”, and they fixed it super quick when he talked to them.

That bacon looks great

gus4416 kyle Mcjagger thx guys. I watched a ton of youtube and google hits, and there were some pretty crazy recipes. I bought all 5 kinds of pepperoni I could find at store, cut them up and kept tasting… the spices in this recipe seemed like what I was tasting mostly. More importantly is spidey had tried it a few times, so his experience was convincing.

This next step with the epoxy floor is what I’ve been looking forward to seeing, being able to spray it down if needed will be such a help. It’s really coming along great!

Tex_77 really nice looking brisket, great trim job.

Spidey said ok to post his recipe, so here it is in amounts per 1000g or 1kg of meat, where spices are in grams. Move the decimal 1 to left to get %, so 2.5g is 0.25% of a 1000g meat block.
500g ground beef
500g ground pork
13 g salt, 1.3%
2.5g pepper black
2.5g pepper white
1.4g ground mustard
2.4g crushed toasted fennel
2.0 g anise, toasted
2.0 g garlic powder
2.4 g sugar
3.3 g paprika
2.6 g crushed red pepper
1.5 g cayenne pepper
10% water, so 100ml

I also added:
20g NonFat Dry Milk, so 2% as binder
4.2 g MSG, so 0.42%. Little less than recommended on Accent bottle, about 2/3.

These all started as whole T and t, so these wierd grams are just what that weighed out to. It’s easy to make a mistake typing all the actual grams divided by 3585g meat block, but pretty sure I did these right, they are all in the 1 to 3 gram per kg meat usage region Marianski recommends for all these in his book usage charts. I had to start with tsp then convert by 1.5 for my larger recipe, then weigh… so, if you see something off it’s possible, let me know
However, you could easily cut a spice in half or add 50% and I think you’d still be in ballpark.

Spidey recipe actually doubles the black pepper, red pepper, and cayenne, for the hot version. My personal taste, I wouldn’t try that until doing regular version, which I think is pretty spicy already. Even as a kimchee eating hot Thai food loving guy

Deepwoodsbutcher thx for your great info, I am sure your experience on these things is way better, and I don’t question it at all. I just thought it worth double checking with you since it’s so easy to do a typo on %s, and not that many folks write out recipes in that format, and it seemed light.
Your commercial experience makes me always
take notice of your amounts, and I wanted to be sure, thx for confirming
k
Your comments on why that might be and how flakes are used in commercial blends were very informative, thanks. The only flakes I’ve used were from dried jalapeno peppers from garden.

Made some pepperoni sticks today, also did a separate writeup on bragging board with details. I got this very good recipe from Spidey , many thanks!

I made some pepperoni sticks, cooked them up today. I had grinder and stuffer out for another stick last night, so ground up meat, mixed, stuffed, and cured 20hrs.

You can see color is good, but not orange like commercial guys get adding oleoresin of paprika. And there was a lot of red pepper, cayenne, and paprika in these.

I got this recipe from Spidey , many thanks to him. After a month or so researching pepperoni recipes on google, youtube, blogs etc, his recipe looked the best for the flavors I like and authenticity. He told me he was going to convert Tbs and tsp into grams and %, and I did that while measuring stuff out. If he doesn’t mind me posting his recipe here, I can post it up as % of meat block and grams spices per kg meat.

Meat was 42% lean beef cross rib, 51% pork butt, and 7% pork fat from butt. All ground 4.5mm.

Spidey gave me a hot and medium version, I did the medium. It is still pretty darn hot, and very good. I buy that Hormel pepperoni in the 1lb bags as a standard snack, and I wouldn’t go any hotter than this.

I was first going to do a citric acid test on some sticks, then couldn’t figure amounts out, so I went pepperoni. By the time I was mixing, I decided I didn’t want to add F-LC culture and ferment 24 hours, as it wasn’t going to be 100f in Phoenix last night. So I just let them cure overnight, then light cherrywood smoke at 160f for 2 hours, then 180f until 160 internal temp. Took 3.5 hrs.

Cut, bagged in 1 layer, sucked out air with a straw, ice bath 40 min, then out to dry.

These have a pretty decent pepperoni flavor with a lot of the anise and fennel I like. They are hot enough from red pepper you wouldn’t eat 5 of them…ok, I just did, so 6…7… nevermind

I made some with 21mm FRESH collagen casings I had left on tube from kabanosy making. Then I did rest with 19mm smoked collagen. Both using a 1/2" outer diameter stainless tube, or 12.7mm. My thoughts are that the 19mm case has a bit more snap, the fresh 21mm bites like there is no casing almost. Both worked excellent. If I was linking them or hanging, I’d go with the smoked collagen as the fresh is a bit delicate if stuffed full. I caused 2 blowouts trying to link it after stuffing and had to tie those off, the case gets more tender as it sits and takes up water.

You can see the 21mm fresh at front of left tray below, and that there isn’t a lot of difference.

Other casing size notes since I bought all sizes to test and have now made meat sticks with them all:

1. I like 16mm smoked the best, it’s just a very nice slim jim size and not too much of a meal so to speak. However, there are several downsides: you must use a 10mm tube, you must add maybe 2x the water to get it to stuff, and it makes a huge length that rapidly eats up your smoker floorspace. Not sure it is worth it.
2. 19mm smoked, not as slim as I like but probably the best to use. Still a good stick size, can use 12.7mm i.e. half inch tube so much easier stuff. I didn’t have any problem sliding a sleeve onto the tube, nor any grabbing during the stuff, it’s about perfect. You can use normal recipe water amounts, so you don’t have to dry as long. More meat per foot, so you can fit it all on smoker. Strong enough to hang, and link nice.
3. 21mm fresh. I got these for breakfast sausage and to replicate sheep casings. But to me 21mm is a bit larger than normal breakfast size. In any case, I love these. They hold up enough for laying flat in smoker, way easier than sheep casings, very tender bite where you almost can’t tell casing is there. Almost as big as a skinny hot dog, those are likely 23mm. Also, I fried up some in a pan and liked it, very breakfast sausauge browning.

Hope this is helpful to some

RafterW pretty amazing find, that will serve you well!