I have built a few electric smokers over the years, but have not done any recently.
My old upright freezer died a couple of weeks ago, and it has the makings of a pretty decent meat smoker, I think.
It is insulated of course, and has a metal interior. The door shelving is plastic and would need to go. That could be replaced with sheet metal.

I don’t really NEED another meat smoker, but I have a hard time resisting the urge to hack.

I put it up to the community for a vote: Thumbs up: meat smoker. Thumbs down: landfill.

I reserve ultimate veto power. lol

The pay-off.
This afternoon I arrowed this guy. He did me the courtesy of going down within sight of my stand. Since I am colorblind and a poor blood trailer, this really helps out.

Just posting some pictures of recent deer butchering.
The deer was shot 36 hours ago and field dressed at that time. The carcass hung overnight in 28 degree outdoor temperatures and was just starting to freeze in some of the smaller parts.
The following morning (24 hours ago) I skinned it, cut out the back straps and quartered it before carrying it home and putting it in the refrigerator.
At this point, all the quarters and trim on this doe that fit in a single heaping full meat lug. As a point of comparison, the buck I shot earlier filled up 2 and 1/2 meat lugs.
This morning I broke down the hind quarters as pictured. There are many methods for doing this. Some guys will even bone out the entire deer while it is still hanging.
I am not really set up for that and do better with more conventional methods that allow me to work as much as I want and then take a break for a while.
Everyone has a process they like. This one work pretty good for me. YMMV.

Here is picture with the pelvis, femur, and shank bone removed from the hindquarter.

Next is a picture of the main muscle groups separated from the hindquarter.

Next is a picture of the muscle groups with some of the silverskin, larger tendons, and most of the fat trimmed.

This is normally where I stop with hind quarter roasts. The shank meat on the far left goes in with the sausage trimmings meat.
The hind quarter roasts are wrapped and frozen, ready for use as pastrami meat, or whole muscle jerky projects.

Next up are whole back straps as trimmed off the hanging deer carcass. Also pictured below are the inner or “Hanging tenders” tenderloins. Probably the most delicious and tender part of a deer. They are delicate an dry out quickly. Best removed immediately while field dressing. These got removed the following morning and are already beginning to darken on the exposed side.

Not too much to do here. Trim off some silver skin and then I slice into chunks about the right size for cooking or grilling for two people. I use a fillet knife to get most of the outer silverskin off. I like to leave primals in the largest size possible and do all final slicing prior to cooking. My theory is that uncut meat just freezes and store better.

Next they get vacuum sealed, dated and labeled.

Front should deboning: I left the bone in the shanks for some osso buco . The rest gets boned out, fat and blood shot trimmed away and reserved for sausage or other grinding.
One of the shoulder blades took a direct hit from my arrow (2-blade Rage mechanicals tip). The arrow passed through the should blade bone, caught the top of the onside lung, took out the offside lung, and passed through the off-side rib cage. I am always checking the wound channels on deer I take, but won’t be posting pictures in the interest of decorum.

Fried softshell crab and shrimp. Collard greens, fresh cucumber salad, and killer homemade bread.

I am talking about cleaning and sanitation. (Yawn). Before you fall asleep or move on, here is why I am kind of OCD about cleaning. I spent a few years working Summers in the family sausage business. Cleaning and sanitation is HUGE, and literally can mean the difference between staying open or being shut down at an inspected commercial processing plant.

For most home processors, keeping our equipment and work space clean is about improving flavor, quality, and shelf life of the products you make. It also is about food safety, and making products that don’t have dangerous food-borne pathogens that could make you or others sick. Just because you cooked a product up to 160 degrees, does not mean it can’t make someone sick. Last of all, clean and well maintained equipment just works better.

When you think about cleaning work surfaces, start to think about anything that could directly or indirectly make contact with the meat. That includes your hands, by the way.

Anyone who has made sausage has probably observed how dried emulsified meat is like glue and is a real pain to get off of equipment. If you are working alone, do yourself a favor and as soon as you are finished with a piece of equipment, or a processing tub, rinse off the big chunks with the hottest water you have. Hot water is one of the best things I have found that can melt the fat and loosen the protein from surfaces. If the water is too hot for your hands, wear disposable rubber gloves.

Once you have the chunks off, you can go back later when you are all finished and scrub the rest off with a soap, hot water, and minimal effort to finish the clean up. Once the heavy gunk has dried on, it is much more difficult to remove.

Another thing that simplifies clean up is to use a plastic scraper to remove all the excess meat off of equipment before wash down. This does a couple of things: It reduces the amount of cleaners required and keeps the meat out of your sink or wash basin. In general, meat and fat in your drains is going to lead to problems sooner or later

If you are working with helpers, it can greatly simplify cleaning if someone can start washing down a piece of equipment as soon as you are done using it for the day. This allows the clean up to start before any meat residue begins to dry and reduces the time and effort involved. Depending on your processing area, you probably can use the space created by cleaning up and putting away dirty equipment sooner rather than later.
My favorite cleaner is a strong alkaline cleaner called Greased Lightening and it cuts fat and even smoke house/grill residue better than most other normal house-hold cleaners.
After you get everything cleaned up and dried, figure out a storage system that keeps it clean till the next time you use it. Equipment stored out in the open on the shelf in the garage or basement is going to accumulate dirt and grunge. Store your clean equipment in a tote with a lid or cover it with plastic film till you are ready to use it again.

Kind of just scratching the surface here. There have been whole books written on the topic of cleaning and sanitation. Would be interested to hear some of your own cleaning tricks.

Photo of my small removable equipment parts after wash down. The big stationary items have to be washed down on the carts and tables they operate on.

Didn’t cook them (cuz they are raw). But man they were good.

Recently came into a used faucet set with a nice sprayer attachment.
Look out, dirty equipment!

A couple of buddies and I made braunschweiger yesterday. The meat block was venison liver, pork snouts, pork shoulder and pork fat.
After a coarse grind, all the ingredients were mixed and run through a fine grinder plate. Then the mix was put back into the freezer for an hour to drop the temperature prior to running it through the bowl chopper.
This is absolutely the messiest recipe to work with and the mix will get everywhere you don’t want it. Lots of hand and equipment washing just to keep from getting all that livery goodness everywhere!

Bún Thịt Nướng tonight. As is usually the case, my dear wife did all the hard work and I helped with the grilling.
Slices of marinated pork loin, and sliced Nem Chua cured sour pork sausage, cooked hot and fast on the grill served over a bed of rice noodles, bean sprouts, fresh mint, green onion sauteed in bacon fat, chopped lettuce, nuoc cham , and peanuts.

Once every couple of years I like to make some jaternice (pronounced eater-nit-see).
WTH is that, you ask?
Every culture has a few sausage types intended for using up the leftovers from hog butchering. Eastern Europeans and specifically the Czech’s version of this sausage is jaternice.
For a lot of people, these sausages, and their ingredients, were considered “cheap cuts” and food that people of modest means ate. True, but they were also nutritious, tasty, and wholesome.

In various parts of the Midwest, Czech immigrants settled, and brought their sausage making traditions with them. Traditionally made of pork offal, pork head meat, a cereal, and seasoning, jaternice is considered an uncured cooked liver sausage that is ready-to-eat. It can be served cold, or heated and browned in a skillet (my favorite). It makes a nice breakfast meat served with eggs and toast.
Served cold it has a firm texture from all the natural gelatin in the head meat. When it is heated, it has a loose pudding-like texture.
Our family grew up eating and liking foods like this which we made in the family sausage business.
Here are pictures of how I dit it.
Ingredients: Pork snouts, pork liver, pork butt, bread and seasoning.

The liver is poached for 10 minutes and the other meats are simmered for 2 hours.
Unrelated Bonus Question: What do diving pigs look like when they come up for air?

The cooked meats are allowed to cool, cubed up and ground.

The bread is cubed up and mixed with the ground meats, seasonings, and kettle broth.

After mixing, I stuffed in large hog casings and tied them into rings. Cooking was done in a large meat lug using 180 degree water until an I.T. of 152 degrees was reached.
This was followed by a cold water bath and refrigerating overnight.

Jonathon Austin On page 50 of the 2023 paper catalog I see images of stuffer tubes. The flat-flangee style stuffer tubes pictured on the right side of page 50 are not shown or listed on page 68 where only cone-flangee stuffer tubes are shown with price and model information.

Does Walton’s carry the flat-flangee style of stuffer tubes pictured on page 50?

Tex_77 said in What did everyone cook today?:

processhead where’s the hot sauce?

It’s off to the side out of the frame. We mix up our own with some ketchup, horseradish, hot sauce, salt and pepper.

I don’t actually eat sauce with the oysters but my wife does. I like crackers with the sauce, but eat the oyster naked.

Didn’t cook them (cuz they are raw). But man they were good.

John Belvedere I am all over everything you set out there, but you got with the knishes. Vas ist das?

GWG8541
I think about the excessive amounts of salt that were used to cure country style hams and it makes me think it was to ward off spoilage/souring at the center of the ham as the salt slowly migrated from the surface to the center.
It had to take a long time for full penetration and curing.

Sticks usually lose enough moisture that it is not too hard to get them to wrinkle.

Jonathon
Meat crust?
What will they think of next? Carb toppings?

OleSmokey I can’t think of a better pairing of wintertime comfort food. Nice job.

BobK I know what you are saying. Experimentation and trial/error are the only suggestions I can offer for what you are wanting to do.

BobK said in Bacon/Ham Prepared Cures Salt Levels:

processhead I totally agree with what you stated. For any recipe some assumptions would have to be made about, principally, the ratio of sugar to salt as well. The sodium nitrite content is provided on the label and you could calculate that to make sure you have enough ingoing nitrite in the recipe. If you assumed a 1:1 ratio of sugar and salt you might be able to start formulating a recipe based on how it tastes. With sufficient nitrite (calculable) in the developed recipe any cure should be relatively safe and the outcome would be more based on personal tastes. That type of recipe is what I was referring too. I might have to go rummage around in the freezer and see if I can find a couple of chunks of pork belly to give this a try. In the meantime if anyone has gone down this path, please, provide your feedback!

Several of us here use a spreadsheet originally developed by diggingdog farms to formulate EQ cure recipes. It calculates the amount of salt-sugar-sodium nitrite as a percentage of the green weight of the uncured meat being used.

It is the only method I use now because it is very predictable and does not rely on any soaking on the back end to get the correct level of saltiness.