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.

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

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.

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!

Brewing beer this morning. Technically it’s cooking at this stage, right?

20 lbs of pilsner malts and Munich malts will ultimately become 10 gallons of German style Alt beer.

At this step I am mashing the crushed grain with hot water to convert starches to sugars and extract flavor and color.
This step takes about 2 hours.

This is the extract we are after and will collect more with subsequent hot water

A little over 10 gallons of extract collected in the electric boil kettle.
Hops are added where flavor and aroma are extracted and added to what will become beer.

![20220330_095727.jpg](/assets/uploads/files/1648652521062-

After the boil, the finished wort needs to be chilled to room temperature so yeast can be added without killing it.
The counterflow chiller is the coil looking thing. Cold tap water circulates through the outside clear hose and hot wort from the bowl kettle runs through an inner copper line before flowing into the fermenters. Yeast gets added and wort ferments turning sugar into alcohol, CO2 and flavors.

The hydrometer reading tells me that I hit my efficiency numbers for extracting all the tasty sweet goodness out of the grain.
Now its just a matter of waiting for the yeast to do their work.

I tried a lot of boudin when we lived in Louisiana years ago. After moving back to NE, we seldom see it in stores here except for the Zummo brand.

For those who have not had boudin before, it is literally a complete meal in a casing. Meat, vegetables, and cereal all seasoned with a variety of flavor-packed fresh/spicy ingredients.

Dr_Pain posted a recipe that was very detailed and looked like a good one, so I made it today. I stuck to the ingredients and process Dr. Pain used for the most part, but I had some pork liver on hand and used that instead of chicken livers.

https://meatgistics.waltons.com/topic/4292/cajun-boudin-recipe-by-claude?page=1

I am very happy with how it turned out and is good as the best I ever had in LA.

I used my bowl chopper to process all the fresh meat and vegetable ingredients, which saved a lot of knife work. Its almost cheating.

Preparing and stuffing a cooked product like boudin is very much like making the jaternice, which I had posted on a while back. It is a sticky, delicious, mess that just begs to be sampled while you are making it because it smells and tastes soooo good.

Dave in AZ mrobisr I was reading about the use of cultures vs. natural fermentation.
It sounds like a key advantage of using a culture is that fermentation is completed in 24 hrs compared to several days when relying on the naturally occurring bugs in the air.
Since fermentation is done at room temperature, I would have less concerns about spoilage with the relatively shorter fermentation time using a culture.

Departing Contestant said in Scrapple:

Germans put oatmeal in it and called it Pruttles
a locker in Kensington KS makes Pruttles. Locker in Goddard KS makes scrapple

You obviously have all these small plants cataloged for the more obscure delicacies. You should publish a directory.

RON PARRISH Totally worth it just to have the whole family get in on the fun.

Denny O said in What did everyone cook today?:

processhead Looks to be Prime grade?

They may have been, but I had taken them out of the bulk pack and individually vacuum packaged them after after getting them home from the store, so the original labeling was gone.

They were tender, juicy and delicious.

Just my opinion, judging from the appearance of most of the Excalibur seasonings, there is already some binder, probably NFDM already in there. As such, I don’t add any other binders.
I only add a binder to some seasoning formulas I work up from scratch.
If you use quality fresh meat, grind and mix well, your product will bind very well.

glen said in What did everyone cook today?:

processhead Looks like some quality marbling there

Costco had them for just under $10/ lb. They looked too good to pass up.

Grilled some 1 inch thick NY strips this evening. Just great meat, fire, salt and pepper. Good meat stands on its own.

If I surprised my wife with one of those, she would probably kill me and then burn the cut out.

calldoctoday said in Love-Hate my Walton’s #22 grinder:

processhead I wish I could put our IR camera on & see if that would identify something. I was thinking lubrication or something originally, but it does not sound like that is it.

Agree. Lubrication is either there or its not.
I would like to see how the gear reduction on the motor drive is put together. The gear box is the last thing between the motor and the grinder head.

I appreciate how Tex_77 keeps Jonathon mostly on track. It’s a tough job. lol