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.

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.

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.

I found this Hobart 18 inch buffalo chopper today at an estate sale in a nearby town.

It came with all the important accessories including a #12 grinder and a “pelican” vegetable shredder, which I will probably try to find a new home for.
Chopper blades were in good shape and the grinder came with a 3/16 inch plate and a brand new Zico grinder knife.

The drive unit looks like it had been sitting unused for a long time. When I plugged it in at the guys garage it just hummed. After getting it home and looking it over, I plugged it in to a dedicated 20 amp outlet in my shop. It started right up and ran as it should. The amp draw while it was running was under the name plate rating, so that’s a good sign.
Looks like all it will need is a good cleaning and I look forward to trying out the bowl chopper.

I also bought a small Enterprise cast iron stuffer which you can see in the background of the top photo. A project for another day.

Sean Clouthier said in water/ice water bath ??:

for some reason when I perform an ice bath w/ water, my casings tend to separate from the meat. What am I doing wrong? Lately, I have been putting them in a meat lug and dropping them into my freezer chest for 15 to 20 min. Is that ok instead of water and ice?

The reason ice water lowers the temperature faster and more effectively than placing them in a cold freezer is because cold water absorbs and transfers heat much more efficiently than cold air does.

If it is actually metal, a close inspection of the knife, plate, auger and housing should give clues on where it is coming from. Look at the friction points where surfaces make contact for signs of metal loss and wear. Don’t forget to check that back end of the auger where it enters the motor drive. There should be a plastic or brass bushing or washer there.
As mdseaside mentioned, you should be oiling the plate and knife with food grade oil. This is so when you start the grind they have some lubrication till the meat makes it through the auger and can act as a lubricant for the knife and auger.

BRYARRR_80 I would add that since you are working with large amounts of ground beef it would be well worth your time to experiment with smaller batches (1 lb) and getting the flavor you are after before scaling up the amounts for large batches.

Makes me wonder what other filters are lurking out there.

PapaSop
Really happy to hear that you got this nailed down.
It feels pretty good to be in control of the finished product.

calldoctoday said in Testing why we can't post Raspberry:

Jonathon What was the problem & why?

Yeah, I would like to know what kind of software gremlins are responsible for filtering out raspberry posts.
Is raspberry some kind of urban slang for an indecent physical act???

PapaSop Looking forward to the taste test results. Thinking you got this down.

JustinT

glen read my mind. His recommendations are all good ones. In general fresh sausages like brats are a good starting point for learning the basics.

Jonathon I had heard the same thing about serving them with the casing peeled. I’m just too lazy to go to the extra work to do it.

One of my all time favorites. Good that you have the key process points documented for making them.

In case the price of veal scares anyone away from wanting to try making these, know that you can make an excellent all-pork version by just by using 100% boneless pork butt, preferably one with a little thicker fat cap.

I also like to use the traditional natural casings when stuffing weisswurst and eat them with the casing on so they have a nice snap.

Thermal processing by sous vide is a great way to cook them precisely and avoid any fat-out issues. Always good to monitor the IT on one while cooking to see when you hit the target temperature.
If cooking for the table, just serve them hot. If planning to eat within a couple of days, or freeze them later, I would recommend the ice bath to bring the IT down faster.