Cured Meats & Food Preservation > Charcuterie: Ham, Bacon, Sausage, etc.

Working with what I have.........

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AndyL:
I've been looking for and experimenting with ways to make traditional CURED, smoked sausage at the appropriate low temperatures  that are required and I believe I've finally found a way to make them with my limited equipment available to me.

In the spirit of passing on info gathered and other ideas that worked for me while doing this I thought I'd post my results here just in case someone else is in the same boat as I am and looking for answers.

My PBC runs way to hot, my Weber kettle is to way to small and my Weber gasser is completly out of the question for making sausage using traditional techniques.

So, after stuffing the sausage in hog casings I let the flavors in the links develop and dry out in the fridge overnight. Then the next day using my Amaze-N-Smoker tray at the bottom, centered and my PBC as a cold smoking chamber I cold smoked my CURED kielbasa links for 3 hours using hickory. The ambient temp was in the teens when I  started while I was cold smoking so no worries there. Just a side note,  for those thinking about using thier PBC in this manner, you have to leave your bottom vent open wide open and your lid off 3"-4" or your pellets in your tray will go out due to lack air flow.

Then I hung them in my conventional oven on the convection setting at an average temp of around 170 - 180 deg F until they reached 152 deg F internal. Then into a ice water bath to below 120 deg F.

Maybe not the most conventional approach to sausage making but as you can see from my picture of just a sample of a couple of my links that I made this technique definitely worked just fine for me!

I was considering purchasing a high end,  dedicated electric smoker for my sausage making needs but now, it's no longer necessary at all.

I love figuring out situations like this with what I have to work with!






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oldsmoker:
Great looking sausage.

HighOnSmoke:
That looks good Andy!

TentHunteR:
Hey, there's absolutely NOTHING wrong with working with what you have, and those sausages look great!


Now having said that the color will turn out even better if hot-smoked after the cold smoke.

Here's a suggestion that I bet will work (based on my past experience with other cookers).  Experiment with your PBC, try getting just 6 - 10 charcoals lit and ashed over, and place a single large chunk of wood on top of them and see what kind of temperatures you get.  Keep your vent cracked open the same as for normal cooking and the lid on so you limit air flow and keep the heat down.  It might take a few tries, but I bet you can get it dialed in to hot-smoke temperatures (165° - 185°).  The coals should last long enough to get the sausages up to temp.


I've used this method in smaller cookers before and it worked well.

TMB:
Looks good from here!

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