I got these casings on sale from LEM. Sorry for the blurry pic. They are smoke flavor lined plastic casings. So theoretically you can get great smoked flavor without smoking it or adding any liquid smoke.
I made a 2 lb batch of easy peasy pepperoni that nepas posted and a 6 lb batch of summer sausage using a PS seasoning mix. I added hi temp cheddar to half of the summer sausage. I wanted to keep it as simple as possible so that someone that doesn't have a stuffer can try it so I stuffed them using my jerky cannon. I poached them in my turkey roaster with the temp set at around 160. It took about an hour to reach an IT of 152.
I gave them a 20 minute ice bath to get the IT down to around 100 degrees then hung them for a couple of hours to bloom.
I will let them sit in the fridge overnight and do a taste test tomorrow evening. I am curious to see how much smoke flavor they will have. If smell is any indication they will be fine. As soon as I cut open the bag a strong smoke scent filled the room.
To be continued...
I had the taste test tonight and I a not impressed. The first thing I noticed when I took the casings off was a wet slime all over the sausages and NO smoke smell whatsoever. I dried the sausages and tasted them. They were good but no smoke flavor. I'm thinking the smoke lining inside the casing turned to that slime that was covering the meat . Maybe it was because I poached them? The package has directions for poaching and baking so I will try baking the next batch I make in a couple of weeks. Baking won't be as quick so I have to call the quick and easy smoked sausage experiment a failure. I guess if you want smoked sausage you're just going to have to smoke it, or add liquid smoke
Here are a few pics:
First the regular summer sausage. It tastes real good and has a nice texture and mouth feel.
Next the summer sausage with hi temp cheddar. It was the best by far. It had the same good texture and mouth feel and the cheese put it over the top. Yum!
The pepperoni didn't turn out as good as I'd hoped. It was a little dry and crumbly and the pepperoni flavor didn't come thru.
Thanks for looking.
Mike
