Cold smoked sausage recipe

[sghoghunter]

I’m wanting to try to do some old time cold smoked sausage. Has anyone got some knowledge to share or point me in a direction to learn?

 

[jicard3]

I’m wanting to try to do some old time cold smoked sausage. Has anyone got some knowledge to share or point me in a direction to learn?

You talking cold smoked to grill later or what comes out of the smokehouse is the finished product?

 

[sghoghunter]

You talking cold smoked to grill later or what comes out of the smokehouse is the finished product?

The kind you grill later.

 

[jicard3]

The kind you grill later.

I've always made mine with AC Legg's #10 seasoning. Add pink curing salt for cold smoked sausage. I buy Fiesta brand curing salt from Academy, it tells you on the container how much to use based on the weight of your batch. I wanna say it's 2 teaspoons per 10lbs of meat. Follow directions closely with the curing salt, too much will ruin it. It'll get too salty quick. Make the sausage and let it sit in the fridge overnight before you smoke. That gives the cure time to do it's thing.
The trick is keeping your smoker temp under 100. The idea is to get smoke without melting the fat. I try to pick a cold day. In my opinion, right now is perfect sausage smoking weather.
Instead of a fire in the smoker, I have a little wire basket that's probably 3 or 4 inches wide and deep by about 8 or 10 inches long. I fill it with pellet cooker pellets, and start one corner of the pellets with a propane torch so they are just smoldering then set the basket in the smoker with the vent open and stack mostly closed so it holds the smoke. It will usually smolder it's way across the basket without having to re-light. Just don't let it have so much air it flames. Let it smoke for 3-6 hours depending on how strong a flavor you want. I go 6, me and my crew like it smoky.
Vacuum seal or wrap and freeze.

 

[Paymaster]

I've always made mine with AC Legg's #10 seasoning. Add pink curing salt for cold smoked sausage. I buy Fiesta brand curing salt from Academy, it tells you on the container how much to use based on the weight of your batch. I wanna say it's 2 teaspoons per 10lbs of meat. Follow directions closely with the curing salt, too much will ruin it. It'll get too salty quick. Make the sausage and let it sit in the fridge overnight before you smoke. That gives the cure time to do it's thing.
The trick is keeping your smoker temp under 100. The idea is to get smoke without melting the fat. I try to pick a cold day. In my opinion, right now is perfect sausage smoking weather.
Instead of a fire in the smoker, I have a little wire basket that's probably 3 or 4 inches wide and deep by about 8 or 10 inches long. I fill it with pellet cooker pellets, and start one corner of the pellets with a propane torch so they are just smoldering then set the basket in the smoker with the vent open and stack mostly closed so it holds the smoke. It will usually smolder it's way across the basket without having to re-light. Just don't let it have so much air it flames. Let it smoke for 3-6 hours depending on how strong a flavor you want. I go 6, me and my crew like it smoky.
Vacuum seal or wrap and freeze.

Good info!!! Thanks!

 

[B. White]

I've mostly made a kielbasa type and I think the seasoning I ordered from Waltons came with the cure. I let it dry overnight on a rack in the refrigerator and as mentioned above only did it when the weather was cold like now. I was using the akorn and just tried to keep it as low as I could. Fat starts to melt at 160, if I remember correctly, so I didn't get to worried as long as I kept it 100-150. I only remember going about 3-4 hrs and it all turned out good. Packaged and put it in the freezer. I bought a pellet smoker, primarily because it claimed a low temp setting, but the temp swings are more than I can keep the akorn going at.

 

[jicard3]

I've mostly made a kielbasa type and I think the seasoning I ordered from Waltons came with the cure. I let it dry overnight on a rack in the refrigerator and as mentioned above only did it when the weather was cold like now. I was using the akorn and just tried to keep it as low as I could. Fat starts to melt at 160, if I remember correctly, so I didn't get to worried as long as I kept it 100-150. I only remember going about 3-4 hrs and it all turned out good. Packaged and put it in the freezer. I bought a pellet smoker, primarily because it claimed a low temp setting, but the temp swings are more than I can keep the akorn going at.

I have some German Sausage Seasoning on the way from Waltons. I'm curious to see how it turns out.

 

[B. White]

I decided to give the camp chef a try on the 150 setting yesterday and pull it off when sausage was 150-153. 30lbs with a high water content took a long time, compared to what I've done on charcoal. I think I took the first off at 6 hrs and let the others go longer, since at 6 some of them were still in the 130s while others were already at 150.

Ground enough to freeze 25lb of bratwurst while I had everything pulled out.

 

[Cool Hand Luke]

Man, that looks gooood