The OFFICIAL meat smoking thread

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

HOld on, gonna have to talk more about sausage some other time.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

To serve my penance from Freed:
Crockpot ribs

And, non busch light beer, I took some liberties here.

[lukethedrifter]

Is that a slow cooker?

[cardsfantx]

Wait...are those ribs in a crockpot??

[Freed Roger]

It is written.

[33anda3rd]

I can't believe AW backpaged my question about from-scratch smoked sausage to post a pic of some ribs in a crockpot.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Yes. Added half a rack of smoked ribs to a pot of chili. Cook in the chili for an hour or so and the meat will fall apart. Pull it out and chop it if you want smaller pieces. Highly recommend doing this. Best way to get smoke flavor into the chili without getting it too Smokey imo.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Anybody smoke sausage before? Tried for the first time this week. Started by making two Spanish-style sausages on Tuesday, then let them ferment overnight in the fridge, then smoked them on Wednesday.

Both batches of sausage were 1kg of total meat from a blend of 50/50 shoulder and belly, really good pork from Catalpa Grove. I told the butcher that I was making sausage and that I wanted the fat content of the above to land 30-33% and he hooked it up. Even at the fancy butcher shop the 4.5lb of pig was only about $42, not bad for 18 sausage links.

Sausage 1 we made a "butifarra fresca," or a Catalan white sausage. It was the above meat mix, tossed in salt and pepper, ground, then paddled in a stand mixer with a slurry of manzanilla sherry, water, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, white pepper and nutmeg.

Sausage 2 we made a chorizo fresco, the above, rubbed and tossed with an ajosal (garlic and salt crushed together in a mortar), ground, and then paddled with a slurry of dry white wine, water, sweet paprika, cayenne, espelette, oregano.

Both were stuffed into 32mm hog casings. We smoked half the sausage and kept the other half fresh. Smoked over apple, kept it around 220 for an hour and 45 min. Came out ok but a bit dry. The casings were black and kind of brittle. Also we used way too much cayenne in the chorizo, the MFer was spicy. I ended up crumbling the fresh chorizo and making tacos with a lot of sour cream to cool it down. I liked both sausages better fresh, wasn't very happy wit the smoked.

My bad for back paging this. Definitely interesting. I’ve got a lot of questions but haven’t had a chance to write or research it yet.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

What do you mean by kept the sausages fresh? How are they cooked if not smoked? Are you following recipes to make it or just kind of winging it? I've never made my own or really ever thought about it. There's a couple places around here that make em from scratch. Maybe not as good as some of the ones you can find in StL but still good enough that I've not considered making any. Prices vary between $1-$2/link which seems pretty reasonable.

Regardless,I've found it's better to 'smoke' sausage at a little higher heat like ~275-300 and get them finished in an hour or less. Lower and slower gets the meat too smokey for my liking and also once the freaking fat starts melting trying to prevent the skin from cracking is always a pain in the ass. And, some of the leaner sausages like chorizo and chicken tends to get done in about 30 minutes which is fine by me.

I've tried lots of diferent ways to cook them:
-Boiling in Beer
-Grilling
-Boiling in Beer then Grilling
-Grilling then Boiling in Beer
-Smoke
-Boiling in Beer then Smoking
-Smoking then Boiling in Beer
-Oven
-Pan Sear
-Etc

And have found that while theres something to be said for boiling them in beer, in the end we just smoke them because it's easier and just about as good as boiling/smoking combo.

[33anda3rd]

Fresh sausage; raw, uncooked
Smoked sausage: preserved via smoking
Salami: cured, hung in a drying chamber or aged by other means.

What I meant by my comment was that I smoked a bit of the fresh sausage we made, kept the rest fresh to cook by other means. I grilled a couple. I crumbled a couple chorizo to fry and make tacos. I boiled a sausage then fried w/ chickpeas.