Smoking sausage in my GMG

[Midwest_kc]

Looking for tips on using my GMG for smoked sausage. These have a minimal setting of 150, which I figure is probably low enough to be ok, though not ideal.

What are people doing with pellet grills for their smoked sausages? I also considered seeing if I could make the Louisiana grills cold smoke box work on my Jim Bowie, as it attaches where the smoke stack attaches. I would think I could figure out a way to get them connected pretty easy as well.

Interested in everyone’s thoughts, and how I can begin making some snack sticks, summer sausage, etc!

[Tex_77]

Jonathon should have some content out soon on using pellet grills for smoking sausage. He will be using a Camp Chef pellet grill, but I would say what will work for one pellet grill should generally work for all pellet grills.

[Grimpuppy]

I have done them on my Traeger. The lowest setting on it is “smoke” and it will run about 165 degrees. The next lowest is 180 and then 200. I started on the smoke setting with a small 4x4 propping the lid open. That dropped it down to 130 degrees. Then swapped out the 4x4 with a 2x4. That gave me 150 degrees. Then closed the lid and dialed to 180 till done. I also stole a rack out of my Masterbuilt and used a carriage bolt in each corner to give me racks. Swap the sticks from the bottom and top racks every hour or so or the bottom will cook faster.

[Jonathon]

Midwest_kc Yeah, the camp chef starts at 160° and the day I did snack sticks on it the outside temp was 15° or something so I didn’t want to play around with propping the lid. Camp Chef has a built in upper rack so I placed them on there and we just ran it at 160 for around 2 hours and then upped it to 180 until the IT was 160, ice bathed it and let it sit out for an hour or so.

I was surprised at how well the sticks did, not any bursting and what I would call small amounts of case hardening. They had a pretty good snap both right away and after they sat out. However, after bringing them out the next day for vacuum sealing I noticed that the casings didn’t have the best “feel” to them. This had happened once before when I laid out sticks for an hour in front of a fan and then put them in the cooler overnight. I think what is happening is that the casing is overdry and then it picks up too much moisture from the fridge. I can’t prove that but it seems to be the only thing these two batches could have had in common.

This would have been released by now but we had a malfunction with a memory card so we are going to reshoot it.

[Jonathon]

Correction, it was -5° not 15°. We finally broke our cold snap here and I swear people are walking around in t-shirts in 30 weather because it feels so much nicer!