I have a bunch of pheasant I’d like to turn in to sausage. It’s already been smoked. I’m new to sausage making so looking for some ideas on this. What seasongs to use, what to add to it such as pork, etc. Since the pheasant is smoked, adding pork and making a “fresh” sausage ok?

Jonathon thanks for the info, guess my stick making will need to wait. If I had something such as Sure Gel I could go right to the smoker?
As far as what I’m calling cold smoke, my pellet smoker won’t get below 170 or so I think, so was planning on using that with the lid cracked. I have a pellet tray that I can use as well that I might try and not even turn the smoker on.

It’s been a while since I made snack sticks. I have the habanero BBQ seasoning and sure cure. I don’t have any other accelerators, etc. I was planning on doing it tomorrow during the day. Can I mix it, stuff it and put it right in the smoker? I’m actually going to cold smoke it and then sous vide to finish. My smoker won’t go below 175 and I’ve had issues getting them to turn out.

Jonathon thanks for the reply. I’m a little confused, you say “it’s often tied into the air in the smoker being too humid”, but then go on to say I could add some humidity?
It’s definitely case hardening.

I’ve made some snack sticks and have had an issue with how they turned out. The issue after discussion on this board and other research seems to be temps. What happened the last time I made them, they took forever to get up to temp, the outer layer seemed to be done early, the middle was still raw.
The smoker I have (Fast Eddy PG1000, pellet smoker) has a low temp of 170. The instructions I’ve seen on here is start at 125 for an hour, 140 for an hour, 155 for 2 hours, and 175 to temp.
I’d really like to get into polish sausages, and other smoked stuff but would like to figure it out.
Thought I maybe could start them in the oven, but the low temp for it is also 170.
Any thoughts?

Thanks everyone, so mixing by hand, say a 5 lb batch, how long would that need to be mixed?

I do not have a mixer either, am new at this. How do I know when it’s mixed properly?

Jonathon, thanks for the info. Here’s what happened last night with my snack sticks. Had a nasty thunderstorm come up, so ended up having to do them in the oven, not what I wanted, but couldn’t put them off. I used the Hatch Green Chili seasoning and sure cure. I increased the seasoning by about 10% or so.

Unfortunately the lowest my oven goes is 175, so started there. I have jerky grid style trays that I used, criss crossed them to keep air between the sticks. I did cut them in lengths to fit in the trays, 14" or so? Some of the meat did extrude in the process, but not a big deal. They fit on 3 trays, which I rotated after about 90 minutes. After about 3 1/2 hours or so some of the sticks were at 160. Some were at 140. Ended up having to check every one. Put them back in, after about another 45 minutes, more of them were done, but about 4 of the sticks, half of a rack were not. I put them back in for another half hour. They were still in the 140 ish area, so I ended up cutting them in half. In the middle of a few of the sticks, they were still at only 127! Having needed to get to bed, I put them in our toaster oven at 300 just to get them to 160. Those ones will be consumed by me. I did take some pics this morning, recreating my setup but don’t know how to post pics here.

I used 4 lbs ground beef, 1 lb ground pork. I did screw one thing up on the recipe I think, and I’m sure it has alot to do with the results. However, I’m still very confused as to the inconsistency in temps of the product. I have a nice oven, and the trays sit on top of each other, so it’s not like they’re a foot in difference in the oven. I miscalculated since I was doing 5 lbs of meat, I put a little over 2 cups of ice water, where I think it should have been 1 1/4 cups?

The other thing I’m not sure may have had an effect is I did have an orange shirt on

I like smaller snack sticks, didn’t have a small enough tube for my 16mm casings, so used what I had on hand, 21mm. This is my second attempt at using casings. I’ve graduated, or rather, am in the process of graduating from a jerky cannon and making fragmented sticks. Last time I kept it as one long coil in the smoker, and the outside got overdone and the middle wasn’t done.
Just looking for input on processing. It appears most cut them into sticks after smoking, correct? How do you get even smoking/heating? My current smoker doesn’t have the ability to hang sticks.

I have a bunch of pheasant I’d like to turn in to sausage. It’s already been smoked. I’m new to sausage making so looking for some ideas on this. What seasongs to use, what to add to it such as pork, etc. Since the pheasant is smoked, adding pork and making a “fresh” sausage ok?