Re: Toile Paper Shortage

I will tell you one thing. I am mighty happy with all the charcuterie and frozen meat I made back in January! Here is my emergency food supply I keep on the ready in the fridge, daily! Priorities.

Mexican Chorizo is one of my favorite sausages. I have been making it every year for the past three years. I have no idea what Walton’s mix is like, and I am absolutely certain it is awesome, but you can make it by hand. It is one of those things you put a lot of love into. It is mostly Guajillo peppers. I think it is like Mole, it is a very traditional, family type recipe.

I love your pictures. Even if it comes from a mix, the liquid looks the same as what I make!

I also learned to not stuff it. I did that the first year and we were cutting them open all the time. We eat the chorizo in tacos and breakfast burritos. It is so good!

Great job!

This past weekend I did 10 lbs of Spanish Chorizo which is hanging in my garage. Can’t wait until it is dried.

Parksider OMG! I forgot about Zweigles reds and whites! I lived in Ontario, NY for 5 years before I recently moved. That’s funny. Small world.

navarte

Made my first this weekend. Bought Walton’s ingredients. I followed the recipe, except I did not use Encapsulated Citric Acid (instead held overnight for about 16 hours) and no cheese. My meat block was 19 lb fairly lean venison, 3 lb of shoulder and 3 lb of back fat. I estimated that to be about 70/30 lean to fat, which is maybe slightly more lean than the recipe.

Instead of using a mixer, we chose to grind ours twice and do a little hand mixing before stuffing.

The stuffing absolutely was the hardest part. We have old cast iron hand crank (Enterprise) lard press/stuffer and the only tube I could find was a 12mm to fit the 1.5" diameter opening. It was some hard cranking. I am thinking very hard about a motor driven stuffer in the future!

We smoked ours on a Green Mountain Danielle Boone pellet grill. We held it at the lowest 150F setting for about 2 hours, then went to 160F and 175F. If you use a grill, recommend you either take your time and go longer at lower temp or do not use the lower grate. We had some sticks getting crispy down there! Also, 25 lb is about all that grill can fit, and it probably was too much.

They were so good when done!! Great bite and flavor. Casing nice and firm and bonded to meat. Got many compliments. I am really happy with Walton’s product and recipe.

Since I had a great experience with Walton’s meat sticks and I have a surplus of pork sausage in the freezer, I am planning to make pork hot dogs in a few weeks. Our family butchers every year and I don’t want all the sausage I get from half a hog. I would like to make 10 lb of it into hot dogs. Do you think 100% pork would be okay? I have no idea if I am going to leave skins on or not. Still have to do the research!

Njlungbuster Sure. I actually concocted my own recipe from internet research. The first one was not too good but I modified it. I will type it up and post it.

Joe Hell I followed a really great recipe over at Daily Brine. A buddy of mine made some early fall and it was good. I also made soppressata which was not fermented.

Meat candy! My buddy has been making cap with umai in the fridge. We had some of it at our meat party 2 weeks back. Put that stuff on the slicer on the lowest setting… melts in your mouth!

I am interested in this thread. Every year we cure our bacon in submersion and then cold smoke in the smokehouse. Since we do this typically in February, the smokehouse is really cold. I suspect it is only 10 or 20 degrees above ambient, so we are talking 30-50F. We also smoke the bacon in the smokehouse over a period of maybe 2 days (not smoking all the time as the “fire” goes out). I am talking a smokehouse constructed of barn board and fairly open air flow to the environment.

This year I decided I wanted to cure my on slab because I wanted to try a different recipe with spices and sugar in the cure. I smoked mine for about 3 hours in my pellet grill, with the grill off, and using one those smoke tubes and pellets.

The product turned out fine, but I noticed that the bacon is different than when smoking at low temperature with thermal processing. It seems more pungent and strong. I was expecting to have to smoke the bacon maybe 3 times at 3 hours a piece, but given how strong it was after one session I stopped there.

Is there a difference in the quality of smoke with cold smoke vs. warm smoke? I seem to recall people saying when cooking with smoker you want to wait until the quality of smoke gets better at higher temperature. If I smoked the bacon at higher temperature like thermal processing would I get a better result?

Just checking to see if this works… I have been trying to make 2 posts for an hour. I click the button but nothing happens.

Re: Toile Paper Shortage

I will tell you one thing. I am mighty happy with all the charcuterie and frozen meat I made back in January! Here is my emergency food supply I keep on the ready in the fridge, daily! Priorities.

I am interested in this thread. Every year we cure our bacon in submersion and then cold smoke in the smokehouse. Since we do this typically in February, the smokehouse is really cold. I suspect it is only 10 or 20 degrees above ambient, so we are talking 30-50F. We also smoke the bacon in the smokehouse over a period of maybe 2 days (not smoking all the time as the “fire” goes out). I am talking a smokehouse constructed of barn board and fairly open air flow to the environment.

This year I decided I wanted to cure my on slab because I wanted to try a different recipe with spices and sugar in the cure. I smoked mine for about 3 hours in my pellet grill, with the grill off, and using one those smoke tubes and pellets.

The product turned out fine, but I noticed that the bacon is different than when smoking at low temperature with thermal processing. It seems more pungent and strong. I was expecting to have to smoke the bacon maybe 3 times at 3 hours a piece, but given how strong it was after one session I stopped there.

Is there a difference in the quality of smoke with cold smoke vs. warm smoke? I seem to recall people saying when cooking with smoker you want to wait until the quality of smoke gets better at higher temperature. If I smoked the bacon at higher temperature like thermal processing would I get a better result?

Jonathon Thawed a pack tonight and threw on GMG. Held up nice. I had request to make them crispy.

I guess heat up. My father in law makes ours and he cold smokes in smokehouse then cooks them in water in a kettle. They are pretty good but the casings separate and they don’t have as nice of color as yours.

twilliams looks real good! How did you cook?

We store casings for several years packed in salt in freezer.

Jonathon the consistency was very good. My problem is the “100 yr old” stuffer and the really small stuffing tube just didn’t work. The product would just push up around the plate. When I tried to add more water thinking it would help it just got worse. I think if I had better equipment in this case it would have made the difference. On a positive note the stuffer did the job to press lard and we had some nice cracklins to eat!!

Half-a$$ hot dogs. Let’s just say it was a real learning experience. Meat sticks were easy compared to these suckers.

Well hot dogs are stuffed. Everything went well until I tried to stuff into 26 mm casing. Ground once on 3/8 then twice on 1/8 plate and mixes by hand twice in between. Left meat in tote outside between grindings and before stuffing to get cold. That old Enterprise stuffer would not push through the tiny stuffing tube.

So had to resort to hog casings. Guess I will have 1/4 lb hot dogs!! At least I got them in casings.

It was a learning experience. I need a better stuffer and a meat mixer.

skibumben man they look good!!! I just finished half of my soppressat today. They looked good but I didn’t eat. I have about 10 lb left after that. Without a nice chamber the drying is not as consistent.