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.

We make it differently and don’t have problems. What we do is stuff them in the fibrous. Then we cold smoke them in a smoke house (it is like an old wooden shed on the farm that breathes a lot and is not insulated). Then we cook them in a kettle with water. Then they hang a bit to dry. Into the vacuum seal bags and freezer. When they thaw out the fibrous casing is usually loose and comes right off. With this method I think you get a lot more moisture into the product though. I should mention that we don’t use a commercial spice/cure mix. We have our own recipe and we use tender quick to cure.

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.

My friend uses UMAI and they make for an easy and consistent way to make charcuterie. Probably safer too. Most recipes you find use sodium nitrate (pink curing salt #2) to protect from bad things. There are books on charcuterie you can read, but I never bought any yet. I found a lot of good teaching info on the internet and recipes too. I usually make soppresat and chorizo. We are making lanjaeger and metworst this year after my friend made some smaller batch and it was great. YooperDog and banger king are right in that using a controlled system is better to get good results. I have made a few batches hanging in my garage in the winter. That usually is fine for temperature but I the humidity is uncontrollable. Also, most recipes ferment the sausage before drying/curing. Don’t be afraid to to hang the sausage at room temperature for the period of time the recipe calls for (usually a half a day to a day). Fermenting is also tricky. To do it right people use an instrument to measure the pH to tell when the fermentation is right. Last year I made Chorizo and I over fermented. It had the consistency and sour taste of pepperoni. They were rock hard. Oh and if you decide to use casings Waltons has 2.4x12" salami casings that are pre cut and have a string on one end. They are really nice for this. Good luck!

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!

My friend uses UMAI and they make for an easy and consistent way to make charcuterie. Probably safer too. Most recipes you find use sodium nitrate (pink curing salt #2) to protect from bad things. There are books on charcuterie you can read, but I never bought any yet. I found a lot of good teaching info on the internet and recipes too. I usually make soppresat and chorizo. We are making lanjaeger and metworst this year after my friend made some smaller batch and it was great. YooperDog and banger king are right in that using a controlled system is better to get good results. I have made a few batches hanging in my garage in the winter. That usually is fine for temperature but I the humidity is uncontrollable. Also, most recipes ferment the sausage before drying/curing. Don’t be afraid to to hang the sausage at room temperature for the period of time the recipe calls for (usually a half a day to a day). Fermenting is also tricky. To do it right people use an instrument to measure the pH to tell when the fermentation is right. Last year I made Chorizo and I over fermented. It had the consistency and sour taste of pepperoni. They were rock hard. Oh and if you decide to use casings Waltons has 2.4x12" salami casings that are pre cut and have a string on one end. They are really nice for this. Good luck!

We make it differently and don’t have problems. What we do is stuff them in the fibrous. Then we cold smoke them in a smoke house (it is like an old wooden shed on the farm that breathes a lot and is not insulated). Then we cook them in a kettle with water. Then they hang a bit to dry. Into the vacuum seal bags and freezer. When they thaw out the fibrous casing is usually loose and comes right off. With this method I think you get a lot more moisture into the product though. I should mention that we don’t use a commercial spice/cure mix. We have our own recipe and we use tender quick to cure.

I am curious for this too. I really don’t want to invest in a linker. I made them once before and manually twisted links and had some success. I thought about just stuffing them all through and then come back and tie off with twine. Also a pain but might be easier than trying to twist link.

I was just putting my meat block together as well. Last year I made snack sticks for the first time and I thought they were awesome. I used 19# venison, 3# shoulder and 3# back fat. It was more meatier but with the high fat still moist. Based on my calculations this is about 70% lean meat, but it would depend on how trimmed your venison is.

What I need help with is I am going to purchase a new stuffer. This old thing from the farm that we have just doesn’t cut stuffing anything that has a lot of binding or goes through small tubes. I would really like a motor driven. Anyone have a suggestion?

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.