doing some smoking today

[Lloyd Smale]

Ive got 16 sticks of summer sausage made up to do today and two turkeys to brine to do tommarow.

[Bodydoc447]

You are an industrious sort. It about wore me out making/smoking snack sticks last weekend. And that was only about 16 pounds. I figure those summer sausages are about 5 lbs EACH!

Doc

[1874Sharps]

I smoked a deer a while back. It was hard to keep it lit and draw through it, so I went back to cigars. Just kidding! I had no smokehouse so I converted my home made utility trailer into a smokehouse. I call it my Redneck Smokehouse!

[Lloyd Smale]

the casings I use hold about 3 lbs each. I quit doing snack sticks. There alot more work to stuff and i like the summer sausage better and found i gave away about 75 percent of the snack sticks i made and out of the other 25 percent the dog got half of those. Same goes for jerky. I like to make up maybe 20lbs (dry weight) every year but again i prefer the summer sausage and end up giving to much jerky away. I eat alot of summer sausage. I give alot of it away too but make usually 150lbs a year and keep at least a 100 for myself. Its even a bit practical because i can make lunch out of some and some crackers and its excellent sliced and browned in a pan with a bit of butter with eggs for breakfast.

You are an industrious sort. It about wore me out making/smoking snack sticks last weekend. And that was only about 16 pounds. I figure those summer sausages are about 5 lbs EACH!

Doc

[Lloyd Smale]

Now that would hold some sausage but it would be tough to make sausage in as i dont know how youd maitain and regulate tempurature. My smoker is a bout 5 foot tall by 4 foot wide and 2.5 foot deep and i supply it with smoke using a brinkman smoker with a gas burner in it and a pipe to put smoke in the box but i also have two electric elements inside the box to regulate heat and the picture was before i had to wrap it in insulation.. Even at that size it took two elements and the heat from the gas chip burner to get meat above 150 degrees.

I smoked a deer a while back. It was hard to keep it lit and draw through it, so I went back to cigars. Just kidding! I had no smokehouse so I converted my home made utility trailer into a smokehouse. I call it my Redneck Smokehouse!

[Lloyd Smale]

heres mine

[smokeywolf]

Lloyd, that's a real nice setup.

I'm trying to stay off the statins, so I'd have to take a fist full of blood thinners and antioxidants before chowin down on the sausage and eggs braised in butter.

smokeywolf

[MBTcustom]

Makin me hungry!
Is there any way you would consider teaching us the fine art of summer sausage making? How do you mix the fixins?
If its family secret forget I asked, but it never hurts to ask does it?

[44man]

Yeah, nice smoker.
Some of us need help. I guess I didn't use enough fat and you can drive tent stakes with mine.
I just got a flier from Cabelas with all kinds of smokers but can't figure which one to get. One will hold a constant 100* to 275* and is on sale for $179.
Then there are 2 Masterbuilt ones, propane and an electric.
Neither of the ones I now have will get hot enough.

[jonas302]

Mine is an old electric oven I removed the oven element and pluged a stove top element into the wires so it runs off the original t stat a cast iron pan with wood in it sits on the burner its free and very well insulated last weekend was smoked duck yum

[duke76]

Makin me hungry!
Is there any way you would consider teaching us the fine art of summer sausage making? How do you mix the fixins?
If its family secret forget I asked, but it never hurts to ask does it?

Its not hard just takes some time, I usually grind my deer and mix 20%ground pork and use a spice kit from say lems or waltons, then mix the spice with some water and cure(the water makes the spices distribute more evenly and to stuff easier) Dont worry the water disappears then stuff it into summer sausage casings and smoke until the internal temperature is 155 you can also do this in an oven and if you like smoke flavoring you can add liquid smoke and summer sausage casings you can also stuff by hand with some sort of stomper if you dont want to buy a stuffer, but makes it easier I have made 100s of pounds of sausage and like I said it isnt hard just takes alot of time and after you do it you will know why it cost so much to have done lol if you have any questions I would be more than happy to help, I know I'm not Lloyd but I'm sure he does it about the same

[duke76]

Yeah, nice smoker.
Some of us need help. I guess I didn't use enough fat and you can drive tent stakes with mine.
I just got a flier from Cabelas with all kinds of smokers but can't figure which one to get. One will hold a constant 100* to 275* and is on sale for $179.
Then there are 2 Masterbuilt ones, propane and an electric.
Neither of the ones I now have will get hot enough.

I have used the masterbuilt electric ones and they work fine for small batches, I make so much I use a smoker made out of a fuel barrell 300 gallon but the masterbuilt ones will work fine smoke at 225 until internal temp is 155 in the center of it

[Lloyd Smale]

I get all my summer sausage, jerky, snack stick, bratt and italian sausage mixes from here http://www.askthemeatman.com/weekly_special.htm they have the best ive found and its better then my best attemps at doing it myself. As to the pork you want to add at least 2lbs of pork but to 10 lbs of meat. I usually add 2lbs to 8lbs. One of the tricks to summer sauage is a smoker that you can really control the heat with. You need to heat the meat without smoke till it gets up to an internal temp of 100 degrees with a setting of 120 in the box this opens the pours of the meat up to except smoke flavor. If you smoke right away you can get a coating on the casing that wont allow the smoke flavor to penetrate into the meat. . then increase your temp 20 degrees every 2 hours until the meat gets to at least 155 internal. I dont like to go past that as it strarts to dry. Another thing is once you get there you have to stop the cooking. I emerse in cold water or even throw them in the snow bank in the winter until the temp inside gets down to at least 120. then you need to hang at room temp overnight to bloom. You dont ever need to get your smoker any hotter then a 180 degrees when making sausage and if you do youll certainly add to the drying. For a small smoker electric is the way to go. there much more controlable. I had two different propane smokers and neither would maintain temps below about 175 degrees. The gas ones are great for smoking turkeys and roast and jerky but not summer sausage or snack sticks. Make sure if you get an electric one you get one that has a therostatic control. Some are just on or off.

[44man]

Great. I had to use the kitchen oven last time to bring up the internal heat and that ruined it.
Now to figure out how to print Lloyd's page!
Duke, I just make small batches anyway. Sounds like you have a great smoker.
The only use I found for the Big Chief I have is to smoke jerky before using the dehydrator.
I will try again after season with this information.
I did a lot of cold smoking in Ohio, I had a big box with smoke that went 10' to it for hams and bacon but it would not cook smoke.

[Lloyd Smale]

I just won one of those big chefs at a whitetails unlimited baquette. I gave it to my nephew. It was a decent looking smoker but i allready have a small elect one and the big chef wasnt temperature controlable. Just on and off so it didnt do me much good. Im sure though a guy could put a reostat on it to control the heat somehow if not you could buy a reostatic controled electric burner off ebay for a differnt smoker and install it. Fish in the brine overnight so today is smoking trout and salmon day and tommarow the last batch of summer sausage for the year. I think this smoking is just as additctive as casting, ,loading and shooting. By the way the turkerys were fantastic. Best i ever ate.

[44man]

My great thanks to Crabo for being able to E mail me Lloyd's info. For some reason I could not save it.
I ordered the Master Built electric smoker and will give my daughter the others.
The Big Chief does not have enough heat with the small coils to regulate. I put a hole in the top with a grommet for a thermometer and it just never gets hot. I have the insulated blanket and it is no help.
Now it might work to just leave jerky dry in it like Lloyd said.
I don't like the smoke liquid added, real smoke is better and it sure does not last long around here. I swear a whole deer made into jerky would be gone in a week.
I also dry deer meat without seasoning for dog treats---watch your fingers!

[Lloyd Smale]

kind of laughed at your dog treat thing. Im not a big jerky fan. I love summer sausage and about everything else out of a smoker but i can take or leave jerky. I make probably a deer a year into jerky. Mostly because friends and family like it so i give probably 75 percent of it away. The stuff i keep, probably half gets eaten by my dog. You want to cringe even more. As you probably read on here we do crop damage shooting of deer for about 3 months of the year. We can shoot all the deer we want. This year i shot 62. Theres three of us that do it. My buddy and his brother are the other two. His brother is a real card! 67 year old 120lb hillbilly that still smokes dope and has a beer in his hand by 10 in the morning. He doesnt have a pot to !!! in though and most of his food is based on the venison he takes. He has 3 dogs and cans about 25 deer a year and uses it for dog food!!! Now id give my dog a piece of jerky occasionaly but i sure wouldnt feed him my canned venison!! My smoking season is about at the end. I did about 50 lbs of lake trout yesterday and have one more batch of summer sausage left to do and this morning im making itlalian sausage bratts and will smoke maybe 25 lbs of them. Then i have one more project before retireing the smoker for the year. I bought a ready made kit to make venison hams. Ive never tried it before. Ive got a couple small hind quarters left in the freezer to try it on. Got to agree though pal. You wont find a bottle of liquid smoke in my house or a piece of sausage made in an oven! One more bit of advice. Invest in a good electronic meat temperature probe so you can run the probe through the crack in the door and not have to keep opening the smoker and loosing your heat.

[Lloyd Smale]

Ill give you one more little trick to try with your summer sauage and snack sticks. When you make or buy your mix for spices add about 3/4s of a cup of brown sugar to the mix for every 10lbs of meat. I make it in 12.5 lb batches and add a cup. Start with 3/4s and ajust to your taste. You dont want any more as you dont want it like candy but everyone that trys mine scratches there head trying to figure out what that little hint of taste is. Ive yet to have anyone that didnt try it think it was the best theyve had. I got that trick from a buddy whos grandfather came over from germany and made his living back in the day as a sausage maker. Another thing i do occasionaly to a batch is put a little heat in it. I kind of like things a bit more spicy then others and will make up a batch just for me. For that batch ive found a simple addititive. Montreal steak seasoning. Try 4 tsps of it in a 12 lb batch to start with.

[44man]

Thank you Lloyd. Why do you live so far away?
Yeah, dogs love dried meat and I swear my little one will eat a whole deer non stop! We buy her chicken and duck jerky tenders too.
Friends come to shoot and she goes nuts over them, getting hugs and kisses, then she comes to me for a treat. Spoiled rotten for sure.

[44man]

My new smoker showed up, only took a few days. I had enough points to reduce the price to $103.
Thing is HEAVY, not out of the box yet and I have to get it in the garage. It is inside my front door now.
I found I can't use chunk wood. I have bags and bags of mesquite, cherry, peach, pear and mulberry wood chunks.
I need to find a way to shred the stuff.
Any ideas?