Steve Rinella Summer Sausage Recipes

CASED SUMMER SAUSAGE

Steps:

• While keeping everything ice cold, combine game meat, pork fat, and all other ingredients (except for the Fermento and water) into a large bowl.
• Mix to combine with your hands. Work in small batches if you need to (don't be afraid to throw the meat back in the fridge or freezer, or into a cooler with ice to get chilled again.)
• Using the large die on your grinder, grind the meat mixture into the bowl set over ice. Change out the grinder die to the small die and pass the mixture through the grinder again.
• Meanwhile, dissolve the Fermento in the water and stir with a spoon. Add to the ground meat mixture and again mix with your hands (or throw in your standing mixer and mix on low using the paddle attachment) until it's all incorporated.
• Wrap the bowl with plastic wrap, pressing down on the surface to remove any air bubbles. Wrap again with plastic wrap and set it in the fridge for 2 days to ferment.
• Make a little test patty and cook it up in a saute pan to be sure you got the seasonings right. Adjust them if you didn't.
• Then, using a sausage stuffer, stuff the sausage into 2 ½-inch collagen casings (an 18" casing will hold about 2.5 pounds of sausage mixture), which make these sausages easy to transport on a hunt.
• Let rest in the fridge to dry out for 1-2 hours while you soak your wood chips and preheat your smoker. Soak a pan of apple wood chips for 20 minutes.
• Preheat the smoker to 112-130 degrees.
• Set the pan of chips in the smoker.
• Lay (or hang) the sausages in the smoker. Smoke for about 60 minutes at this temperature, then raise the temperature to 180 degrees.
• Smoke until the internal temperature reaches 150 degrees, which will take about 2-3 hours or more depending on your particular smoker and the ambient temperature. Keep filling your pan of apple wood chips if they get low.
• When the sausages are done, let them hang at room temperature for one hour to cool, then wrap well and refrigerate.
• I always make a ton and give some away to friends. If necessary, they can be wrapped and frozen for several months.

VENISON SAUSAGE

Steps:

• In a large metal bowl, mix sugar, mustard seed, garlic, salt, and pepper with pork and venison. When ingredients are well mixed, grind the meat mixture in a meat grinder. Put the ground meat into a mechanical sausage stuffer. Be sure to push all of the air out of stuffer so there are no air pockets in the sausages. Fill pork casing with ground meat. When casing is filled entirely, find the center of the sausage and fold and pinch in 1/2 on a table. Pinch and twist into sausage links 2 at a time, pulling the "leg" of the sausage through the center each time a twist is made.
• Hang sausage in a smoke house or put sausage in a smoker for approximately 8 to 12 hours.