How to Make Smoked Sausage

Nothing satisfies a holiday stomach than smoked sausage. Whether lounging out on the couch, or in front of a football game, smoked sausage tastes great with beer and other munchies, and can be a great component to a holiday party.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• a heat source for cooking (gas burner, hot plate, etc.)
• a thermometer
• fresh sausage already grounded together
• a smoke house to smoke the sausage
• cure
• cold water

1. Decide whether you want to do cold or smoke cooking.

2. With cold smoking heat is not generated inside of the smokehouse. Since there is no heat, the finished meat will be uncooked, but will have the smoke flavor. The longer you leave the sausage in, the stronger the smoke flavor will be. Add cure to your meat to prevent spoiling.

3. 
   Drying Sausage.

   Place the sausage into a smokehouse, preheated to about 130 degrees Fahrenheit. You will want the sausage completely dry before you precede to smoke it. It will normally take the sausage to reach 100 degrees Fahrenheit before the drying process can occur.

4. If you choose smoke cooking, your finished sausage will be cooked. You will want the temperatures in the smokehouse to reach between 175 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit. You will want to start the temperature lower and slowly rise it. For the majority of sausage, temperature needs to reach about 150-152 degrees Fahrenheit to be fully cooked. You can check the temperature with a food thermometer.
   
   
   Whether you choose to cold smoke or smoke cook you must add cure with the seasoning to prevent your meat from spoiling.

5. Once you are done smoking the meat, raise the smokehouse temperature to about 170 degrees Fahrenheit and proceed to cook the sausage until the temperature of the sausage reaches 140 degrees Fahrenheit.

6. To make sure your sausage reaching an internal temperature of 155 degrees Fahrenheit, you will want to raise the temperature of the smokehouse to about 180 degrees Fahrenheit.

7. Next you will take the sausage out of the smokehouse and sprinkle it with cold water, but not freezing water. You will want to lower the temperature of the sausage to between 80 and 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

8. Hang your sausage at room temperature for about 2 hours.

Tips & Warnings

• For every 20 to 25 lbs. of meat, add 1 ounce of cure, if dealing with smaller portions, add a half of a teaspoon for every 2.5 lbs. of meat
• Do not smoke the sausage before you dry it out
• Meat without cure will spoil

[jsteele]

on 10/26/2009 Sounds delicious. Good article 5* and recommend. Man that made me hungry... :0)