1/27/2018 – First attempt at making andouille sausage as what we buy often is tasteless compared to how articles about say it tastes. This has many of the traditional Cajun spices used in sausage.
Recipe below inspired by Hank Shaw here. The strikeouts below are from his recipe that I did not follow.
Ingredients – As I had about 6 lbs of pork once the Butt was cleaned I increased the amounts in his recipe plus used Cure #1 and salt from the Cure Calculator. The amounts below in bold are what was used.
1 cup onion, diced 1.25 C
1+ tablespoon lard or peanut oil
3 1/2 pounds venison, pork, beef or other meat
1 1/2 pounds pork belly or fatty shoulder – Total meat and fat was 2823 gm = 6 lbs 3.5 oz.
33 grams kosher salt, about 3 tablespoons 49.85*
4 grams Instacure No. 1, about a heaping teaspoon Cure #1, 7.05 gm*
25 grams dry milk, about 1/3 cup (optional)
3 tablespoons minced fresh garlic 6 small cloves
2 teaspoons cayenne. 2nd tsp was heaping
2 tablespoons sweet paprika. 2nd tsp was heaping
1/2 teaspoon clove – 2nd was a heaping spoonful
1/4 teaspoon allspice – 2nd was a heaping spoonful
2 teaspoons dried thyme – 2nd was a heaping spoonful
1 teaspoon powdered mustard – a heaping spoonful
1/2 cup red wine or beer (put in fridge to keep it cold) – 5/8 C
Hog casings Will make large patties and vac packed in pint bags.
1/27/2018 – Heated cannola oil in a small saute pan and cook the rough chopped yellow onion over medium heat until they are soft and translucent and slightly browned on the edges. Remove from the pan and let cool in a cold tap water bath in another bowl. Once cool Mary chopped them small and sprinkled on seasoned meat.
While the onions are cooking, take about 10 to 15 feet of casings (typically three
lengths) and submerge them in warm water.
Cut the meat and fat into 1″-1.5″ strips, spread on baking sheet and shook on the blended salt, cure, dry milk, garlic, cayenne, paprika, clove, allspice, thyme and powdered mustard. You need the Instacure No. 1 as a safety measure when you smoke the links; if you don’t plan on smoking them, you need not use this. You need the dry milk to help the links hold onto their moisture: If you skip this, they will still taste good, but they will shrivel up when you chill them.
Left on the baking sheet and put into the freezer with the grinder for 30 minutes. Grinder was cold but no ice crystals on the meat.
Ground the onions, meat and fat with seasonings and garlic through the coarse die. It ground ok but could have been colder. Ground it in the garage where the temp was about 60°.
Spread the ground seasoned meat out on the baking sheet and put in back into the deep freezer for 30 minutes. Took it out and added the ale mixing by hand for 2 minutes. He said–This turns what was essentially flavored ground meat into a cohesive sausage–sort of.
Put the ground, seasoned meat with the cure into a SS bowl–with plastic wrap tight against the meat–to cure for a couple of days per the SMF post linked here. As the only time to smoke it was the next weekend it cured for 7 days.
Handy Universal Cure Calculator results for the above.
Weight of Meat in Grams… 2823 grams
Cure #1 % Nitrite… 6.25 %
Salt % Desired…2 %
Sugar % Desired…1 %
Parts Per Million (PPM) Nitrite…156
*Calculate the Cure
Cure #1 Needed… 7.05 grams
Salt Needed… 49.85 grams
Sugar Needed… 28.23 grams
Total 2908.13 gram
2/3/2018 – Ambient temp is 47° and humidity is 81% with occasional drizzling rain.
7:00 AM – Had made large thick patties and put on mats in the MES around the hanging bacon. Lite Lumberjack pecan pellets in the Amazen tray and started the smoke. MES temp is 54° and the smoke drifted out the top port with no power to the MES.
1:30 PM – Pulled the bacon slab so I could heat up the MES and bring the patties up to 155° based on advice below. Set the MES to 200° with a steady smoke stream and the chip loader pulled back out to let in more air. IT of the patties was about 75° as had been the air temp in the MES for the past 6 hours.
3:30 – IT is 140° and MES per the ChefWorks probe is 208°.
4:30 – IT is only 149° so raise MES setting from 200° to 225°.
5:25 – IT is 155° so pulled them and let sit out in the kitchen to cool. Put into a zip lock bag and into the refer.
Slices of one at room temp was chewy due to the course grinder die and mild hints of the cloves, all spice and other fragrant herbs. No hints of the peppers. Hopefully, once they have aged a bit with the smoke they will be more interesting.
The next afternoon we vac packed them individually in pint bags and froze them. More tastes during this was like the day before.
Chef Folse says to “smoke andouille at 175-200 degrees F for approximately 4-5 hours.”
He also said: It was not uncommon for the Cajuns to smoke andouille for seven to eight hours at approximately 175 degrees F.
Another guy – If you hot-smoke your links, pull them when they reach an internal temperature of 155°F.
Another guy – Place in a smoker and smoke at 194°F until the internal temperature of the sausage registers 140°F on a probe thermometer.
