Smoking sausage after drying?

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Smoking sausage after drying?

Postby CCollins54 » Thu Dec 29, 2016 4:49 pm

Has anyone ever tried smoking a sausage after dry curing? I have some dry cured spanish chorizos and was thinking of gently cooking and smoking at around 225 F for a couple of hours. any feedback is appreciated. honestly i am just nervous to try the sausage because its my first time and not cooking it still freaks me out haha. the sausages have lost over 30% weight but they dont feel as hard and dry as i expected...
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Re: Smoking sausage after drying?

Postby NCPaul » Thu Dec 29, 2016 5:25 pm

You'll have to give us more information to help us decide what you should do. Cooking it now is not likely to make something better if it's not good at this point. I usually dry to over 35 % for a firm texture. That you're nervous makes me nervous.
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Re: Smoking sausage after drying?

Postby montanaSalami » Thu Dec 29, 2016 6:12 pm

If they are not firm at 30% weight loss, then they likely had more initial water content then is common. If you used the correct amount of Salt and Insta-cure #2 and followed good sanitary practices, the likelihood of them being "dangerous" is small. YMMV, I'm no expert, do/eat at your own risk,,,, and all other cautionary caveats in effect...
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Re: Smoking sausage after drying?

Postby CCollins54 » Thu Dec 29, 2016 6:34 pm

the only reason i am nervous is because i had trouble keeping the humidity down. i had a hard time keeping it below 90%. my chamber is a 8x10 walk in cooler with a didgital thermostat set at 55F. i have two small dehumidifiers running but the humidity gauge still reads 90%. my humidity gauge could be off? it reads in the 50% range out of the chamber which seems to be correct. the chamber smells a little funny. kind of like wet socks. not a strong smell but it is there, very subtle. i did use very good quality pork. my sanitation practices were very thorough. i use a total of 3% salt. 2.75% coming from kosher salt and .25 percent from insta cure #2. i used 1 Tbs of bactoferm f rm 52 per 10 lbs of meat. i fermented for 60 hours at 75F and 99% humidity. my ph reading from a milwaukee ph meter with meat probe was 4.89 in my chorizo batch and 4.3 in the sopressata. i have been drying at 55F and around 90% humidity for 1 month and a few days. the weight loss is right at 30%. i have had to fight some green mold. but have always wiped off with diluted vinegar solution. i had a little mold grow inside the casings on the sausages that were probed. the rest of the sausages only had surface mold on casings and were wiped down. i did spray with bactoferm mold 600 a couple of weeks in but it did not seem that the white chalky mold ever took off.
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Re: Smoking sausage after drying?

Postby NCPaul » Thu Dec 29, 2016 9:34 pm

Everything you describe is correct. Your humidity meter may be reading high by about 5 %. Give it a couple more weeks. :D
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Re: Smoking sausage after drying?

Postby CCollins54 » Fri Dec 30, 2016 12:17 am

Ok, thanks for the feedback.
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Re: Smoking sausage after drying?

Postby montanaSalami » Fri Dec 30, 2016 7:19 pm

I had a large batch of Salami that was slow to firm up, and let them go to 40%. They are great now. I did buy some commercial Salami as a taste test comparison. Mine are far superior. I was were you are, a bit scared to eat at first. I got over it, and now I am a Salami making fool.
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Re: Smoking sausage after drying?

Postby CCollins54 » Wed Jan 11, 2017 9:53 pm

ok, i have let a couple of weeks go by now and the sausages have continued to firm up. i pulled a sample of each today. both the chorizo and the sopressata are close to being dry all the way through. they both have a little bit of softness and moisture left in the middle. the casings on the outside are starting to get hard though. will this prevent the sausages from continuing to dry out in the middle? i took a bite of each of the samples. both have a funky flavor left to them. will this mellow out the more they dry? the funk tastes similar to the way the chamber smelled during fermantation, is this normal?
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Re: Smoking sausage after drying?

Postby montanaSalami » Fri Jan 13, 2017 4:17 pm

I don't know about funk. Mine gets better after freezing, or so I believe. YMMV...

I've some softness also, and I attribute this to failing to fine grind the pork before stuffing. I'll make a 20lb batch in the Spring and incorporate all my lessons learned from last year.
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