Smoking Sausages

Vinyl Professor

Hi:

Recently bought a Large BGE and we love it...it is a wonderful toy, er, cooking tool.

I do have a question...has anyone used their BGE to smoke meat/sausages. By "smoking" I mean smoking for preservation and not immediate consumption. We often make our own pork sausages and would like to try to smoke them this year...My parents were from Slovenia/Croatia and they used to smoke sausages every year using cherry wood...any ideas if this can be done on the Egg. I would think it can, but I thought I'd ask the pros...

Peter

Austin Smoker

I think you mean "cold smoking", never done it myself, but you might try a search for it. Good luck

stike

i just did some kielbasa. the cure was for texture though, not to preserve it.

you can cold smoke with a little finagling. hot smoking is a little easier (shorter times and slightly higher temps).

for longer cold smoking (like salmon or bacon), a few folks here have used the egg as the smoke chamber, and piped the smoke to a smoke box away from the egg (so the smoke could cool).

or they have just done short cold smokes (couple hours) by using very little lump and an ice drip pan to drag down the dome temp. like for cheese.

i've only just done the kielbasa (there's a joke in there somewhere), but am looking to try belly bacon, buckboard bacon, and dry cured chorizo. if i have any luck i'll post it as i go

ShortRIb

My thoughts are that you smoke for flavor. You salt to preserve. What I mean is, say you are doing a summer sausage. You would add a pinch of Tenderquick or saltpeter to preserve the meat. Then place it in a casing. Smoke it until the internal temp is around 150. Since you added the salt, it can remain in your fridge for a few months. The curing salt keeps the "bugs" off. However, if you didn't use the curing salts, you would have to eat it within days or freeze it. The smoke does nothing to preserve your meat. It just adds a smokey flavor.
Even if you were drying the sausage, you would salt it then hang it to dry age for many days.
So, if you were stuffing your own sausage, my suggestion is to stuff it in the casing, smoke it, then freeze it. If you want to use it like a summer sausage, add cure, stuff the casings then keep it in your fridge until ready.

I hope this helps.

PS A LITTLE TIP..if you smoke sausage and want to freeze or refriderate it for later, as soon as it reaches temp on your smoker, remove it and place it in an ice bath until it cools to about 70 degrees. This will prevent it from getting real wrinkly. Trust me...do this.