Last weekends sausage

TexanOfTheNorth

As originally planned, I successfully completed my first sausage making effort last weekend. Starting with 2, 5lb. pork butts I made a batch of andouille and Texas-style hot links. The only part I was (mildly) concerned about was running the egg at the low temps needed to smoke the sausage (i.e., 130-160* range). I knew that the key to holding such a low temp probably lay in using a much smaller quantity of lump so I completely emptied the fire box of the residual lump from my last cook. I then used just a small amount of the previously used lump to start my fire; along with a couple of small lumps of apple wood for smoke. My initial load only got me up to 100* so I added a bit more and had no trouble at all keeping the low temps that I wanted.

I'll be using some of the andouille tonight to make some chicken and sausage paella. I'll probably do a rack of ribs tomorrow and throw a couple of the hot links on to go with those.

One of the pork shoulders

Spices for the hot links

Spices for the andouille

Pork cubed (for grinding) and mixed with the hot link spices

Grinding pork for the hot links

Hot links stuffed and ready to be smoked

Andouille stuffed and ready to be smoked

Sausages on the egg after about 2 hours

Finished hot links

Finished andouille

Aquacop

@TexanOfTheNorth, sweet cook, what kind of grinder do you have

Village Idiot

Both look great.  Reicpes?

TexanOfTheNorth

It's a LEM #5 that I purchased at Bass Pro Shop. I used it stuff the sausages as well.

TexanOfTheNorth

Village Idiot said:

Both look great.  Reicpes?

I got the hot link recipe from @Griffin. Here's a link to his blog page.

Here's the link for the andouille recipe.

I used a product called Ready Cure, which is a 1% sodium nitrite cure that we get here in Canada. For that reason, I cut the kosher salt in both recipes back to 1 tbsp.; which worked out well in terms of the overall "saltiness" of the end product.