Homemade Hot Links Recipe

hey everybody I'm chef Tom with a tbq calm and today we're making hot links these hot links that I'm preparing today are a pork hot link not to be confused with the red hots down in Texas but we're gonna do it all the way from scratch starting with this pork butt so here we have our Boston butt pork shoulder we're gonna be utilizing all this excess fat on the fat cap but first I want to feel around and make sure that there's not anything cartilage wise left behind anything hard that you don't want to go into your sausage and this one looks pretty clean I think we're in good shape so the easiest way to handle this is to kind of follow the blade bone down until you get around the blade bone sitting right here and once you get around it kind of slice straight through now that gives you a really nice hunk of meat to start carving away at oh there we go found a little piece of cartilage so that's something you want to look for we'll get rid of that all right so let's start taking strips out of the pork butt and the size just depends on your grinder a lot of times cubes are the best way to go my grinder does a good job of taking in a whole strip at a time but it's not a bad idea to have some cubes because we're gonna try and firm this up in the freezer first and it'll do that a little bit quicker if we have cubes to work with and this is the reason that we use the Boston but look at all the fat content in there that's exactly what you're looking for when it comes to making sausage I'd hope to have this sausage somewhere in the 75% meat to 25% fat ratio when it comes to the blade side of the butt you're just gonna do your best to carve out in that odd shaped blade all of the meat and then really anything that's left behind if you have just a little bit stuck to that bone that bone makes for great pork stock now this recipe we're doing today you can scale up or down it's all based on the per poundage as far as the seasonings go we're probably gonna do about 5 pounds today but you know sausage making is a lot of work so if you've got the time you might as well go ahead and do 20 pounds of these at a time so I'm just gonna scale out 5 pounds of this pork shoulder but maybe go just a touch over because I have it and there's gonna be some loss in the process and then I'm just going to transfer this to a sheet pan if you got you know like a casserole dish or something like that something that you can get some surface area on that will still fit in your freezer the more surface area you've got the faster this is going to set up for you and the reason that we're gonna put this into the freezer is because we want all of the elements of the sausage to be as cold as possible as we're making the sausage if the meat ever gets warm enough to where the fat can start to melt it will totally change the texture of the sausage for these hot links I'm gonna be using a handful of items that can grab right off the shelf here at all things BBQ you guys out there in internet land check out a tbq com to pick up any of these we're gonna start off with the Cattlemen's grill carne asada eight second ride and then we've got some code three spices grunt rub grate garlic flavor in here a little bit of that house accuse slow smoked gold one of my favorite mustard sauces and you got to have some hog casings fresh natural hog casings these hog casings that need some time to soak before we can actually stuff the sausage into them so what I'm gonna do here is just open this up and one of these little packages will do twenty-five pounds of sausage so we're gonna open this up and start to tear this thing apart and since we're doing a smaller amount today I'm not going to be using all of these casings alright so these are gonna go into warm water and this warm water is gonna allow these to become more pliable and then here in a little bit about an hour so we're gonna start to rinse the salt from the inside of the casings because these have been sitting in a salt mixture as for the rest of these casings I'm gonna try these back up so they don't get all tangled we'll put them back into the bag and then just cover them in kosher salt and throw them in the fridge these will keep for a long time when they're packed in salt so we're gonna take these casings that we've soaked and start to rinse them out you want to get yourself a bowl with some cold water running in there and then you're just going to open up the ends get some water in there and run it all the way through to the other side you get to that other side turn around go back to the other way so you'll do this a couple of times and then find the ends and transfer it to a bowl of clean water if you leave these ends hanging out together you'll always know where those are when you come to work with this piece of the casing and then you'll want to refresh the water so that you're not just working with salty water the whole time repeat the same process find the end open that up scoop some water in there and run it through the casing get to that far end run it back the other way all right and that's how we rinse the casings make sure you keep them nice and organized as you transfer over try not to tangle anything just work your way around the bowl always keeping the ends of your casings on the edge so you know right where they are well the pork is really set up nicely it's not frozen all the way through but it's pretty firm on the outside we've got all of our equipment here for grinding that's been in the freezer as well so we're keeping all of these components nice and cold [Music] we're gonna start out with a course dye this year is a 10 millimeter dye so this first pass through we've got the partially frozen pork no seasonings on a coarse grind one of the great things about these LEM grinders is they've got what they call the Big Bite technology so as this is moving along it's got a longer thread right here where you drop in the meat and that usually means that it snags whatever it is really easily so a lot of times this plungers just completely unnecessary so this is our first grind our coarse grind and at this point we're going to add some seasonings let me go grab those from the fridge now I've scaled out these seasonings for a five pound batch and put them in the fridge because again we want everything to be cold this is our slow smoked gold the Hausa q mustard sauce we're gonna add an equal amount of Cattlemen's grill eight second ride an equal amount of grunt rub again for the garlic and we've got some cayenne this is gonna give it some of the red color and that kick that we're looking for out of a hot link and last a bit of smoked paprika for the color and the extra depth of flavor so we want to give this just a really quick mix by hand you don't want to work the meat too much because you will begin to melt that fat just trying to get everything pretty evenly incorporated now it's pretty hot out here on the patio it's about 90 degrees and just to make sure I keep the mixture cold I want to throw it back into the fridge for another 20 minutes before we do our last grind and at this point we're getting ready to do this final grind you want to switch out your dye for a finer dye this one right here four and a half millimeter and the reason we're going down to a finer dydz because I want a finer texture in this sausage I don't want the hot link to be chunky like I would maybe an Italian sausage or something like that so we're gonna take it down so it's a little bit smoother it's crazy just how much aroma is coming off with just cold sausage I mean the garlic's already jumping out to me from the grunt rub and definitely get that Chi in that chili powder thing going as well beautiful red color on the sausage working out the last of it now all right that's exactly what we're looking for at this point it's a really good idea for you to do a little bit of a fry test so what I do is take just a pinch of that sausage cook it up in the skillet and taste it and make sure I like where all the seasonings are now this specific recipe I've done I don't know a handful of times enough to know that it's going to be right where I want it but for you at first time at home always taste your food make sure it's exactly where you want it there's just one last step before we get to actually stuffing the sausage and that's to create the primary bind which we're going to do by mixing on this stand mixer with the paddle attachment now this is really important because this gives sausage it's sausage II texture it's what holds everything together so again with the paddle attachment we'll start out slow work our way up just a little bit [Music] so what we're looking for 30 to 60 seconds is all it's going to take but essentially when you pick up this sausage it all wants to hold together now it's changed the structure and that's what we're looking for so that's right where we want it it's tacky and it holds together we're not gonna waste any time we want to make sure we keep this cold we're gonna transfer it right over to our stuffer and I'm gonna press this flat you don't want any air bubbles in there because we don't want any air bubbles in our case sausage now before I transfer the casings onto the horn we're just gonna put a little fat here for lubricant to make sure everything's moving and then I'll show you the setup and the best way to get these on here so start by taking one end of the casing open that up and much like we did we were rinsing earlier gonna scoop a little bit of water in there and this water I want right down here so it's it's down in the valley in between these two I'm gonna start to slide the casing onto the horn now the water stays down there in the valley but what it's doing is it's making sure that everything's nice and slippery so that it moves without tearing perfect so then we're just repeating this process until we've got all of our casings right here on the horn and I'll move a little bit of this water back to the bowl but we're gonna leave some here in the tray as well because it's going to help the sausage move around and spin as it starts coming off of the horn there's a couple of different ways to get this started but what I like to do is crank until the sausage comes all the way to the end and then we know that there's no air left in the end of the sausage so you can go ahead and tie it off first thing and just gonna start slowly cranking away kind of want to let the casing tell you when it's full it should take very little pressure just using my thumb and a finger to to kind of guide things and then when we get a bubble or something like this where it looks like there's a decent amount of air you can just take the back of a knife and tap it it's not gonna cause a blowout but it does let that air out of there so we don't want to over stuff these because that will cause a blowout also if you over stuff you'll have a hard time forming links later on right now this is nice and pliable we could form a link here if we want to so we're not going super full now you notice that it kind of wants to curl in a certain direction and you just want to follow that you'll see this actually has a twist to it right now where if we get all the way up here into this casing that's on the horn it looks like it's twisted so I might just help it along by go ahead and twist that and it lets it move a little bit more naturally now hopefully I don't have to spend too much time doing that I can just go ahead and fill away now when we get down to the end we're getting close to here we're going to slow down just a little bit I'm gonna give ourselves some room to tie off so I'm actually going to back off just to take all of the pressure off of there and I can leave that untied for now until I finish making these links now I know that hot links actually has the word links in it right but I like to cook them whole sometimes just cook that whole spiral up just like that you can slice them to serve all right and we're here at the end we've run out of sausage to stuff you can see this one went ahead and filled a little more full so we cook it as a whole ring we're just gonna cut off right at the end here and tie this one off I also going to show you a really simple technique for forming links what you want to do we call this pinch pinch twist and just repeat it over and over again you set your length pinch set your length pinch twist it up same direction every time pinch pinch twist pinch pinch twist and since we haven't tied off this end piece yet it's got as much room as it needs to expand out and then we can kind of tighten it down so we get a nice firm link there and that's all there is to it from here you've got options if you want to go the low and slow route and try to incorporate a lot more smoke flavor what you want to do is first rest the sausages in the fridge overnight uncovered this forms the pellicle on the outside which allows the smoke to really attach to the sausage but what we're gonna do today is cook them off hot and fast on the kimono Joe ceramic grill we've got the kimono Joe preheated it's running nice and hot and we've set it up for indirect cooking to prevent flare-ups all right let's start this main guy right here in the center and then we'll put our links around the outside all right so we're just gonna close this up let these get to cooking we're looking for an internal temperature of 160 degrees really nice browning and carmelization on the outside there that's great it's exactly what we're looking for not too much not too light now inevitably is the grease begins to drip out of the sausages and on to the plate or on to hot coals it's going to flare up that's really easy to control that you just got to cut the oxygen down so cook with the door closed in order to keep the flare-ups from getting out of control all right well we've hit our 160 target really great little browning on the outside there start taking these guys off alright let's slice into one of these check that out look at all that fat and it stayed in place because we kept the sausage cold the whole time it didn't leak out right away so that's a really beautiful structure for a sausage it's all held together very nicely the fat doesn't automatically pour out you got to squeeze it to see and it's distributed really well I like to have some mustard sauce or some barbecue sauce on the side with the hot links I'm going to get into this big Rick's original great barbecue sauce mmm but it can't outshine that hotlink just wait for it and that heat it starts creeping up on you it's on the back end but it's there for sure I love the mustard mixed in there as well just a little bit of Tang eNOS it matches the heat really well that comes off of the eight second ride it comes out of that Cayenne and there's just a touch of smokiness from that paprika very nice now when it comes down to all of these different flavors we're talking about I'm not writing the Bible here you guys do whatever you like at home I mean these are just some of the suggested flavors that I really like in a hotlink and you can definitely mess around and figure out what you like I think what's really important to take away from all of this is just that process of the sausage making making sure you're keeping everything cool making sure you get that primary bind do it right and you're gonna be happy with the results I thanks so much for watching be sure to check us out at 80 BB Q calm everything in this video from the grinder to the stuffer the seasonings the casings and of course the grill is available for purchase at ATV BQ comm if you enjoyed the video please hit that subscribe button and the alert bell next to it to be notified when we drop a new video if you have any questions or comments so there's anything you'd like to see me cook let me know in the comment section down below and let's be good to one another for more recipes tips and techniques head over to the sauce ATB BQ comm all things BBQ where BBQ legends are made

Channel: allthingsbbq

Views: 327,343

Rating: 4.9306893 out of 5

Keywords: Homemade Hot Links Recipe, homemade hot links, hot links recipe, hot links, pork hot links, how to make hot links, how to make sausage, sausage links, homemade sausage links, pork sausage, grinding sausage, food, cooking, recipe, chef tom, atbbq.com, atbbq, all things bbq, the sauce, kamado joe, classic ii, ceramic grill, kamado grill, kamado joe recipes, recipes

Id: f9MkwU9Bfuo

Length: 19min 45sec (1185 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 19 2018