Pork Sausage for Beginners! | Chuds BBQ

Oh what's going on everybody welcome back to Judds barbecue my name is Bradley Robinson and today I'm gonna show you how to make this beautiful plump porky smoky delicious barbecue sausage coming up what a cop is making sausage the world is endless you got chicken beef pork any combination of any proteins with any flavor profile is looking for whether it's jalapeno cheese kielbasa all the way up to spaghetti and meatball sausage but that being said there are a few hard fast rules in order to make quality homemade barbecue smoked sausage and that's what we're going to cover today with a very simple all pork recipe even ideal world you would start out with some really lean pork meat and some pure pork fat ideally that back works really well that way you can control the perfect meat to fat ratio which is one of the most important components on making sausage ala Rory and Louis we take the full ham off of the whole hogs that we get and that way we get really lean ham meat and there's also a bunch of fat back and get the perfect 70/30 ratio for the home cook that's a little less realistic but if you'd like to see us do that head over to patreon.com/scishow and Louis and check out how we make our sausage it's a great way to see more of me but for home cook finding fresh hams can be a bit difficult getting a pork shoulder is your next best bet because as you can see it has got a beautiful marbling to it and it just so happens to work out to the perfect amount of fat content for sausage so that's what we're going with today I've got two boneless pork butts here boneless pork shoulders that run in about five pounds of piece and what I'm doing is just cubing them up into 1-inch squares freaking Carlisle having a backyard party over here the reason I'm squaring all this meat off is number one we're gonna put this on a salt care overnight with all the other seasonings and what that's gonna do is tighten up the meat a little bit it's gonna season the meat all the way through if you were to just put all the salt and other seasonings on a full pork shoulder it would take days or weeks to get salt penetration all the way into the meat but if it's cubed up in little squares like this it'll only take a few hours the overnight cure also helps with the texture of the meat itself the meats gonna tighten up a lot and that's gonna help a lot with the grinding process because instead of trying to smear and smudge it's gonna cut really clean because it's got a firmer texture the other really practical reason why we're Cuban the meats so small is so that it will fit into the grinder easier look at that ten pounds I'm gonna died makes life easy as far as salt content is concerned with sausage the general rule of thumb I like to follow is 1.5 to 2% of salt by weight of meat and fat put together in your sausage so for this 10-pound batch of sausage that works out to be four thousand four hundred and thirty six grams so we're gonna go with about 1.7 percent of that which will arrive us at 80 grams of kosher salt if I was putting cheese in the sausage or any other salty ingredients I would back that down to 1.5% if I was going really basic I may bump it up to two percent depending on the meat the next ingredient that's of utmost importance is pink salt we're going with about 12 grams of that this is pink salt curing salt prog powder number one whatever you want to call it this is a really important ingredient if you're planning on cold smoking your sausage because what this does is keep the meat safe while it's held in the danger zone while it's cold smoking in they go now it's time to add some flavor and like I said we're gonna go with a real basic flavor profile on this pork sausage just to focus in on the techniques but these are a few ingredients that I throw into pretty much every sausage I make we're gonna start out with garlic powder I like granulated garlic better than fresh garlic just because it's more consistent it'll spread more evenly through the sausage as well as not being nearly as harsh as fresh garlic can be 40 grams going in next up mustard powder this is another one of my go-to ingredients as far as sausages concerned because a pork mustard kind of makes sense got that really German flavor profile to it but also mustard powder is a natural emulsifier and it's gonna act as our binder in this sausage and of course because we're in Texas we're gonna add some black pepper I've got some cayenne pepper and some paprika add some color add some heat and that's it that's all I'm gonna put in this now I'm gonna mix this up make sure everything is evenly thoroughly coated and basically what's gonna happen overnight is the salt is gonna penetrate the meat and it's gonna cure it it's gonna draw out some moisture which is gonna kind of reabsorb kind of like the dry brine we talked about in the chicken video as well as all of the spices in here are gonna hydrate and really add some really good flavors to this pork so I'm gonna mix this all up put it in the fridge overnight and I will see you tomorrow so this meat has been chilled overnight in the fridge I've actually had it in the freezer for the last few hours just to make sure everything is nice and cold I've also had the meat grinder pieces in the freezer as well as this ice pack mostly because I'm outside and it's really hot out here and I want to make sure that the meat stays as cold as possible so it's gonna give us the best grind and make sure none of the fat starts melting and smearing and all that good stuff so adding liquid to your sausage is a really great pro tip because it's gonna make sure that everything comes out nice and juicy is gonna make sure all those spices stay nicely hydrated and it's also another time where you can add some additional flavor traditionally ice is used as sausage-making that's what I've got in here it's just going to help add moisture as well as keeping the meat really cold throughout the grind up to ten percent of the total weight of your sausage you can do a liquid so for this ten pound batch I did about a pound of ice you can do stock you can do beer you can do any liquid you like that's for the grinding plate I'm using the coarse die again same one we used on the burger video check out that video a good coarse ground sausage is really what we're known for here in Texas if you wanted to get a tighter texture something a little more like a hot dog or kielbasa you could use a smaller plate and if you want us to run it through a small plate two or three times let's start getting into the emulsification territory as you can tell the sausage has gotten much tighter it's got a really nice texture to it grinds up real nice and even definitely wanna get yourself a high powered meat grinder if you're in the Senate I screw it one of the most important things about making sausage is making sure that all the meat has binded together I was mentioning this in the burger video but whenever you grind meat enzymes are released and the meat wants to kind of bind itself back together as you can see this is real loose real crumbly so if you tried to case this you'd end up with a really poorly textured sausage you would crumble out in the casing and you wouldn't have that nice tight snap that we're looking for so in order to make this better you can go through and mix the hell out of it but something that I found works out really well especially for the home cook is just sending it through the meat grinder twice it's gonna help mix it all together redistribute all the fat make sure everything is nicely incorporated and it's gonna do some of the mixing for us which is gonna give us a really tight bind and as you can tell this is the one that went through twice this is one that went through once and this one is a lot more cohesive alternatively you can not send it through twice just really give it a solid mixing by hand I've had some really good results at least with this sides plate if you're using a smaller plate I probably wouldn't suggest running it through twice so there is our ground sausage mix that's looking real nice but just for good measure I'm gonna go through and give it a nice mix by hand just to make sure everything's incorporated this is kind of the opposite of what you want to do with a burger or what you want to do it meatloaf or something cuz this is gonna really tighten the meat up together that's kind of what we're going for when making a sausage that way it'll form as one link instead of just ground meat in a casing and you can start feeling it getting tighter giving you more resistance just like kneading dough we're getting this together and as you can see it's starting to hold itself together as one mass a lot of people say one way you can test if it's properly mixed as if it sticks to your hand and this one does so I'm gonna call it done this is also the stage where you would add any cheese or peppers or anything you want a garnish or flavor your sausage with it you don't want to send through the grinder so the meat grinder itself does have the capability to put one of these stuffing tubes on it and you can send the meat right back through the grinder right into the casing but I find these manual stuffers really do a better because you can control the amount of pressure with both hands and then you can get the really perfectly taught casing as we're casings I'm going with some all-natural hog casings you can pick these up on Amazon you get em at the grocery store I typically go to my local butcher shop and grab them you can get a whole tank for real cheap they come packed in salt and will last a really long time but what you want to do is take them out of the package suck em in some water make sure you rinse out all of the salt take a casing open up the end like that and then I can put some water through and that's just gonna make sure the casing is all the way opened up nice and flushed out of all the salt and you can just get it right on here I've been making sausage for five years now and this part always makes me giggle fill this tube up with meat I wanna make sure you press it in nicely so you don't create any air pockets in there one thing to mention too is if you're new to sausage making when you're seasoning your meat you can always take a pinch of this make a patty and fry it up and taste it that way you know if it's got the right amount of garlic the right amount of salt that kind of stuff tie a nice knot in the end nip off the little tail and then what you want to do is grab the casing on the horn here with your left hand and slowly start cranking with the right hand so we're trying to do is keep enough tension on the casing that it fills up to its max without bursting but without being too nice if we were just gonna case this like this come out real loose and no good and if we were to put too much pressure on this end we would end up popping the casing it's trying to find that perfect balance which is going to give you the tightest sausage link so go nice and slow let it fill up you don't want to pop it anything like that and then you can just pull it out give it a little twist and then go again going link by link like this is really great for beginners who have never made sausage before because you can make sure that the casing is really nice and tight but you're also making sure that you're not gonna get any extra air pockets you can take your time and really make some beautiful looking sausage links it's definitely not the most efficient way to go about it there are a lot of different techniques in the sausage making world a lot of times you'll see people make one big loose link and then go around linking everyone which is really great if you're making hundreds of pounds of sausage a week but if you're just doing a little 10 pound batch you might as well take your time and make some really pretty links tie off this end as well make sure everything's nice and tight and there you go beautiful perfect sausage links made at home can't go wrong you can tell they're nice and plump nice give to them nothing's too soft I don't see any air pockets so I see no need to prick the casing mm-hmm prick you can make these links any size you want as well you can make full ropes you can make it as long as the casing is itself Elroy and Lewis we tend to do longer links about this size because you can just pop these in and because we're serving it sliced by the pound these longer links make a lot of sense this is a skill that takes time a lot of practice they are really good at making sure you're nailing the perfect tension I don't think you can get sheep casings and get beef casings another great thing about these casings too is that if you do buy them in bulk or you don't use them all you can always repack them in salt keep them in your freezer keep them in your fridge they'll last a long time beautiful up and I'll tell you when I decided that it would be a good idea to start an outdoor cooking channel I do not anticipate for the amount of flies that I would encounter so I do apologize if you're seeing all these flies I see them too maybe I'll invest in some citronella candles all right coming down to the end here so guys let me know what sausages you want to see me do next all right and that is all of my sausages linked up and ready to go if you have any questions that I did not cover in this casing tutorial let me know and I will glad they get into it in my next sausage video so now what I'm gonna do is pop these into the fridge uncovered overnight what that's gonna do is help dry out these casings so we get a really good snap and then we will cold smoke them in the morning [Music] all right it's now day three of the sausage making process and you could easily just grind seasoning case and smoke this all in the same day but if you really want to up your sausage game and get there a nice deep red color and that perfect snap this is a way to go about doing it so the sausage has been chilling just like this in the refrigerator overnight and the skin is nicely dried out and that pellicle is really important when it comes to cold smoking because that's what's gonna allow the smoke to really adhere and stick to this sausage and get us that deep red color there got my smoker fired up behind me I've got a little bit of charcoal for heat and then one big thick log and what that's gonna do is just help maintain a nice thick smoke but we're not gonna go any hotter than 150 degrees the whole point of cold smoking is to allow smoke to penetrate the sausage give it good color but without rendering any of the fat start throw them on some putting these on the grill here you want to just make sure that they're not touching each other because anywhere the sausage is overlap if I was to do that then that's just one spot that's not gonna get any smoke on it and you'll end up with splotchy bald spots not a good look as you may know botulism loves to form right around that temperature which is why we put the sodium nitrite in there the pink salt that's gonna help stave away any bacteria that may want to try and form at these lower temperatures you can also hang these that's a great method one of these days I'm gonna build a cold smoker and that's it we're just gonna let these absorb smoke for the next few hours but we'll check back in a little bit all right here we are right at the three hour mark we have stayed within 20 degrees of a hundred and fifty for the entire time these are looking real nice nice and smoky nice and plump just trying to look real nice get some color on the underside of these and they'll be done one thing I like to do is just give them a little wipe you wipe everyone loves it clean weenie alright now that these sausages have been cold smoked for a solid six hours they have had a nice little sausage polish it's time to shock them in an ice bath and what that's gonna do is stop the cooking process it's gonna help the skins shrink up it's also gonna cool them down rapidly so they can go right into the fridge alright and there you have these are some beautifully cold smoked sausages he's went up to about an internal temperature of a hundred and fifty degrees and these are now ready to go all we need to do is heat them back up at 275 degrees or so for about thirty minutes cook the meat all the way through and these are some beautiful barbecue sausages straight out of the fridge on to this 275 degree smoker these sausages are done they've had an internal temperature of about a hundred and sixty-five degrees you can see that grease is starting to come out of the casing a little bit that's a sign of good rendering and the color is just spectacular but now it's not for all of our hard work to pay off mm-hmm nice and plump so taking these off you really want to try not to probe them for internal temperature but you usually got a sacrifice one just to make sure for mine it was this one you can see I poked the end there and it's kind of leaked out a little bit when it was really hot but just like any meat we want to let these rest so the juices don't start flowing out but luckily because they're so small they cool down pretty quick nice and juicy very nice consistency on that it's kind of what we're looking for you want it to be nice and juicy very tasty mm-hmm nice garlicky flavor the smoke is definitely there beautiful color it's got a good amount of heat from the Cayenne which is really pleasant but not overpowering and this is just the beginning you can build off this with any any other spices you like but this is a great starting point for any sausage all right guys and that is it that is my basic sausage tutorial I hope you enjoyed this video and if you do plan on getting the sausage making for the first time I highly recommend this recipe starting really simple and just getting the fundamentals down but if you enjoyed this video please like and subscribe to the channel let me know in the comments below what you want to see me cook next hit me up on Instagram at chud's BB Q for any questions and to see what else I've been cooking until the next time I see you please go cook something outside

Channel: Chuds BBQ

Views: 405,980

Keywords: Offset Smoker, Backyard BBQ

Id: QZ_dLrvBS-4

Length: 17min 15sec (1035 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 16 2020