Quick Meat Type Question

[tex_toby]

I have a summer sausage kit from Hi Mountain and am planning on doing it up today. It says I should use a beef or venison to pork ratio of 3-1. Can you use 100% pork? What about using brisket as the beef portion? Your sausage guru help is most appreciated!

tex

[DATsBBQ]

The pork is to add fat content to the sausage. Brisket (use the fat, don't trim) would be better than going all pork. Venison is one of the leanest meat around and definitely needs the added pork.

Summer sausage, to be summer sausage needs red meat. It wouldn't be summer sausage if you went all pork.

[JamesB]

You also will not get the texture of Summer Sausage with out the beef. If using brisket, I would trim as much fat as possible and replace that portion with pork fat, but that's just me.

[tex_toby]

Thanks, fellas. Sorry I never got around to posting the results to this. It was a lot of work and I was about 80% satisfied with the end product. What I ended up doing was using about 7 pounds of pork butt with the fat included and about 8 pounds of brisket that I trimmed all of the fat off of. I cut both the brisket and pork butt into cubes that I could feed through my grinder. I mixed them together so I could get a good combo blend. After that, I mixed in all of my spices and ran back through the grinder a second time per the instructions I was working with. I then added diced pickled jalepenos (I probably should have used fresh) but I think they worked ok. I also cubed up (tiny cubes) 2 lbs of sharp cheddar cheese and hand mixed into the batch with the jalepenos.

Two mistakes I think I made were obviously using regular cheese instead of high-temp. I figured as much going into it, but I was impatient and didn't want to wait to order some high temp. It didn't hold up great, but it wasn't terrible either. The next thing I did was grind all of the fat in with the meat. From what I have been reading, I should have trimmed all of the fat and ground it separately and then add back to the mix before stuffing. I ended up cooking the sausage in the oven being that it was my first time and I wanted to manage the heat as close as possible.

At any rate, I ended up with about 5.5 3lb sticks. The texture is slightly spongy, but it is definitely edible. I will try a few different things next time, but it was a pretty decent first shot.

tex

[DATsBBQ]

Nearly a 50-50 mix of beef and pork? Cut back on the pork next time and I think you'll be happier.