#4 - SMOKED COUNTRY   SAUSAGE   10# Batch

      Ingredients

8 Pounds - - - - - - - Venison Trimmings
2 Pounds - - - - - - - Beef Fat
6 tbsp.  - - - - - - - - -Salt
1 pint - - - - - - - - - -Ice Water
1 tbsp. - - - - - - - - - ground white pepper
3 oz. - - - - - - - - - -  corn syrup solids
4 tsp. - - - - - - - - - - onion powder
1 tsp. - - - - - - - - - - ground nutmeg
2 level tsp.- - - - - - -Powder Cure
2 cups - - - - - - - - - -Soy Protein Powder

It is best to keep all ingredients, spices and meat, in the refrigerator overnight to keep it good and cold. Pre-mix the dry spices to insure even distribution of the cure.
Cut the meat and fat into workable size pieces to put through your grinder. Grind meat and fat together using a 1/4" plate. Add and mix in all the spices and ice water thoroughly. Be sure that the meat is kept cold. Remove all blood clots, chords, etc. Stuff into hog casings of about 32-35mm. Form into 6 inch links by twisting the casings as you stuff the sausage into casings, twist in opposite directions as you fill the case. (This gets easier after you do it a couple times) If several pieces of casing is needed, tie the ends together to make into one long sausage. This will work better to hang into smoker for cooking.
Do not let sausage warm up any more than necessary necessary during processing.

Hang in smoker at low temperature around 110 - 120 degrees with damper open for an hour or until surface is nice and dry. Then make a good smudge and gradually allow the temperature to rise to 160 degrees F. Leave damper open slightly as the temperature is raised about 20 degrees per hour. Hold the temperature at around this 160 to 170 degrees until the internal temperature of the sausage reaches 152 degrees F. We use charcoal and sometimes have trouble sustaining the temperature for this step. We take the sausage inside, after the charcoal is getting a little cool, hang in the regular oven and hold at 170 degrees until done, about 2 to 3 hours. Now remove from oven or smoker and spray with cold water for about 5 minutes to try to cool the inside temperature to 110 degrees F. Place into refrigerator overnight, bag em up and freeze the ones you don't eat.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION ON SMOKING AND CURING MEATS

In a national magazine, I actually read some do-it-yourselfer calling a dried-out piece of meat a cured product. Nothing could be further from the truth.

References to the use of nitrate as a cure can be traced back several hundred years. When using nitrate to cure meat, it combines with the pigment of the meat to form a pink color and flavor the meat as well.

Flavor in what way? To give you an example about flavoring the meat, let us consider the leg of a hog, better known as ham to most people. The leg of pork when cooked or roasted is, pure and simple, roast pork. However, when this very same pork is injected or pickled in brine, it now becomes "ham" after being boiled or cooked in a smokehouse.

What a difference in flavor we have between roast pork and boiled or smoked ham! It is the nitrite that has the ability to impart these special flavors. Without its use, there would be no hams, bacons, picnics, or Canadian Bacon, and all we would have is pieces of cooked or roast pork. Additionally, nitrites also help to prevent rancidity in the storage of meats.

Most important of all, nitrite protects the meat products from the deadly toxin known as botulism. The botulism poisoning we are talking about is the most deadly form of food poisoning known to man.

Very simply diagnosed, your vision is blurred in less than a day. You have trouble holding up your head, as your neck muscles are not working very well. A little while later, you have difficulty in speaking. All the neck and throat muscles do not function, and you see everything double. This is then followed by the failure of chest and diaphragm muscles, cardiac arrest, and then pulmonary failure.

It's all over in about three days if not detected. This is botulism, or food poisoning:insidious, painful and deadly. Worst of all, botulism can produce its deadly toxin even without a foul odor or other sign of contamination. Botulism spores are the most resistant forms of life known to man.

Cures are critical in the manufacture of smoked and cooked meat to prevent food poisoning. Botulism spores are found in every type of meat or vegetable. They are harmless and cause no problems. Lack of oxygen, low acidity, proper nutrients, moisture, and temperatures in the range of 40 degrees F. to 140 degrees F., however, are where the problems begin.

It becomes obvious that sausage and meat are consistently smoked in these temperature ranges. The sausages are moist, and the smoke or heat eliminate the oxygen-perfect conditions for food poisoning if you do not use cures.

For home use, however, you should not confuse the cooking of meat in your oven with smoking meat in a smoker. Most ovens will build up a 200 degree F. temperature on the "low" setting, and most people start baking well over that temperature. This high starting temperature prevents botulism spores from surviving. This information is only meant to impress you with the fact that when you smoke meat at a low temperature, the real possibility of food poisoning is present.

Often I've had people tell me that their grandparents didn't use cures when smoking meats, since some people feel cures are not necessary. Would a person so young really know what his grandparents were doing? Probably not.

Or better still, back in the good ol' days, how many people died of natural causes? An excuse a physician would give you when he couldn't diagnose why the person died, no matter how old or young the patient was, was that the cause was "natural." Fortunately for us the physician today can easily diagnose food poisoning problems, and this book was written to help avoid them.

In much simpler terms, how many times have you read about food poisoning around Thanksgiving and other holidays? The well-intentioned cook decides to make the dressing for the turkey the night before. This gives her more time to do many other important things the next day. She stuffs the turkey the night before, and places it in the refrigerator to be cooked the next day.

Unfortunately, she doesn't know she is creating ideal conditions for food poisoning. Obviously, the stuffing that she puts into the turkey is somewhere between 40 and 140 degrees F. Because the various parts of dressing have some sort of liquid in them, the moisture is also there. Lastly, she sews up the turkey to create a lack of oxygen in its cavity.

It is simple to create food poisoning: proper temperatures of 40-140 degrees F., moisture, and lack of oxygen. To be sure, whenever you smoke any kind of product in the low range of 40-140 degrees F., it should be cured. If you can't cure it, don't smoke it. It doesn't matter if it's meat, fish, poultry, cheese, or vegetable; don't take the chance. It's a pretty good bet that anything you will smoke has some moisture in it. You are removing oxygen when smoking the product and the temperatures are ideal.

Your mouth and your intestines manufacture nitrite, and there is some evidence that our intestines' nitrite prevents us from poisoning ouselves with the very food we eat every day, since there is moisture in the stomach, lack of oxygen, and correct temperatures for food poisoning.

Furthermore, there has been some evidence of crib deaths when the infant was not able to manufacture enough nitrite in its system and, consequently, died of food poisoning. (-an article in a trade magazine written by a physician.)

Even more interesting, just to name a few nitrite-containing vegetables, plain old beets have been found to contain 2,700 PPM of nitrite; celery, 1,600 to 2,600 PPM; lettuce, 100 to 1,400 PPM; radishes, 2,400 to 3,000 PPM; potatoes, 120 PPM; zuchini squash, 600 PPM. The source for these nitrites in the vetables comes from nitrogen fertilizers. It is nitrogen that helps to produce the green color in vegetables and to make them grow faster.

It makes little difference whether you fertilize your vegetable garden out of a bag of chemicals or cow manure. The chemical end result will be the same - nitrogen equals nitrate.

In recent years, a number of books have been written on the subjects of meat curing and sausage making by people with no backgrounds or actual experience in this field. It is frightening to read that these people have recommended the use of ascorbic acid purchased at your local drugstore to cure sausage or meat. There is no documented scientific proof that botulism can be prevented by using ascorbic acid to cure meat.