Summer Sausage

As pheasant season opens next weekend...I always make homemade summer sausage for snacks throughout the long days. Here's my recipe...Enjoy!
[T-Tablespoon, t-teaspoon, C-Cup]

Summer Sausage

3lbs ground beef or ???
2T Mortons tender quick salt
1t salt
1/2-1t garlic powder (to taste)
1/2-1t onion powder (to taste)
1-3t red pepper flakes (to taste)
1/2t cayenne (optional)
1-3T cracked black pepper (to taste)
1/4C brown sugar
1/4C oatmeal
Dash Worcestershire
1C water

Mix all ingredients; roll into 2-3" roll and wrap in foil; refrigerate 24 hours. Remove foil bake on rack in pan at 325 for one hour.


Jim

Why oatmeal?

X2

Binder. No casing.

Correct, it serves as binder...you'll never notice it.

I would like to try this. I will be using a casing, can/should I leave the oatmeal out?

What is Mortons tender quick salt? Sounds like a meat tenderizer?

No oatmeal in my summer sausage. I prefer it in a casing.

Here is a link to the Morton's Tender Quick Salt... http://www.mortonsalt.com/home-product/morton-tender-quick/.

I've not made it without the oatmeal as I don't use casing and don't have a sausage machine so you guys are on your own there. Think of it as heart healthy...

My son & I made some for the first time last weekend during our wild sausage class at Feral in Austin. It was super easy and I can't wait to make more. Do you guys all bake it or smoke it? A little intimidated about that part....

I smoke mine in a Masterbuilt smoker. I rigged mine up so I can hang the summer sausage vertically from some wood rods. There is a guide I found online a while back that explains how to increase the temperature on the smoker incrementally until the sausage reaches a specific internal temp. I've always followed that guide and had great results. I also use an A-Maze-N smoker tray in the masterbuilt which works great.

I smoke mine. You just have to keep a real close eye on internal temp and check in several spots whether you do it in the oven or the smoker because you will have varying temps. Worst thing you can do is render out the fat.

I'd say worst thing you can do is not cook it enough... been there done that and rendering a little fat is definitely better than not getting it hot enough.

Good to know - gonna give it a try over the holidays.

Yup, I agree with this. I always have some fat render out, never results in dry sausage.

wish I still had my dad's recipe for the summer sausage he finally worked to perfection. It was the best I have ever had and it basically came from a sausage cook book I bought him for father's day back in the 1970s, he would then follow the recipe for a small batch of whatever kind of sausage he was making, then tweek it a bit to get it where he liked it better and note it in the book. Somehow, that book never surfaced when he passed or my mother passed when we were trying to sort things out. From memory, very similar to the OP except I know it had whole mustard seed in it, which really helped set it off.

I gotta try this recipe

Was the book: Great Sausage Recipes and Meat Curing by Rytek Kutas?

not totally sure ... but very possibly so. I looked it up with Google and the cover sure looks familiar. The problem I have is with all the notes that dad made with the tweaks he made to those recipes.

Great Sausage Recipes & Meat Curing by Rytek Kutas