Author: Spudalicious

Let the euphemisms fly!

I typically have several different types of sausage in the freezer. Smoked kielbasa is one of my favorite and most versatile. I’m using duck and pork here, but beef and pork is the standard.

I’m primarily Irish, so it’s easier for me to metric. It also comes in handy when you need to be precise on things like curing salts and such.

The animal parts:
2lbs duck breast
2lbs pork shoulder
1lb pork back fat

The other stuff:
40 gm kosher salt
5.5 gm Cure #1
10 gm sugar
3 gm marjoram
6 cloves garlic
1/2 cup ice cold water

I’ll apologize for gearing this towards people that know how to make sausage. If I made it for the generic crowd, it would be a multi-part series.The one thing that I will put out there is that cleanliness is next to godliness. Just like the booze making series, everything has to be clean, clean, clean.

Cube the duck and pork, add the seasonings and leave in the fridge overnight. The water will be hand mixed in for two minutes after the second grind.

You want the meat to be close to freezing when you grind it for a proper texture. Let it sit in the freezer for awhile before the first and second grind. I did the first grind through the coarse plate and the second through the medium plate. I usually like kielbasa a little finer, but I’m gun shy after my last batch of breakfast sausage turned out gummy and tough. Duck can’t handle a lot of grinding.

It was below 60 degrees in the garage, so after stuffing, I was able to hang the links overnight on my custom drying rack/target stand. If your temps are above that, you will have to shorten the hang time. The purpose is to let the flavors meld and develop the pellicle the smoke will stick to. The different lengths are due to the craptacular casings I had on hand.

I smoked for four hours on cherry starting at 120 and slowly ramping up to 180. Final IT was 145. Into an ice bath to stop the cooking and then hung in the garage for a couple of hours. I’m pretty happy with this batch.

These sausages are fully cooked and ready to eat. Grill until hot, or in a 300 degree oven. Or split them and brown in a skillet. Or slice in rounds as an ingredient in another dish. You can even skip the casings and keep it as fresh, unsmoked sausage. As I said, this is a very versatile sausage.

Enjoy! Thanks for looking.