Friday, August 11, 2006

day 35

Well, I have to confess. I didn't get out into the woods this morning. I didn't go to bed until 12:30 or so last night, and I was so keyed up that I didn't fall asleep until after 2 am. So when that alarm rang at 4 am . . . it was a pretty easy decision to turn it off and go back to sleep. oh well.

Spent the day smoking. Got the sausage in the smoker at 10 am or so, and it took nearly three hours at 115 deg. F to get the suckers up to 90 degrees, which is the temp they should be when you start the smoke.

Here's the data from my "sausage log" (to paraphrase Path Walker . . . everyone should have a sausage log):
Two 2 lb. sticks summer sausage; Eastman Products summer sausage mix; added 1 tbs extra spices to 4 lbs meat
--put them in 10 am at 56 deg F; smoker at 115 – 130
--at 12:45 internal temp reached 90 deg; began smoke and smoker temp at 135-145
--at 2:00 internal temp 111; smoker heating element unplugged, burner plate alone keeps box temp at 150.
--3:00 internal temp 122, burner plate alone keeps temp at 156
Here's a picture from the Bradley Smoker forum of someone else's summer sausage hanging in a smoker; I only did two sticks obviously, but this is basically how the setup looks. Next time I will fill the box like this guy does.

At 3:30 pm I put the turkey in, which in hindsight turned out to be a mistake. Mostly because I should have been smoking/cooking the turkey at a higher temp than the temp for the sausages. I also had to cut the strings for the sausages and instead of them hanging, they had to be laid on their sides on a rack. Doesn't effect the taste any, but it puts aesthetically unsightly rack marks onto the casings. (shudder) oh well.

At this point I turned on main heater element all the way and changed the water. The temp in the box dropped to 129 but climbed within five minutes to 140. The sausages were now on the top rack, laying on their sides at 125 deg. internal temp. Ultimately I was shooting for box temp of 160-165.

Here's the rest of the sausage log entry:
--5:00 smoker temp 165, internal temp of sausage 137 deg.
--6:45 temp reached 152 (smoker temp 181); water shower in sink for 15 minutes only lowered temp 25 deg. Had to leave to bring kids to park at 7 pm. Upped box temp for turkey to 220.
That was about it. No deer sniping tonight. The turkey took til 11 pm to reach 185 deg. But boy did it look good when it came out.

The sausage turned out perfectly, I just tried some. yummy.

And that's confessions of a deer sniper.

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