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Sous vide sirloin tip roast, smoked crab poppers, smoked creamed corn, smoked bourbon apple cobbler.

Hi everyone, with hunting season vastly approaching I wanted to create a board to share about your hunting and fishing outings before your processing and cooking starts!

I’ve got several things planned for this year. Whitetail hunting at my house (1st year of owning property). Dusky grouse and rainbow/brook trout in south central Colorado. Will share the adventures soon!

Like I mentioned in another thread I’ve been negligent in posting as we did some major renovations in the old homestead. With all the work finally done I can now get back to business. I made some tender jerky today using Walton’s pepper and garlic jerky seasoning as the base and eye round as the protein. 18% low sodium soy sauce and 18% brown sugar. It was Vac tumbled for 1 hr. and rested under vacuum for 24 hrs. in the fridge. After the rest I released the vacuum then hand tossed the meat. I then vac tumbled again for 1 hr. with another 24 rest in the fridge. This morning while my smoker was coming up to temp I vac tumbled again for 20 min. Total weight of the meat was 5lbs. 5ozs. After all the tumbling and rest the weight of the meat was 7lbs. 8ozs. After smoking and drying the jerky the total weight of the finished product was 3l s. 14ozs. That in my book is a win. The jerky is nice and tender with great flavor. Below are some pics of the process and a during and after shot of the kitchen, one of many rooms remodeled. 14F24029-5521-401F-A1FC-D388E76872CB.jpeg CB7C3738-3423-4466-BB8D-61D9E1CAE39B.jpeg 82550831-C6FE-4FB5-870E-AE72304EA77D.jpeg CCDEF663-088E-4EBB-915C-1EA54A03067F.jpeg 76D8E776-E15F-4D9E-8DB3-5E0B0C03A246.jpeg 3F4AC49A-3125-4534-B813-17BDEE815142.jpeg 231A83C0-F2BE-4019-8383-8A7813929B2D.jpeg DB36BE3D-C85A-4FE9-8E6D-A6AECA453525.jpeg 5BB2CEA4-7ECD-4DD0-B0BC-63AD21FC9415.jpeg 72B5B0F7-CA6A-4258-BF42-256B712DBB98.png

Re: New Batch of Dry Cured BaconI have been using part of A pork butt and use the dry bacon cure. I figure about 3 days A inch then add A day then just finish it like regular bacon. Much meatier and also much cheaper and easier to find. They are usually about 3 pounds a piece usually have at least 1 curing in the fridge. Love my BLT on whole wheat toast.

Made kabanosy today. Marianski called it “the best meat stick in the world,” in his book. So that got me interested.
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I used the recipe in Marianski’s book “Home Production of Quality Meats and Sausages”. It is pretty simple: pork, 1.8% salt, 0.25% cure1, 0.2% black pepper, 0.1% each of sugar, nutmeg and caraway. 10% water. So for 1000g meat, that is 18g salt, 2g pepper etc.
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Recipe uses sheep casings, but I used 21-23mm fresh collagen casings, which are the closest thing to actual sheep casings. I was happy with the Walton’s casings, very delicate. Here they are at top, next to some pepperoni 19mm sticks I also made tonight, to compare casings. Both thru a 12.7mm or half inch tube.
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Short cook, 60 min light smoke then 30 min at higher temp to 155-160 IT. I used my pretty new Smokin It 3.5 smoker with about 2oz of cherry wood. Unfortunately I trusted the smokers meat probe and pulled it at 161f. Got inside and crosschecked with 3 Thermoworks digital thermometers, all at 132 f 😞 So lesson learned, don’t trust the smoker probe and always crosscheck. Had to put it all back on and cook another 1.5 hrs.
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Taste is good and interesting. Apparently you dry these out a bit, about a week is supposed to be where most like them. Not sure I’d say they were better than beef venison sticks with Willie’s seasoning. But they are pretty unique and I never made a 100% pork stick before. I will report after a week or so in fridge drying a bit.

I picked up a 11 lb belly at COSTCO and made some Bacon in anticipation of some fresh garden tomatoes coming on soon. Nothing like a BLT with your own Bacon and home grown tomatoes. After the curing, I seasoned the bacon with the Excalibur 20 mesh black pepper, which gave a good consistency, and some brown sugar before I smoked it.
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A little sample for breakfast and man was it good. I just need that garden tomato to ripen up now.
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The Kansas Department of Commerce I guess has decided it time to start promoting barbecue in Kansas. I will say that I am highly disappointed that Billy Sims BBQ was included in this. Now for my Billy Sims rant, the food is terrible, it is a chain restaurant, and the names sake is a former OU football player. There are far better BBQ places in Kansas that should have been included in this over Billy Sims.

Here is the article The Smoke Show: Kansas Tourism Releases New Story Series Episode Featuring BBQ

Here is the video Kansas Tourism: The Smoke Show

Austin Jonathon Departing Contestant Darkfish89 RafterW RPrince

I made some pepperoni sticks, cooked them up today. I had grinder and stuffer out for another stick last night, so ground up meat, mixed, stuffed, and cured 20hrs.
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You can see color is good, but not orange like commercial guys get adding oleoresin of paprika. And there was a lot of red pepper, cayenne, and paprika in these.

I got this recipe from Spidey , many thanks to him. After a month or so researching pepperoni recipes on google, youtube, blogs etc, his recipe looked the best for the flavors I like and authenticity. He told me he was going to convert Tbs and tsp into grams and %, and I did that while measuring stuff out. If he doesn’t mind me posting his recipe here, I can post it up as % of meat block and grams spices per kg meat.

Meat was 42% lean beef cross rib, 51% pork butt, and 7% pork fat from butt. All ground 4.5mm.

Spidey gave me a hot and medium version, I did the medium. It is still pretty darn hot, and very good. I buy that Hormel pepperoni in the 1lb bags as a standard snack, and I wouldn’t go any hotter than this.

I was first going to do a citric acid test on some sticks, then couldn’t figure amounts out, so I went pepperoni. By the time I was mixing, I decided I didn’t want to add F-LC culture and ferment 24 hours, as it wasn’t going to be 100f in Phoenix last night. So I just let them cure overnight, then light cherrywood smoke at 160f for 2 hours, then 180f until 160 internal temp. Took 3.5 hrs.
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Cut, bagged in 1 layer, sucked out air with a straw, ice bath 40 min, then out to dry.
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These have a pretty decent pepperoni flavor with a lot of the anise and fennel I like. They are hot enough from red pepper you wouldn’t eat 5 of them…ok, I just did, so 6…7… nevermind 😉

I made some with 21mm FRESH collagen casings I had left on tube from kabanosy making. Then I did rest with 19mm smoked collagen. Both using a 1/2" outer diameter stainless tube, or 12.7mm. My thoughts are that the 19mm case has a bit more snap, the fresh 21mm bites like there is no casing almost. Both worked excellent. If I was linking them or hanging, I’d go with the smoked collagen as the fresh is a bit delicate if stuffed full. I caused 2 blowouts trying to link it after stuffing and had to tie those off, the case gets more tender as it sits and takes up water.

You can see the 21mm fresh at front of left tray below, and that there isn’t a lot of difference.
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Other casing size notes since I bought all sizes to test and have now made meat sticks with them all:

I like 16mm smoked the best, it’s just a very nice slim jim size and not too much of a meal so to speak. However, there are several downsides: you must use a 10mm tube, you must add maybe 2x the water to get it to stuff, and it makes a huge length that rapidly eats up your smoker floorspace. Not sure it is worth it. 19mm smoked, not as slim as I like but probably the best to use. Still a good stick size, can use 12.7mm i.e. half inch tube so much easier stuff. I didn’t have any problem sliding a sleeve onto the tube, nor any grabbing during the stuff, it’s about perfect. You can use normal recipe water amounts, so you don’t have to dry as long. More meat per foot, so you can fit it all on smoker. Strong enough to hang, and link nice. 21mm fresh. I got these for breakfast sausage and to replicate sheep casings. But to me 21mm is a bit larger than normal breakfast size. In any case, I love these. They hold up enough for laying flat in smoker, way easier than sheep casings, very tender bite where you almost can’t tell casing is there. Almost as big as a skinny hot dog, those are likely 23mm. Also, I fried up some in a pan and liked it, very breakfast sausauge browning.

Hope this is helpful to some 😉

Made some Lebanon bologna with the Excalibur seasoning. Didn’t want to go straight to smoker so didn’t add the encapsulated acid.

This stuff is great!

5 part beef
2 part deer
Cure #1 per digging dog farms calculator
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Everyone needs to have a great day once in awhile just to help stay focused on the important things in life. I had one of those days today. My son turned 13 today and got the news from church camp that my 11 year old daughter got saved today. Needless to say I’m a pretty proud dad today. I just had to share this with yall because I consider so many in this community as a close friend even though I have never met yall. Also to top it off my corn started tasseling.[ text](link url)

Re: What did everyone cook today?[link text]([link url](link url20220527_214624.jpg ))

I know some of you love to take artistic pictures of your creations. I think it would be fun to see the pretty pictures. I’ll start!

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Grimpuppy: this is my first try at Boudin used your recipe. Now I need to decide if I should use my mixer or grinder tomorrow after it is cooked.

Been many years since it has been good around here for morel mushrooms but dag nabbit all I got 7 to enjoy!AA11DEB0-9CD4-48FD-AD45-C0A331C1204C.jpeg 48A2633E-0F08-4067-81FF-62D09F42149C.jpeg

Just made 22 pounds of bacon from a hog that went to slaughter in November. Just prepped the black raspberry maple jalepeno rub for when it comes out of the smoker. This made me start pondering though: What other exotic flavors have you guys tried? Open to trying any flavor that I haven’t already made!

20lbs Signature Smoked Kielbasa. Ground, mixed, and stuffed the night before. Getting some cherry smoke right now, followed by an ice bath, and then air dry.

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Well hard not to as a captive audience but regardless many thanks for the hat! Proof you’ve all put up with 500+ posts from me in this community!

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I decided to make some Philly cheese steak fresh brats for dinner.
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I grew up outside Philly, just across the Delaware border, so ate a lot of authentic cheese steaks and made them in HS working at a sub shop. It is a super simple flavor profile: just thin sliced ribeye, cooked on a flat top so there is some browning. Toss on a sub bun, add fried onions, sometimes fried green pepper, and either cheese wiz or melted velveeta. That’s it.

I did a search for “philly cheese steak” here and read all 65 hits, absolutely tons of folks just love the Walton’s spice mix for this. But I didn’t find any posts where someone made their own flavoring, so I decided to do it.

I used ground beef, 80/20. I’d say 95% of the posts Here, folks used pork with the Walton’s seasoning, but Jonathon did a nice post where he made some with beef and liked them. I didn’t have the spice mix to give pork the beef flavor, this was a spur of moment thing. To my mind, the #1 defining flavor is steak, so I went with ground beef. The #2 flavor is onion, so I went with dried onion and onion powder. The #3 flavor is the cheese, I went with white queso velveeta frozen and diced fine. The optional #4 flavor is the green pepper note. I went with diced fresh jalapeno pod because it has a strong green pepper note, and just a bit of heat. The last flavor note is black pepper, some places sprinkled black pepper on the steak and onions while frying.
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All items listed as a % of meat block weight.
Other ingredients were 1.5% salt, lower than most sausages because the queso had salt. I used Non Fat Dried Milk as a binder, normal amounts are up to 3% but as I didnt add extra fat nor much water, I went with 0.5%. Then 10% water. The spice amounts were chosen with reference to Marianski’s tables for normal spice usage ranges.

Meat 80/20 ground beef
Water 10%
Salt 1.5%
NFDM binder 0.5%
Black pepper 0.18%
Dehydrated onions 0.5%
Onion powder 0.5%
1 Diced jalapeño hull, 2.5%
White queso velveeta cheese, frozen, diced 22%.
(so example, 1370g meat x 22% = 301g cheese)

My meat block was 1370 g, about 3lbs. Made 16 links of 5", in 32-35mm hog casings.

Mixed meat, water, all other spices & milk except cheese in Kitchenaid mixer about 4 min to strong protein extraction. Added diced cheese, blended 30 sec. Stuffed in 32-35mm hog casings. Linked them when done stuffing at 5". I used a lazy susan with serving tray on it to coil the meat easy.
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Cooking:

Lightly brown brats in pan w bacon fat, low heat so they don’t burst. Do all sides. When brown, add half cup water and 1T or so of the queso, cover and simmer low until 165 f internal temp.
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Tasting Notes:
Great taste, this was pretty much spot on for the Philly cheese steak flavor. First, a strong steak/beef flavor with that light sear maillard reaction on the casings making it match griddle seared steak. Good salt level. Wee touch of heat, and a nice identifiable green pepper note. Cheese made it perfect, nice runny but still sticky, plenty of it at 22%, creamy. I thought these were perfect and will not change anything when making them again.
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If you’ve got the Walton’s seasoning, everyone rates it a touchdown, and mostly with pork even. But if you don’t, I think this would make you pretty satisfied. Hope the writeup helps someone! 😉

I had some beef crossrib pieces frozen, along with brisket fat, pork fat, and venison. Decided to make some Corned Beef Brats. Mostly because of all the great food posts here on corned beef and reubens 😉 Here they are on a reuben for lunch today, on some sourdough rye bread I made yesterday. 20220430_133118.jpg

Corned beef /venison brats
1000 g ground venison
1000 g ground lean beef, 4.5mm
250g ground pork fat 3mm
250g ground brisket fat 3mm
2.2% salt <<wanted a bit salty
0.25% cure#1
0.5 % nonfat dry milk <<binder, (normal stuff from Safeway, Walton’s was out of the better High Heat stuff on my last order. This works well, the HH stuff apparently works better)
8% water
0.1% ascorbic acid (vitamin c, 1x 1000mg tablet per kg meat, cure accelerator for strong color and no cure rest, stuff then smoke 2 hrs later)
0.1% each coriander seed, mustard seed

Grind beef and fat separately, beef 4.5mm fat 3mm. Venison pre ground. Mix spices, cure1, with most of the water. Add to meat with salt, mix in Kitchenaid 1 min. Add ascorbic acid mixed with remainder of water and binder (NFDM), mix 3 min. Add fats, mix 1 to 2 min to blend evenly. Ensure good protein extraction, blend more if needed… Kitchenaid mixer extracts super fast with paddle compared to my 25lbs hand mixer. Stuff into 32mm hog casings. Link at 6". Dry in fridge on racks 2 hrs, accelerated cure working. Into preheated 120f smoker 30 min to dry more, increase to 130f add smoke 1 hr. I didn’t want a lot of smoke, so I pulled them off, bagged them in 1gal bags 1 layer with air removed, and then Sous Vide finished them. SV cooked to 160f for 1 hr. Supposedly the max color from nitrite cure happens at 160f, as well as instant lethality at 161f per USFDA chart I have, so went to there. Probably only needed 15 or 20 min, but I didnt check internal temp til 1 hr, got busy. Dumped in ice bath 15 min, air dried, into freezer for later bagging.

I posted the sourdough rye recipe in the Sourdough thread.

Taste:
Tasted exactly like corned beef. I had debated using allspice and juniper, which is sometimes in the commercial boil spice packs, but decided to play it safe and skip. Nice good pink corned beef color. I used a bit of the brisket fat to ensure it had that CB fat flavor, I liked it. Saltiness-- good, bit salty like corned beef usually is. I probably wouldn’t use more than 2.2 or 2.3%, but did want a strong salt/corned flavor.
Next time changes: I might let cure in fridge 1 day do I for sure get full salt/protein cure throughout. I’d skip the vitamin c if I did. I think I got the full cured flavor and color, but just want to try a longer sit to be sure. I might add 1 bay leaf and 1 or 2 berries of allspice and juniper to the roughly 6lb block.