Sausage Casings

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  Sausage Casings 101 - Sausage Casings Basics
  • Jonathon  

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  One method I have been using lately, in addition to poking holes, is to fire up my smoker at 225 and cooking them (with or without smoke) until they hit an internal temp of around 150-155 (about an hour) and then finishing them on the grill to add some color until they reach 165.
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  Sausage Casings 102 - Choosing The Right Casing
  • Jonathon  

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  Faith Fellowship If you want to parboil you should use Natural Casings as collagen casings generally wont stand up to being boiled. You might also want to think about using a cellulose casing that is inedible, it will give you a skinless product at the end but it is good for cooking. If you vacuum pack them first and then par boil them (Sous Vide style cooking) then you can use Collagen, Natural or Cellulose.
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  Sausage Casings 103 - Preparing Your Casings
  • Jonathon  

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  Sausage Casings 103 - Preparing Your Casings Attend this entry level class from Meatgistics University by watching the video, reading the article and post any questions you have! Preparing Casings These casings are all made from different materials, are best suited for different products and have different preparation requirements. Edible Collagen Most types of collagen are edible and require no preparation or cleaning before being ready for use. All you have to do is take them out of the package, put them on the stuffing tube and stuff them, the moisture from the meat will rehydrate them during the cooking process so they will not have that tough dry texture that they do before being used. Inedible Collagen For nonedible collagen, the rule of 15s comes into play. They must be soaked for 15 minutes in a 15% salt solution that is 15° C (59° F) before they can be used for stuffing. With any type of collagen blowouts are of medium concern, you need to make sure you don’t overstuff your casings or you will have blowouts either during stuffing or when linking. Cellulose Casings Cellulose Casings are made from plant material and are ready for use right out of the package, just put them on the stuffing tube and begin stuffing. These casings are inedible and must be removed either before or after the cooking process. Luckily they have a thick black stripe down them to allow you to easily determine if the casing has been removed or not. These casings are very strong and blowouts are not a concern. Fibrous Casings Fibrous Casings are a dried paper-like casing that needs to be rehydrated before they are suitable for use. To do this fill a bowl with 80-100° and let them soak for 30-60 minutes. When they are ready for use they should be pliable but not soggy. We recommend that you only soak as many casings as you will need but if you do soak too many you can simply allow extras to dry out and then use them again in the future. Fibrous Casings are very strong and blowouts should not be a concern. Natural Hog or Sheep Casings 100 Yard “Hank” - If you purchased the 100-yard hank of hog or sheep casings you only need to rinse the outside and then soak the casings in hot water for an hour, there is no need to flush them. Natural casings are a natural casing and therefore they are prone to blowouts, you need to be careful not to overstuff the casings or you can have blowouts either when stuffing or when linking. Home Pack - If you purchased home pack hog or sheep casings they will be in a bag and packed with salt. You will need to flush these casings by allowing water to run all the way through them, then you will need to rinse any salt off of the outside of the casing and then soak them in hot water for 1 hour prior to stuffing. Tubed Natural Casing - If you have the tubed sheep or hog casings they only need to be soaked as well as they have been flushed already. When loading these onto the stuffing tubes you will place the plastic sleeve over the tube and then thread the rest of the casing on. Once your casing is fully loaded you need to grab the plastic sleeve and pull it out from between the casing and the tube, it should all come out fairly easily. Shop waltonsinc.com for Collagen Casings Shop waltonsinc.com for Fibrous Casings Shop waltonsinc.com for Natural Casings
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  Sausage Casings 104 - Shelf Life & Storage
  • Jonathon  

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  Sausage Casings 104 - Shelf Life & Storage Attend this entry level class from Meatgistics University by watching the video, reading the article and post any questions you have! Natural Hog and Sheep Casings Shelf-Life - If they are unopened and stored in a refrigerator or cooler you can expect to get 12 months from these casings but remember, these are a natural product, not a manufactured one so times can vary. The casings might have an unpleasant smell to them but that is to be expected if however the smell is truly rancid then the casings have gone bad and should be disposed of. The difference in smell between the slightly unpleasant normal smell of these casings and spoiled casings is unmistakable. How To Store - These will be sent to you either packed in salt, if you purchased the home pack, or kept in a salt solution if you purchased the 100-yard hank. The salt will keep the casings fresh throughout the shipping process but they should be stored in a cooler or refrigerator when you receive them until they are ready for use. Once you have taken them out of the package and rinsed and cleaned them they can be put back into the salt or salt solution and vacuum packed again at which point they will have the original shelf life. Collagen Casings Shelf-Life - Collagen casings should have a shelf life of between 12-24 months depending on how they are stored. If the casing feels excessively brittle when you are putting it on the stuffing tube or you are experiencing an unusual number of blowouts your casings might have gone bad and should be disposed of. You can slightly rehydrate older collagen casings by taking them out of there package and storing them in the refrigerator the night before they are going to be used. Once you have used how much you need you can reseal them in a bag. Do not vacuum pack them though as this will crush the casings How To Store - They should be kept in a dry place that is between 40-60° F and left in the original packaging until they are ready for use. Once they have been opened you should reseal the casings and always store them in an airtight container. The older the casing is the more brittle and prone to blowouts it will become. Fibrous Casings Shelf-Life - These casings do not really go bad, you should get at least a few years out of them if stored correctly. How To Store - They should be kept in a cool dry environment and out of direct sunlight. Cellulose Casings Shelf-Life - These casings do not really go bad, you should get at least a few years out of them if stored correctly. How To Store - They should be kept in a cool dry environment and out of direct sunlight. Shop waltonsinc.com for Collagen Casings Shop waltonsinc.com for Fibrous Casings Shop waltonsinc.com for Natural Casings
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  Sausage Casings: 201 Tips for Stuffing Collagen Casings
  • Jonathon  

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  Sausage Casings: 201 Tips for Stuffing Collagen Casings Attend this Intermediate level class from Meatgistics University by watching the video, reading the article and post any questions you have! The Basics Learning how to stuff collagen casing can be as much of an art as it is a science. The first thing you can do to make this easy on yourself is to use the correct stuffing tube, you should use the largest stuffing tube that your casing will fit over in its shirred form. For example, a 23 MM casing will fit over both a 10 MM and 12 MM tube but you want to choose the 12 MM tube as this will allow the casing to come off the tube more naturally. Also, you should note that collagen does have a direction, one end of the strand will be fully open and the other will have some of the casing folded slightly over the center hole. The open side is what should be loaded onto the stuffing tube if you lose track of which side was the correct one look at how the collagen is stacked, it looks like bowls stacked in a cupboard, you want the bottom of the bowl to be facing towards the stuffer so the casing comes off as if you are un-stacking the bowls. Right Amount of Pressure Making sure that you are using the right amount of pressure to hold your casing on the stuffing tube is very important and takes some practice. Too little pressure and the casing will come off too easily and you will end up with an under stuffed casing which can create a wrinkled, unappealing product and will not hold its form through the cooking process. The other side of that is that if you use too much pressure you can end up with blow outs or backflow. A blow out is when your casing splits from internal pressure, it forces you to stop stuffing, fix your casing and put your meat back into the stuffing cannister. Backflow is when your product comes back around the stuffing horn instead of going into the casing and creates a host of problems including possible contamination and defects in the texture of the sausage. Also, an overstuffed casing has a tendency to burst during the cooking process You want the casing to feel firm but not so firm that when you try to twist it the casing splits, it is going to take a little bit of practice to master this but once you do it is like riding a bike, you will never forget how. A good way to judge if you are stuffing to the proper amount is if you can just faintly see the swirl line along the casing, you want to be able to just faintly see it. If it is obvious then you are under stuffing, if you can’t see it as all then you have overstuffed. As you are stuffing try to get your sausage into a coil to make it easier to handle. Up to You! Now that you have the sausage stuffed into the collagen you can either hang them in the smoker, cut them into sausage sized sections or twist them into links and then hang them for smoking or vacuum seal them for future use. Now you can smoke, grill or pan fry them. If you made a fresh product and want to vac seal them for future use make sure you freeze them first for at least an hour. If you try to vacuum seal a fresh sausage the vacuum that your machine pulls will crush your product flat. Shop waltonsinc.com for Collagen Casings Shop waltonsinc.com for 11 lb Sausage Stuffer
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  Sausage Casings: 203 Tips for Stuffing Fibrous Casings
  • Jonathon  

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  Sausage Casings: 203 Tips for Stuffing Fibrous Casings Attend this Intermediate level class from Meatgistics University by watching the video, reading the article and post any questions you have! Prep-Work Fibrous casings are the most popular choice for making summer sausages and some other larger diameter sausage-like products. It is made from a paper product and is generally easy to work with but here are a few tips to make sure you are making the best product possible. First, make sure your fibrous casings are soft and pliable before you attempt to stuff them, they need to be soaked for 30 minutes in 90-100°F to soften them up. Choose the largest stuffing tube or horn that you have that your casings will fit over, with larger fibrous casing this is generally your largest stuffing tube. Doing this will allow your casing to stuff evenly and prevent swirling inside the casing which can cause an odd appearance odd when you slice your summer sausage. What to Expect Since Fibrous casings are so strong blowouts really are not a major concern here so feel free to stuff the casing until the casing is smooth and full while minimizing backflow. Backflow is when sausage comes back up around the tube before going into the casing. So make sure you are holding the casing on tightly and near the end of the tube. As you are stuffing your fibrous casing make sure that you leave at least a few inches at the end of the casing so you can clip it closed with hog ring pliers, a bag and casing clipper or a max pac stapler. Twist the end of the casing as tightly as possible and place your hog ring or staple as close to the meat as possible to keep the meat tightly in the casing. Extra Information Now, most of the fibrous casings that we sell are prestuck, which means that small holes are already present along the casing. This allows for the pressure to bleed out during the cooking process and for the casing to form down tightly to the meat. If you purchased one of the few fibrous casings that are not prestuck you will need to get something like a sausage pricker and make some holes up and down the summer sausage. The casings already have a loop of string on the opposite end to hang it in a smoker so your hog ring will be responsible for keeping the casing closed while the weight of the meat is pushing down on it, so make sure it is as tight as you can make it. One other thing to make note of here even though it is not technically part of the stuffing process if you do not run a shower cycle or an ice bath to cool your sausage down the casing is going to stick to the meat when you try to peel it. If you have run an ice bath and it is still sticking when peeling try putting it in the fridge overnight, that will often allow the casing to peel away cleanly. Shop waltonsinc.com for Fibrous Casings Shop waltonsinc.com for 11 lb Sausage Stuffer