If making your own smoked sausage recipes, you need to be careful. If you don't take precautions, food poisoning can occur. It is important that you use a commercially produced cure containing a chemical called sodium nitrate. Cures are said to prevent botulism, a form of food poisoning found in foods that are contaminated with the botulism toxin.
When making smoked sausage, you will need all of the same sausage making supplies as you would if you were making regular sausage. The only difference is that you will also need a means of smoking the sausage, such as a smoke house. Smoke houses can be built using directions obtained from a variety of books on the subject.
How to Smoke Sausage
When smoking sausage, you will make your usual sausage, but you must also add cure and take even more care to sterilize equipment and surfaces. The freshly made sausage should be dried before being placed into the smoke house.
Wet casings will discolor and mottle when placed into the smoke house. For this reason, it's important to air-dry the casings beforehand. The best way to dry sausage is to hang it. Because the meat should remain as cold as possible during this step, some people towel dry the casings and then hang them in the refrigerator overnight before smoking them. Because the sausage may still drip, make sure you keep a bowl or bin beneath the racks so that you can catch any leakage.
When the meat is hung in the smoke house, make sure it hangs freely and that the sausage links don't touch each other.
Because each individual smoke house is different, it's impossible to know how long you should smoke your own sausage in your own smoke house without a lot of trial and error. For this reason, you may want to consult a professional butcher before you try it.
 | Making homemade sausages is fun, but it takes time and effort. You will need plenty of countertop or table space, and you might even want to ask a friend for help. |
 | Polish sausage takes advantage of several spices, such as dried mustard and garlic, but perhaps the spice that sets it apart from other sausages is the marjoram. |
 | Sausage balls can be made in the exact same way you make sausage-just omit the casings. You will then have a great addition to many dishes, like pasta and casserole. |
A basic pork sausage recipe, or breakfast sausage, as it is commonly called, is easy to make. The main ingredients are ground pork, salt, a little bit of water to keep it from becoming too sticky and a few spices. |
Anyone can make sausage. All you need are the basic sausage making supplies, a few pounds of ground pork, a few more pounds of ground beef and a handful of spices. |
