Elk Sausage Electric Smoking:

 

We finally finished the butchering of the two Cow Elk on Saturday. See my Thanksgiving post for more information.

I don’t like the way butchers rush through meat processing, missing hairs, burning hair off with torches and wasting meat. I de-bone everything, cut it into the common cuts and vacuum seal the meat before freezing it.

I am putting way too much wear on Rhonda’s KitchenAid Pro 6 when grinding the meat so I just bought a Cabela’s Pro Series Grinder  IK-523860.

We used the Cabela’s Snack Stick Kit with 17 pounds of freshly 4.5mm ground Elk. The kit comes with seasonings and cure for two 15 pound batches of sausage. We already used half of the kit before, but only had enough casings for 10 pounds of meat this time. Follow the directions from the kit for casing prep and Sausage mixing.

Elk has no fat in the meat but does have a little on the rump and chest. We mixed 98% meat to 2% fat.

When we ran out of casings I just put the big stuffer tube and extruded sausage rolls.

We just fed the snack links casings through a rack from my Masterbuilt Electric Smoker. Do not put any through the last side holes because they touch the side of the smoker. We did not leave enough air space for equal drying.

I started the pre-heat at 7:00pm with the smoker temp at 140*F with the vent open.

At 7:30pm I put in the meat and added a tray of Mesquite Wood Chips.

I put a cookie sheet under the Sausage Roles because I thought they would fall apart. You can skip the sheet. More air is better.

At 8:30pm I closed the vent to 1/8^th open and added mesquite. The temp is still at 140*F.

I added mesquite wood again at 9:00 and 10:00pm.

At 11:00 I added mesquite and increased the temp to 160*F.

At 12:00 midnight I installed a Wireless Meat Thermometer Probe into the center sausage role. The meat temp was at 130*F. I closed the vent and raised the smoker temp to 170*F.

At 12:30 the probe was at 137*F so I increased the smoker temp to 180*F as per the directions in the Cabela’s kit.

At 1:00am the probe was at 144*F and at 1:30am it was at 146*F so I increased the smoker temp to 190*F.

At 2:00am the probe temp was 144*F. With a drop of 2*F, I jumped the smoker temp to 200*F. I watched the probe temp start up again.

Wow, at 2:47am the probe finally reached 156*F. The kit said that was the minimum temp needed.

I rinsed the casing snack links under cool water and stacked to air dry and cool a bit more before Ziploc bagging them for the refrigerator.

 

Excellent flavor throughout, but I did have a few dry spots.

The next day, I sealed 2 of the Sausage Roles per 8 inch wide vacuum bags. I put a handful in the 8 inch wide bags for the Snack links. I froze all but a couple of bags.