Smoked Javelina Mexican Red Pepper Sausage 2/16/18

Yesterday we stuffed seven LEM 1 ½”X12” Fibrous Casings for today’s smoking. We ran out of casings so we improvised; Javelina Luncheon Loaf was an easy solution.

I don’t like having an empty rack when running the smoker. The easy solution was my wife bought a 6 ½ pound pork shoulder roast at the grocers.

We used yellow mustard with no spices on the pork roast to create a layer that will lock in the moisture. After pressing the remaining sausage mix into the glass bread loaf pans we put a layer of mustard over the top too.

At 4:54 pm we started the smoker set at 150*F with 2 trays of maple wood chips on top of about 2 trays of left over chips from yesterday’s smoking with the vent on top open.

At 5:30 pm I put another tray of maple chips in because the leftover chips had already turned to ash.

At 6:20 pm I put another tray of maple chips and raised the temperature to 170*F. The roast was not getting enough heat to seal the mustard glaze.

At 8:00 pm I raised the temperature to 180*F. At 8:30 I went to 190*F.

It looked like the sausage and luncheon loaves were tolerating the increased temperature so at 10:30 I raised it to 200*F

At 11:12 pm I pulled the sausage and increased the temperature to 225*F. The luncheon loaves and roast need the extra temp to glaze the mustard.

At 12:18 am I pulled the loaves and at 1:15 I pulled the pork roast. Total smoking time is 8 hours 21 minutes. There is no burned "bark" layer because I controlled the temperature. The pork meat is cooked well done, tender, smoke infused and juicy. The internal temperature is 187*F.

In northern Arizona the Javelina’s like to hang out in huge forests of cat claw brushes also known as Wait-A-Minute bushes. The bushes have 2 hooked thorns attached at 90* about every inch with the next set rotated 120*. The claws do not pull off very easily like roses or black berries. The hogs can hear anything coming and can easily tell the sound of your clothing being shredded.

This is a very angry sow that is just about to charge and tried to cut me with her razor sharp teeth. I wear gators to protect me from the cat claw, but they can also save you from Javelina attacks.

Smoked Javelina Mexican Red Pepper Sausage 2/15/18

Three days later, we stuffed ½ of a stand of LEM 21mm Smoked Collagen Edible Casings with 5 ½ pounds of Javelina sausage. They are the diameter of hot dogs, don’t need to be soaked and are Edible. Fibrous casing are not edible, these are like natural casings. Our big learning is that our LEM 5 pound stuffer did not come with a ½” OD 3/8 ID stuffer tube. We used Paracord to lash a 3/8^th ID stuffer tube from our meat grinder onto the end of a larger tube the make it happen. I ordered a stainless steel tube from LEM with an assorted bunch of casings.  

 While we did the links we soaked the 15 LEM Fibrous Casings we had left. We stuffed 8 of the LEM Fibrous Clear 1 1/2 “ by 12” non-edible casings for tonight’s smoke. We filled the Masterbuilt Electric Smoker and started it at 5:30 pm set at 140*F with the upper vent closed, 2 trays of apple and 2 trays of maple wood chips. I just set the time at 6 hours to let the smoker start.

 While the smoker is running we stuffed the other 7 sticks of 1 ½” by 12” clear casings that will go into the smoker tomorrow.

At 8:00 I raised the temperature to 150*F and added a tray of maple wood chips.

I pulled everything at 10:30, for a total time of smoking at 5 hours. The links in the edible collagen casing were perfect. The sausage in the non-edible fibrous casings had a little water separation in them that soaked back up as they cooled.

Smoked Javelina Mexican Red Pepper Sausage 2/12/18

We both got our Javelina with our bows during the Arizona HAM (handgun, archery or muzzleloader) hunt. We bought left over tags for this hunt. They were in a huge area of Catsclaw bushes. We packed them back to the truck and were back at home within 10 minutes where we had Juniper trees to hang them in for field dressing.

22 Pounds of Javelina ground with a 3/16” disk

4 Pounds Grated Cheddar Cheese

3 oz Mexican Oregano Dried Ground (Tampico brand)

1 oz Mexican Cumin Dried Ground (El Guapo brand)

¾ oz Cilantro Dried Ground (McCormick brand)

¼ cup Black Pepper Ground (McCormick brand)

1/8 cup White Pepper Ground (McCormick brand)

1/3 cup Cayenne Red Pepper Dried Ground (Watkins brand)

1/8 cup Dark Chili Powder (Kroger brand)

1 oz Arbol Chili Powder Dried (El Guapo brand)

1 cup Dried Garlic Powder (McCormick brand)

1 cup Dried Onion Powder (McCormick brand)

16 oz Pickled Sliced Jalapeno pureed in food processor (Mezzetta brand)

4 cups Crushed Ice

1 cups Water RO

¼ cup Molasses (Grandma’s brand)

½ cup Sea Salt Fine Ground

1 cup Sugar Raw

We ground the sea salt, cilantro, black pepper and red pepper to a powder with a small blade type coffee, spices and nut grinder. Then blended all the dried spices together in the Hamilton Beech Big Mouth Food Processor with the cutting blade so it is all mixed together and there were no clumps. We poured the spice mix into a bowl and put the pickled sliced jalapeños and juice in the processor. When it was pureed we added the spices in with the molasses, ice and water to rehydrate the dried powder.

In a huge 2 foot diameter stainless steel bowl we put all the ground meat and then spooned the spices mix evenly over the top. We hand mixed the meat and spices for about 5 minutes until everything looked very well mixed. Then we sprinkled the grated cheese over the meat mix and mixed it for another couple of minutes. It is late at night so the mix went back into the plastic storage containers and back into the refrigerator.