Andouille!

It's been a few weeks, and I've been working on the whole sausage thing some more.  I made the garlic and marjoram kielbasa out of the Ruhlman Charcuterie book.  Came out great, but I forgot to take pictures.  It was the first time I used natural casings and my new stuffing machine.  A few challenges with untangling the pieces of casing, but it worked out ok.  The natural casings are much easier to use than the collagen casings I used before.  And the hand crank stuffer is much easier than the auger on the KitchenAid mixer. (Thank you Sally, it was a wonderful Christmas present!)
I also figured out the linking in 3s thing. It's easier than you think.  Now if I can get my links even lengths, I'll be a happy charcuterist (or whatever it is en Francais).

The kielbasa came out pretty good, but it's a fairly mild sausage.. lots of garlic flavor, but beyond that, not something to knock your socks off and say "wow, that's the best sausage I've ever had".  We cooked a bunch up with cabbage and polenta & kale (sort of a hybrid Irish/Italian dinner). The rest got frozen after vacuum packing.  I need to figure out how to vacuum pack sausage without it squishing out, though. Maybe freeze the sausage first, then vacuum pack it?

So on to more flavor!  and that's hot-smoked Andouille, again from Ruhlman's book.  Hot smoked is cooked during smoking, so it can be eaten right after taking it out of the refrigerator. There's a cold smoked recipe, too, but that one needs to be cooked before eating, and I'm used to the hot smoked stuff from the store (Aidell's as it happens).  Did the grind and seasoning (it takes a bit of pink salt as a cure) and stuffed it, then put it in the smoker last night.  I used hickory, since that's all I had (I understand that pecan is what you're supposed to use).  It took a lot longer than I expected (started smoking at about 7PM, finally finished at 10:30PM.  And here's the product, sliced up for jambalaya (what else would you use Andouille for as a test?).

It tastes pretty good, but not much heat. Sort of a mildly spiced summer sausage with the dominant smoke flavor. Next time, more cayenne, I think.  I'm always a bit cautious on the pepper after trying some recipes from Bobby Flay that are blazing hot.

Each time, it gets easier. The whole stuffing process went a lot smoother, the links are generally more uniform.  I did make a small mistake, though: I linked in threes again, but it turns out you don't want them bundled like that when smoking, because the inside of the bundle doesn't get much smoke, nor does it get hot.  You want separate strands of links to hang from the hooks in the smoker. 

In the end, I pulled it out of the smoker when the internal temp got to 150 (I ran the smoker a bit hotter at the end 200 vs 180 recommended, because I wanted to go to bed).  Brought them inside, plunged them into icewater to cool it down and stop the cooking.  I cut the links apart, dried them off, and they went into the refrigerator. 

Now, what do I do with 2-3 pounds of Andouille?  I've sort of standardized on 1.5 kg batches of meat: it's a convenient amount to handle and grind and stuff.  Gosh, though, if I do 3 pounds of sausage a week, we only eat about a pound or so a week, and we'll have a freezer full of sausage before you know it.  Maybe I need to get going on the long time cure stuff.