After fermenting for 2 days, then smoking, then hanging for 2 weeks, the
landjaeger is done. Here's a photo of the fermented sausage hanging in the smoker. I used apple wood, figuring it's something reasonably local: Landjaeger is a southern German, Swiss, Austrian sausage, and there's plenty of apple trees in the area. After smoking, I hung it at about 60 degrees/50% RH .
The recipes all say to monitor the mass to know
when it is dry enough; so it started weighing about 35 ounces, then a
few days later was down to 26, and still pretty squishy. By a week, it
was down to 21 ounces, and yesterday, it was at 17 ounces, about half
the original weight. As it dried, it got darker, which is nice, because I
was afraid that I hadn't put enough smoke into it, but it turns out
that it's more about oxidation (I assume) than smoke that does the
color.
And here it is in cross section (because, hey, you have to cut some off and eat it!). Tastes like landjaeger I've had before, so it's a winner. If you've not had landjaeger, it's basically kind of like jerky, serving the same general purpose of a dried, preserved meat for traveling. I'm thinking about getting ready to do a slow fermented sausage next.. salami.
While we're looking at food from southern Germany, I also made some sauerkraut from a leftover half a head of red cabbage. It's crunchy and sweet, just like it's supposed to be.
