cooking sausages














 








Home



 

Cooking Sausages
 
Cooking sausages after smoking is
needed to make them ready to eat.

Smoked sausages, hams and other pieces of meat are considered a raw product unless
heated to an internal temperature of about 154º
F (68º
C)
and it is of no importance
whether it is done by boiling, steaming, grilling or baking. A sausage might be
smoked at 100º
F for 6 hrs, will have a great smoky taste, flavor and color but
it will still be a raw sausage like a fresh sausage that was only ground, mixed
with spices and stuffed into casings. Both of them must be cooked to safe
temperature before consumption.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends cooking fresh pork to an
internal temperature of 160º
F (72º C) and the National Pork Producers Council recommends an internal cooking
temperature of 155º F (68º C) for maximum juiciness and flavor. Those extra 8º F
(between 152º F and 160º F) might kill a few more microbes and as a result the
sausage might have a few hours longer shelf life, which is more important from a
commercial point of view.   The Food Code says 160º F (72º
C) and this temperature we adopt  as the recommended temperature for cooking meats, we donÅ‚t
want to argue with folks in Washington. McDonalds also cook hamburgers to this
temperature. The only problem is that the Food and Drug Administration
recommends the following : “ be sure the heat stays between 225 and 300 F
throughout the cooking process."
What the Government was probably trying to say is that you should cook the
product (after smoking) to its safe inside temperature of 160º F
using temperatures of 225º
300º
F which are still too high even for cooking
sausages. The only gained advantage is the shorter cooking process but there is
a great
loss of the final quality of the product. Are you in a such a hurry ? Can you
enjoy drinking with your friends and making sausage for another half an hour ? So set your cooking temperature at 160º - 170º F (71º - 77º
C), take more time, open another beer, enjoy yourself and cook your sausage to
the temperature of 154º
F (68º C). It will take you a while longer but the final
product will be of such quality the folks in the Government can only dream of.
The "Trichinella spiralis" worm present in pork (almost
unheard in the USA) and wild game dies at 137º F (50º C) and cooking to 160º
F obviously takes care of the problem. So does cooking to 154º
F and the smoked meat will be juicier, tastier and more of it (less moisture
loss).
Bacteria
“Clostridium botulinum", creating food poisoning known as botulism
is present almost everywhere and given proper conditions can develop into deadly
toxins.  To fully kill them we
will need a temperature of 212º F (100º C) for at least 10 minutes
but cooking at a temperature as high as that will significantly lower the
quality and looks of the sausage. The greatest danger zone is
between 50º
145º F (10º
63º C) and at those temperatures most of the microbes,
which cause meat spoilage and all others, which cause food poisoning can grow
easily and fast. Therefore this temperature range should be avoided as far as
possible. Clostridium
botulinum
(botulism
food poisoning) is most dangerous
between 78º-95º F (26º-35ºC).
At 140º F (60º C) it goes again into a dormant stage
though we
cannot kill those spores unless boiling at 212º F (100º
C) for at least 10 minutes. Baking at higher temperatures will of course kill
them faster.
To sum it up : anything falling within 154º
160º F (68º -
71º C) is
cooked to safe temperature, the Government recommends 160º F and there is absolutely
no reason whatsoever to go any higher. For a home sausager
maker the inside temperature of the meat should fall between 154º

160º F. We can
stop cooking at 154º
F (67º C) as most products will be of
smoked variety and thus previously cured with salt and nitrite what gives us considerably
more safety. Fresh sausages and meats which were not previously cured, will not be
smoked, just cooked before consumption and the recommended
temperature of 160º F
should be observed.
The lower cooking temperature, the juicier and tastier the product is and the
weight loss is also smaller. Fats start to melt at 95º-104º
F (35º- 40º C) and going over 170º F (76º C) internal meat temperature will
decrease the quality of the sausage. The
fat that binds pieces of meat together has lost its holding power
and the sausage is dry and tastes like bread crumbs.
When completed, the sausages should be air dried at low temperatures for a couple of hours. In commercial operations the sausages are
hung in coolers to get better air movement around the sausages. At
home, this is usually not possible so the sausages should be placed on racks for
the drying process. The completed sausages should either be refrigerated until used, or frozen.
When refrigerated, most fresh sausages will last a day or two and poached
sausages a few days longer. If frozen, the sausages should be tightly wrapped to
prevent drying out. If possible, it is best to eat the sausages fresh since some
changes in flavor and texture occur during freezing, and though still healthy
and nutricious, the unfrozen meat never tastes the same again.

Staying within
154º

160º
F (68º

72º C) will produce the highest quality sausage.
 
Methods of Cooking
 
It really does not matter which method you will use to cook
the sausage to 152º-160º
F (68-72º C) internal temperature. You could smoke your meat in
the most primitive conditions outdoors, then bring it home and poach it in a pot and
it will be a great product.















Waldemar cooking in the Catskill Mountains of New York
Sausages poached at 175º
F (80º
C)



We can use the following cooking methods :

Cooking in a smoker (hot air)
Baking in the oven (hot air)
Poaching in water

All we have to do is remember that the fat melts down at
quite low temperatures and although it solidifies again, its looks are already
gone. Fry a piece of solid fat on a frying pan and see what happens when it
soldifies, it doesnłt look the same. We canłt avoid it altogether (unless we
make cold smoked and air dried products), but there is no reason to intensify
the problem by creating unnecessarily high temperatures.
The melting point of some fats :



Fat melting
Fat soldifying


Pork - 82º-104º F (28º-40º C)
71º-90º F (22º-32º C)


Beef - 104º-122º F (40º-50º C)
86º-100º F (30º-38º C)


Lamb- 111º-131º F (44º-55º C)
93º-113º F (34º-45º C)


 
Cooking in Smoker
It makes a lot of sense to cook meat in the smoker as it is
already there. Besides, it will have a  slightly better taste than by using
the poaching method and it will shine more. On a downside, it will loose more weight
than other methods. It is also the slowest and the most difficult method that
largely depends on technical possibilities of the smoker. Without a doubt the
products that have been cooked in the smoker have the best taste and flavor and
it is hard to imagine Hunterłs Sausage (Myśliwska) cooked in water as this is
the type of sausage that has always been cooked
in the smoker.
A slow but regularly
increasing temperature inside the smoker will achieve the best effects. Two thermometers are needed
one to monitor
the temperature of a smoker, cooking pot or oven (oven has its own dial)
and the other to monitor the inside temperature of the meat or sausage in its
thickest part. It helps to have a thermometer with an alarm sounder in it, this way
we get audible warning when meat has achieved its pre- set temperature. Cooking meats in a smoker is a slow process. While it takes
2
3 hours to smoke a sausage, it may take an additional 5 hours to cook it
inside the smoker. It will largely depend on an inside temperature of the meat
when smoking was stopped. If it was 100º F (38º C) we have a long way to go, if it was 150º F (66º
C) we are almost there.
That shows a need for some intelligent planning and when
cooking in smoker and it is advisable to keep on slowly increasing smoking
temperature to about 160º F. When smoking is done, the temperature should be
increased to 170 Fº (77º C) and maintained at that level until the inside
temperature of smoked meat reaches 152º F (67º C). This way the process will be
relatively short. That sometimes might be difficult to achieve and we will have
to increase the temperature of a smoker to about 185º F to bring the internal
temperature of the meat to the required level. A lot will depend on outside
conditions and how well the smoker is insulated.. Of course we take for granted,
that our smoker is fully capable of providing heat on demand.
The other easier  method will be to increase at once the
temperature of the smoker to 170º F  (77º C)  and wait until the meatÅ‚s inside
temperature reaches 152º
F (67º C).
Poaching
Poaching is a proper, acceptable and professional way of
cooking sausages and there are dozens of well known sausages, that are made this
way. It is also easier and faster to apply than cooking in the smoker and the
meat weight loss is also smaller. When poaching sausages, water is brought to a
temperature of  158º - 194º F (70º - 90º C) and the meats or sausages are immersed in
it. For instance,  home made hams are  poached in closed containers at 176º F (80º C) and this temperature is maintained until
the meatłs inside temperature reaches 154 F (68 C).
Some recipes call for preheating the water
before adding the sausages and some call for adding the sausage to cold water.
Most people prefer the latter method. The poaching water should be heated
rapidly to 175º 
F to
185° F (80º to 85° C). A product taken out of the hot vessel might
still increase its internal temperature by about one degree. A cooking pot
remains uncovered during poaching.
The poaching method is the recommended method for 
sausages smoked with hot smoke (over 90º F
(32º C). The short hot smoking process
creates a dry layer on the outside of the sausage, similar to a second skin, that
prevents migration of moisture and juices from inside of the sausage to the
water in the pot. By the same token when hot smoking, the smoke can never properly
penetrate the inside of the sausage. On the contrary, the cold smoked products
never develop that hardened skin and smoke penetrates fully the inside. This is
the reason why a  product smoked with cold smoke for long time will always
have superior taste and flavor. Exact times and temperatures of poaching are
given with particular recipes. At 176º F ( 80º C) the sausages are
poached from 10 - 120 minutes, depending on a type and size of the product.
Baking in Oven
You can bake your meat or sausages in the oven as long as
your unit can maintain temperatures of 190º F or lower (preferably 170º F) and
home gas ovens are normally capable of delivering such low temperatures. If the
ovenÅ‚s lowest temperature will be higher than 190º F
(notably electrical ovens) switch to the poaching method.
Notes
The thermometer should be inserted in the
thickest part of the meat
The previously cured meat will develop the
best color when heated to 160º F (72º C).
Most sausage recipes contain smoking
instructions on required temperatures and times
At higher cooking tempereatures a sausage
shrivelling will be more pronounced
In many poorly insulated smokers the cooking
temperature must be almost 25º F higher than the corresponding meat temperature to
notice any practical progress. (The meat temperature follows the smokerłs temperature
but is behind by about 25º F).
 


Copyright © 2005 wedlinydomowe.com All rights reserved
 




geovisit();