My wife and sons deer hunt; my deer hunting revolves around the tracking, butchering, processing, and cooking. In that November column, I mentioned a jalapeño summer sausage kit I got from our oldest son Pete as a gift the Christmas before last. Not a small kit — the contents made 25 pounds of summer sausage.
Besides making enough sausage to sustain deer camp for the next seven years, I’m sure Pete picked this one out because of the description of clear, “easy-to-follow instructions” that have been “time-tested over many years” printed right on the back. Seriously, I’m looking at the box right now. It says “easy-to-follow instructions” that “have been time-tested over many years.” In Pete’s eyes, even Dad couldn’t screw this up.
However, the way the spices and dried jalapeños separated in the package, I couldn’t cut everything in half and make a much more manageable 12½ pounds. One batch would be mild, and the other would melt your face.
So, all 25 pounds it was. That required 15 pounds of venison, and 10 pounds of pork fat to make the proper ratio of summer sausage. Shoutout to the folks and freezer at Burritt’s for having the perfect amount of pork fat. The gift got a bit more expensive, but it’s not like I do this every day or even every year, right? And I’d end up with 25 pounds of summer sausage!
Who cares that I had to work that day and volunteer to help with set-building for the high school musical in the evening? I could squeeze it in, right between the Chiclets and the erasers. (Fellow GenXers should get that movie reference.)
With exactly 15 pounds of venison all trimmed up and ready for the grinder, and exactly 10 pounds of pork fat partially thawed and cut up and ready for the grinder, I got out two ginormous disposable silver foil trays large enough to hold a Thanksgiving ostrich. I mixed all the meat together and went to work with the grinder.
It required two passes — first through a grinder “plate” with larger holes; the next pass through a plate with smaller holes — and I evenly spread the mixture between the two mammoth pans. Did I mention it was 25 pounds of meat?
The grinder passed out from exhaustion, but no matter; off to the school!
Someone forgot a tool for set-building — honest, not me — so we switched from the small project to the large project on the list. Recalling what I could of the “easy-to-follow instructions” on the sausage-making kit box, I remembered seeing that the cooking time didn’t seem very long. So we’d be fine working on the large project, and no worries that the conversations on stage ran long and I got back over an hour later than I wanted.
In a rare instance of forethought, I remembered that only a few of us in the family appreciate spicy food. The bulk of the dried jalapeños had worked their way to the top of the spice mixture through a process Wikipedia tells me is the Brazil Nut Effect, so I scooped out a good portion of the hot peppers to dilute the heat.
While the 10 sausage casings soaked in warm water, I evenly spread the spice mixture between the two colossal pans and mixed by hand until a uniform, amber-colored mixture resulted. The “easy-to-follow instructions” were living up to their reputation. After all, they were “time-tested.”
Mixing in the curing compound came next, which involved blending it with water, adding to the meat, and mixing. The instructions said to do it all at once in the 25 pounds, but the sausage-making kit clearly hadn’t talked to my sausage-stuffer kit, which (a) only held 5 pounds at a time; and (b) says that if you don’t put the sausage in the casings fast enough after adding the water, it will set up “very much like cement.”
I know what you’re thinking, but no! Ha! I didn’t cause 25 pounds of ground venison and pork to harden into a cinderblock. Rather, I mixed the curing compound and water in a separate bowl, measured out 5 pounds of soon-to-be-scrumptious summer sausage into a separate pan, drizzled in a portion of the curing compound, and mixed.
Me, Jake … thinkin’ ahead! Again! I was on a roll!
Time to introduce my lovely assistant for the evening, Vickie, who turned the handle on the stuffer while I held the casings with the right amount of tension. Each batch of 5 pounds in the stuffer resulted in two casings of summer sausage, tied up at both ends. Lather, rinse, repeat four more times, and the gargantuan foil pans, having served honorably and faithfully, passed on from this realm with dignity.
All that remained was the cooking. Our smoker abandoned us a couple of years ago moments before our traditional Christmas Eve pork shoulder, but that’s OK: The time-tested, easy-to-follow instructions on the box indicated the oven worked just as well.
I spread out the bounty of the land and our hard work. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen what 25 pounds of summer sausage looks like all together, but it rivals the bat rack in most minor league baseball dugouts.
Photo snapped and sent to Pete. Being an ER nurse on the night shift down in Jackson, he’d be up, only a few hours into his shift, at 10:30. “Is that the jalapeño sausage?” he texted.
“That it is! Hope I did everything right so it’s edible!” I replied.
Indeed, everything had been going right. I was home free.
Now you can say it: Ha.
Line the bottom of the oven with some extra pans. Set the oven to the “lowest temperature possible.” Cook one hour. Turn up the heat a little and cook until the internal temperature reaches 156 degrees. Not 150. Not 153. One-hundred fifty-six.
Check, check, and check.
After the hour, I increased the heat, waited another 20 minutes, got ready for bed, opened the oven to see perfectly cooked sausage at 156 degrees, and found still-raw sausage.
As it turns out, “easy-to-follow instructions” are, in fact, easy to follow when you don’t include all of them. Nowhere beyond that one hour did the instructions mention anything about not starting this at the same time that Jimmy Fallon comes on. Turns out, no “time” was included in the “time-tested” instructions. The instructions also never said that cooking 25 pounds of summer sausage over the next FIVE HOURS, poking it with a non-digital meat thermometer, and watching the needle move at the speed of molasses in January (another one for you GenXers) would leave your oven looking like the battlefield after a grease-balloon fight.
(To be fair, the instructions on the box for cooking it in the smoker did contain the length of cook times, and the oven was set to the same temperature as the smoker. Why didn’t I simply look at the times in the smoker section to get an idea? Because I was cooking it in the oven! Sheesh!)
In case you’re wondering, when you’re taking cat naps on the couch through the middle of the night while monitoring the internal temperature of 25 pounds of summer sausage, it takes a long time for the clock to hit 4 a.m. At one point, Vickie came out to check on me, thinking I’d passed out and the sausage was burning, with the house to follow. But, no, just napping.
At 4 a.m., I hit my limit. To heck with 156 degrees. I was done. Sausage logs went into the fridge, and I finally crawled into bed for two hours before work.
When I stumbled bleary-eyed out into the kitchen after getting ready, Vickie only had one question: “So, was the sausage still warm when you put it in the fridge?”
In case you’re wondering, the condensation from 25 pounds of warm summer sausage being placed in a cold refrigerator coats absolutely everything. The milk tasted like deer camp.
To pat myself on the back, though, this actually was not a debacle. The sausage is fantastic. And no one’s gotten sick yet.