Kruse Family Sausage Recipe

This recipe dates back to my great grandparents and is a tried and true crowd pleaser!

Equipment

  • Smoker

Ingredients
  

  • total lb *.28oz Morton Pickling Salt
  • Total lb *.04oz Black Pepper
  • Total lb *.04oz Pink Cure
  • Total lb *.16oz Mustard Seed
  • 2-3oz cloves Garlic per 25lbs of meat

Instructions
 

  • Example 16 lbs of rings. Salt would be 16lbs*.28=4.48 oz of salt
  • Add all seasoning to the batch before grinding
  • Double Grind with a 3/16 grinder plate
  • For venison/pork 50/50 mix is perfect
  • Elk, Beef/pork 60% beef or elk, 40% pork

Notes

This is my Dad Speaking:
Stuffing and smoking Tips -Ring Smoking Tips
I like using wood chip dust for smoking. Electric burner or LP fish type burner with a steel pan of wood dust sitting on the burner. I've used wood dust for the past 20 years with great luck .I like hickory or a hickory-maple blend wood dust.
Let the meat you're working with get to a cold room temp, don't stuff chilled or near froze meat, this causes problems when smoking and the product will drip moisture for hours.
I used hog casing for all rings., size 32-35 mm in size, just ask for hog gut.  Double tie ends with string, very tight as I like to hang the rings on rods on the string end. You can hang on the other end, this just leaves a little rod mark area on each ring and a little fat juice may drip out while smoking.
After stuffing the casings, wipe down the rings to get moisture and meat off the casing. Start the smoker and leave it heat up for a while (15mintues to 30 minutes before hanging the meat). This isn't critical if the outside temp is average 30 degrees. If the outside temp is cold (0-20), pre heat the smoker.
Hang the rings in the smoke house and turn on the heat and bring the temp up to 120-125 degrees and hold this temp for about an hour. Dry off the casing some before adding wood. Then add a full pan of wood dust, create a center open cone in the pan so the dust can start working with the heat source. 
After you get the wood dust going, bring the heat up to 130 degrees. After it reaches the 130 mark let it sit at the temp for 4-5 hours. The temp can go anywhere form 125-135 degrees. Check and add more wood dust if it has burned down. Keep smoking/wood going for all 4-5 hours of the process.
The rings will take on a red/burgundy color, after 4-5 hours in this 130 degrees the ring casing will start to wrinkle a little depending on your smokehouse layout, you may have to move rings around the heat source. That's it, rings are done! Let cool, wrap and freeze.
 
Always cook rings in water or grill or slow cooker until done. Remember, rings are only cold smoked and must be fully cooked before eating. Use vacuum bags to keep rings in the freezer for up to one year for freshness. I make the rings about 1/2 lb to 1 lb each. 
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!