Slim Jim-The best American sausage

Slim Jim—The Best American Sausage

We’ve been getting killed this year in Raleigh, NC with snow. So its given me extra time to work in the kitchen. I haven’t made any epic charcuterie recipes in a while so I thought I’d WIP the process for you. I don’t know much about ConAgra other than they recreated the original 1928 recipe. I think it originally contained chicken but now its pork and beef. I’ve taken a published recipe form Len Poli and created my own process using higher quality meat and applied a little more science to the cooking process. I’m very choosy about what goes into my sausages. No low quality meats or fillers, as a result they are not cheap to make either. Costco meats. I ended up with about 126 feet yielding about 140 sausages. Cost was about $1 per foot.

If you never had a spicy, mostly beef sausage thats partially cured and smoked, let me tell you, they will keep you up at night. The umami flavor is addictive, intoxicating powerful.

Here was the recipe I was working with:

http://lpoli.50webs.com/index_files/Snack Sticks.pdf

Step 1: Meat Selection
I was looking to make ~20 LBS total. ended up with 4LBS short Rib, 4LBS Chuck, 5LBS lean Top Round, 7LBS Lean pork, 1 LB quality beef fat from the chuck.





Step 2: Meat Fabrication
The meats were portioned in 1” cubes. Fat separated.





Step 3: Cure
Salt, Sugar and Phosphate aded with 4 cups of distilled water and Vacuum tumbled for 70 minutes, Left to rest under pressure overnight.







Step 4: Meat Processing
Meat was then partly frozen, ground and mixed with spices and more water, then mixed with the spices and pushed through 22mm sheep casings.

Step 4: Meat Processing
Meat was then partly frozen, ground and mixed with spices and more water, then mixed with the spices and pushed through 22mm sheep casings.






Step 5: Drying:
Left in garage refrigerator for two days to dry out a bit and firm up.





Step 5: Smoking
Since its so cold, though it would be a good time to cold smoke. I created a cold smoking chamber with a thick card board box lined with aluminum foil. Smoked them for 24hrs around 70 to 80F degrees. The secret to smoking sausages is to wash them in hot water then cold, just as they finish smoking. You remove that metallic taste, but leave behind that nice soft pleasant smokey note.







Step 6: Post cook drying:
Resting them in the refrigerator for a week or so to balance the flavors.

That is awesome. Not much more for me to say.

Those look ... tasty We make smoked sausages in our family too (although we have to 'outsource' the smoking which takes 2-3 days in cold smoke), but those look very different.

I love your 'smoker'

Great write-up, and those look quite tasty. I will PayPal you $12 + shipping costs; please mail me a dozen

Wow. This is when I really wish for a larger house.

As long as you're at the PO anyway.......

Would you elaborate on the tumbler? I've got a few toys but that's new to me.

daveb said:

As long as you're at the PO anyway.......

Would you elaborate on the tumbler? I've got a few toys but that's new to me.

Click to expand...

lus1: I'm guessing is acts as a tenderizer with the side benefit of evenly mixing the ingredients.

Yep. DaveB's gonna have to get a tumbler now!

The show stopper would probably be getting the garage that cold. All the ducting, a new air handler, heat pump, the list goes on and on...

Damn Dennis! You put my sausage making to absolute shame. You know my address to ship me some of that, right?

Man Dennis , when you do something, you really do it right! Strictly cold smoke? Never elevated temperature?

Yep, the vacuum tumbler is something i've never heard of before, well played!

Well this is amazing.

I used to make something similar to that, but with no smoke or beef, and really lightly fermented. It dried out a little more too, not quite to sec, but a little less moist than a commercial Slim Jim. It was still recognizable as a descendent of the Slim Jim, less of a clone.

Those look really good. I can't bring myself to do projects like that at home, because it is such a pain in the ass to set up and break down equipment, rig up smoker setups that you're just going to break down anyway, etc. you have managed to do it with grace. Stabbing the probe through the cardboard is a stroke of genius.

I've wanted to play with a tumbler since I first dug into the modernist cuisine books a few years back. Utilizing one on the scale I work at isn't currently in my budget. CURRENTLY...

This is a very timely thread, as I've just recently began to change my butchering techniques in regards to smoking brisket. I typically process about 5-600# of black angus brisket a week, and another 150-175 are done by some of my staff. I'm producing much more usable product by normalizing the size and shape of the brisket, which leads to far less scrap product after smoking/serving. I've been incorporating a good amount of that into our house sausage (we typically sell about 60-70# of 5-6oz sausages in any given week). And while having that easier to process brisket scrap has both decreased my production times regarding sausage (breaking down enough pork butts to produce 60-70# of sausage is very time consuming, if done correctly), and increased flavor, I've been left with a decent amount of left over scrap. As much fun as grinding fresh burgers for staff (and myself) is, it's not terribly cost effective. This sounds like an excellent way to utilize said scrap in a tasty manner- bar snacks.

brainsausage said:

I've wanted to play with a tumbler since I first dug into the modernist cuisine books a few years back. Utilizing one on the scale I work at isn't currently in my budget. CURRENTLY...

This is a very timely thread, as I've just recently began to change my butchering techniques in regards to smoking brisket. I typically process about 5-600# of black angus brisket a week, and another 150-175 are done by some of my staff. I'm producing much more usable product by normalizing the size and shape of the brisket, which leads to far less scrap product after smoking/serving. I've been incorporating a good amount of that into our house sausage (we typically sell about 60-70# of 5-6oz sausages in any given week). And while having that easier to process brisket scrap has both decreased my production times regarding sausage (breaking down enough pork butts to produce 60-70# of sausage is very time consuming, if done correctly), and increased flavor, I've been left with a decent amount of left over scrap. As much fun as grinding fresh burgers for staff (and myself) is, it's not terribly cost effective. This sounds like an excellent way to utilize said scrap in a tasty manner- bar snacks.

Click to expand...

That's a good idea.

This looks absolutely amazing. That cold smoke setup is straight outta the AB playbook. Nicely done.

Here's the vac tumbler but I bought the large tumbler chamber to accommodate up to 25 lbs. it does a nice job at facilitating the cure and as Bill noted, distributed it evenly due to the constant tumbling.

http://www.waltonsinc.com/c-240-vacuum-tumblers.aspx

BrainSausage, yea at the level of meat you're processing, those machines get crazy pricy quick. Good idea about using up the trim for bar snacks or even sold as a very inexpensive side dish. You could just emulsify the scrap then mix that in with whole chunks of meat. Then dry it to your liking before smoking.

Mike Mrmnm I brought the temp up to just over 100 and smoked it on and off for a strait 24 hrs. I don't think that the cold smoking was necessary, but I wanted to add another element to the finished product and the weather was right.

Danny, indeed, as you know, necessity is the mother of invention.

Looks tasty, I just made a batch of Len Poli's Italian Style Slim Jim's. I made about 10lbs and I think that lasted all of about a day. I use a Smoke Daddy cold smoke generator that works pretty well http://www.smokedaddyinc.com/cold-smokers/. It generally heats up the smoke chamber about 5 degrees above ambient.