mmm ... kielbasa in the making

mmm ... kielbasa in the making, originally uploaded by Seligmans Dog.

The gang bought me all the stuff for kielbasa for Father's day: stew beef, fat back, spices, hog casings. The works!

A few weeks back, I diced the beef and fat and got it ready. Doing this on a parental time scale in which weeks pass between steps, I finally got to break into action yesterday. I ground the beef and fat coarse, added spices, mixed and stuffed. A few complications during stuffing, but nothing big (I assembled the stuffer incorrectly which caused a delay), but the product never suffered.

I took a sample of a quunelle and a short kielbasa and smoked them to "take a peek" at the batch. Smoked kielbasa is from the gods. This discipline is amazing. Stew meat (cheap) and pork fat (usually free) combined to give a delicacy. The fresh sausage is a great deal of fun and a lot more fun than the dry-cured effort because of the immediate feedback.

Next? Sweet/hot Italian sausage.