Smoking and Curing

News flash, finally the sausages got stuffed in class. It was a trying night with burst sausages and a girder not working right, but in the end the sausages got stuffed and the brining got done. There was a lot of different size sausages, I thought the smell of the Cajun Andouille sausage was amazing I got to try it earlier when I was taste testing. As you see in the picture some of the sausages had problems while stuffing the sausages. I had some trouble as Manager of the Day (MOD) I have not been a MOD for a long time. It was interesting to say the least; I have never done stuffed sausage before. We learned a lot about stuffing sausages and curing meats. We learn about different kinds salts like curing salts, such as Tinted Cure Mix (TCM) and the dangers of using too much of the TCM. We learn about dry salt curing and brining which is wet salt curing process.  We also learned about smoking, and the benefits of cold smoking and hot smoking, like how cold smoking makes meats store longer, where as hot smoking makes the meat ready to eat.  We learned how smoked items and some salted have to be air dried and aged for periods of time. I learned a lot about hams and how to make pancetta, Duck Confit, Gyro Meat, and Prosciutto. It’s been a lot of fun to learn as much as I have and I look forward to learning more.