Myself and 12 other guys just completed our yearly ritual of making deer (antleope, bufflao, falllow, etc.) salami yesterday. This year was a new record of 800 pounds. It took us a total of 9 hours inlcuding clean-up. I now have a whole lot of baking, cooling and vacuum packing.
Once they reach 165 degreees, I pulll them and hang em outside to cool for a couple hours. After that, I rotate them into the fridge for a couple hours. The final step is to cut them into 1 pound pieces, vacuum pack and freeze.
My reciepe is as follows: 20 pounds of venision, 5 pounds pork or beef (75% lean), 6 cups of apple juice, 1 package Excalibur Fast Pak Willi's Snack Stick seasoning, 2.5 pounds of cubed high temperature pepperjack cheese, 3 cups tamed jalepenos. We grind the pork and venison seperately, then mix everything but the cheese. We then regrind the mix. Finally, we hand mix the cheeese into the mix.
We have our own home built "salami cannon" sausage press. I should have gotten some pictures of it yesterday but forgot the camera. We press into 2.5" diameter casings (3.5 pounds each). It is best to let it sit in the fridge over night before cooking to let the seasoning settle in.
I cook the logs six at a time at 275 degrees for about 3 hours. You must use a good digital meat thermometer and temp every log. On the first load, you need to check every log starting at about the 1 1/2 hour mark. Every oven will have a pattern for temperature. For example, in my oven, the far left salami will be done first. I then move the thermometer to the far right log. When it is finished, I remove it and move the thermometer to the one left of center and so on. Our old oven was just the opposite. There will be up to a 30 minute difference between when the first log reaches 165 and the last one does. If you don't find your oven's pattern you will end up with some over cooked and dry and some under cooked and potential dangerous.
The seasoning mix comes from Excalibur Seasoning in Pekin, IL and the cheese comes from Butcher and Packer online. Do not use regular cheese. When you cook it, the cheese will simply melt into the meat and disappear. The high temp. cheese will hold it's shape.
This year I also saved some of the mixed meat and just made hamburger patties. Had one last night, they are AWESOME.
Back to work cooking......................
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