The kit yields 30lbs of finished summer sausage so I grabbed 20lbs of ground elk from my 2019 cow elk that had somehow escaped my wife's watchful eye and been hiding out in a deep corner of the freezer and 10lbs of beef and pork trimmings.
I ground it all together through the course plate and divided it into two 15lb portions. My mixing tub is from Harbor Freight and works quite well especially when dealing with these large quantities of meat.
It was at this point that I realized I had deviated from the seasoning packet instructions. Hi Mountain recommends a ratio of 24lbs ground lean meat to 6lbs of pork fat but I ended up doing a slightly heavier fat ratio than that of 20lbs ground lean meat to 10lbs of a beef & pork fat mixture.
The first batch of 15lbs was the Cracked Pepper & Garlic seasoning from the kit with no additional ingredients. I mixed the seasoning and cure with the meat in my mixing tub and then ran the meat through the grinder again but this time with the fine plate. This ensures I get good even distribution of the seasoning and cure and the meat is a nice smooth consistency and texture. I forgot to take pictures at this point, but this is what the meat looks like after being run through the fine plate.
I got my little sausage stuffer out and got ready for that part of the process. Here is another area where I deviated from the kit... the kit comes with 10 fibrous casings that are 2.5" in diameter. I found that those were a little too big for my liking so I purchased a couple of packages of 1.5" diameter fibrous casings to try this time. I prepared the casings per the packaging instructions by soaking them in warm water for 30 minutes prior to stuffing them. It is best to get the casings soaking before starting to grind the meat through the fine plate, this way the casings are ready and you can proceed to stuffing as soon as your done grinding.
Fifteen pounds of meat fit nicely into 8 casings and I hung them in my garage overnight... keep in mind that I was doing this in December and the temperature of my garage is equivalent to a nice meat locker right now, if I was doing this during warmer months I would put them into the refrigerator instead.
I did the same process with the second batch of 15lbs except in this batch I added a couple of cups of the jalapeno flakes along with the seasoning and cure. I then ran this batch through the fine plate of the grinder. I mixed in the high temp cheese AFTER the last grind of the meat, the YouTube video I watched gave clear instructions to add the cheese after the final grinding process. If you run the cheese through the grinder it just gets mixed into the meat and you don't get the cool looking cross-sections with the clearly identifiable pieces of cheese.
I prepared the stuffer again and got the second batch of summer sausages in the casings and hanging in the garage overnight. Here's all 30lbs hanging:
I don't have one of those fancy smokers with temperature controls, so I had to improvise a bit to smoke/cook the summer sausage. The instructions indicate that under normal smoking conditions the sausages would receive 90 minutes of smoke, so I had the sausages on the smoker for 90 minutes then transferred them to an oven set at 180° and baked them until they hit internal temp of 156°.
In the end the summer sausage turned out exceptional. The cracked pepper & garlic is excellent, and the batch with the additional jalapeno & pepper jack cheese is even better. I'm extremely happy with how these two batches turned out... now all I need are crackers!!!
