Southern Cooking - Summer Sausage
66Easy way to make summer sausage at home
You don't have to have a Southern heritage to enjoy homemade summer sausage but making summer sausage is a down home Southern tradition. If you don't know what summer sausage is, it's a home made sausage that is a little like commercial smoked sausage or the kind of sausage folks buy from Hickory Farms around the holiday season to slice and eat on crackers.
This recipe was originally designed to be used with ground venison (deer) which is natural since many Southern men are avid hunters but it also works just fine with ground beef from the supermarket.
Here are the ingredients needed to make summer sausage:
2 pounds ground venison or lean ground beef (ground round is good)
1 cup cold water
2 tablespoons Tender Quick (this product is found in the seasoning aisle at the supermarket and will last you a long, long time)
1 1/2 teaspoons liquid smoke
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
2 Jalapeno peppers chopped very fine (leave out if you don't care for the spicy flavor)
Combine all ingredients together in a large mixing bowl and blend very, very well. Shape meat mixture into three thin, long loaves - something like an ear of corn. Wrap each loaf with foil and wrap very tight. Refrigerate these for at least twenty-four hours so that the meat can "season".
After twenty-four hours or more, line the loaves on a wire or broiler rack with drip pan. Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
Poke small holes (using a fork) in each loaf and bake for 30 minutes.
Remove from oven and unwrap loaves (with care - they will be HOT) then bake uncovered on the same pan for 45 minutes to 1 hour.
Cool and refrigerate. Serve sliced thin on crackers, toast, with cheese, etc.
You can also double the recipe to make more and once the sausages have cooled, they can be frozen to use later.
This is very simple and the result is excellent, as good as any summer sausage you can buy in a store.
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