I’d never tried andouille sausage before, but now that I have a fancy smoker, I figured I could take a crack at smoked sausage, and I thought that I might as well start with the best sausage. This is a little modified from how I made it, but it should be even better; and the unmodified version was AMAZING.
One note: part of the reason there’s so much bacon fat is for flavor. You can substitute lard or oil, but if you’re using something like that, just use enough to fry the onions.
Also, I use a heavy hand when measuring spices for sausage. So you probably want to use heaping teaspoons and let some extra wine splash into the meat when you pour it.
Ingredients
5 pounds fatty pork, ground
1 cup onion, minced
2 tablespoons bacon fat (to saute the onions) (or 1 tablespoon oil or lard)
1 teaspoon allspice
2 tsp cayenne
1 teaspoon clove
1 tsp mace
1 tsp ground mustard
2 tbsp paprika
1 tbsp black pepper
1 tbsp red pepper flakes
1 1/2 tsp sage
1 1/2 tbsp dried thyme
1 tsp prague powder 1
2 tablespoon kosher salt
1/3 cup garlic cloves, minced
1/2 cup dry red wine
Directions
Okay, so melt your fat in a pan and saute the onions until soft. Let them cool, and then mix everything together.
It’s sausage, it’s not really complicated. Mostly just grinding and assembling things. If you want to stuff casings, you can do it now, or you can form it into patties or links. Up to you. Whatever you do with it, let it sit overnight in the refrigerator, up to two or three nights to let the flavors meld.
Smoke at 200 for approximately three hours, or until it temps at 150. At this point, it is fully cooked and can be eaten as is, but the fat shouldn’t have rendered off yet.
Congratulations! You made smoked sausage!
eatbensmeat 