cooking sausages

Cooking sausages after smoking is needed to make them ready to eat. Smoked sausages, hams and other pieces of meat are considered a raw product unless heated to an internal temperature of about 154º F (68º C) and it is of no importance whether it is done by boiling, steaming, grilling or baking. A sausage might be smoked at 100º F for 6 hrs, will have a great smoky taste, flavor and color but it will still be a raw sausage like a fresh sausage that was only ground, mixed with spices and stuffed into casings. Both of them must be cooked to safe temperature before consumption.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends cooking fresh pork to an internal temperature of 160º F (72º C) and the National Pork Producers Council recommends an internal cooking temperature of 155º F (68º C) for maximum juiciness and flavor. Those extra 8º F (between 152º F and 160º F) might kill a few more microbes and as a result the sausage might have a few hours longer shelf life, which is more important from a commercial point of view. The Food Code says 160º F (72º C) and this temperature we adopt as the recommended temperature for cooking meats, we don’t want to argue with folks in Washington. McDonalds also cook hamburgers to this temperature. The only problem is that the Food and Drug Administration recommends the following : “ …be sure the heat stays between 225 and 300 F throughout the cooking process.”

What the Government was probably trying to say is that you should cook the product (after smoking) to its safe inside temperature of 160º F using temperatures of 225º – 300º F which are still too high even for cooking sausages. The only gained advantage is the shorter cooking process but there is a great loss of the final quality of the product. Are you in a such a hurry ? Can you enjoy drinking with your friends and making sausage for another half an hour ? So set your cooking temperature at 160º - 170º F (71º - 77º C), take more time, open another beer, enjoy yourself and cook your sausage to the temperature of 154º F (68º C). It will take you a while longer but the final product will be of such quality the folks in the Government can only dream of.

The "Trichinella spiralis" worm present in pork (almost unheard in the USA) and wild game dies at 137º F (50º C) and cooking to 160º F obviously takes care of the problem. So does cooking to 154º F and the smoked meat will be juicier, tastier and more of it (less moisture loss).

Bacteria “Clostridium botulinum”, creating food poisoning known as botulism is present almost everywhere and given proper conditions can develop into deadly toxins. To fully kill them we will need a temperature of 212º F (100º C) for at least 10 minutes but cooking at a temperature as high as that will significantly lower the quality and looks of the sausage. The greatest danger zone is between 50º –145º F (10º –63º C) and at those temperatures most of the microbes, which cause meat spoilage and all others, which cause food poisoning can grow easily and fast. Therefore this temperature range should be avoided as far as possible. Clostridium botulinum (botulism – food poisoning) is most dangerous between 78º-95º F (26º-35ºC). At 140º F (60º C) it goes again into a dormant stage though we cannot kill those spores unless boiling at 212º F (100º C) for at least 10 minutes. Baking at higher temperatures will of course kill them faster.

To sum it up : anything falling within 154º – 160º F (68º - 71º C) is cooked to safe temperature, the Government recommends 160º F and there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to go any higher. For a home sausager maker the inside temperature of the meat should fall between 154º – 160º F. We can stop cooking at 154º F (67º C) as most products will be of smoked variety and thus previously cured with salt and nitrite what gives us considerably more safety. Fresh sausages and meats which were not previously cured, will not be smoked, just cooked before consumption and the recommended temperature of 160º F should be observed.

The lower cooking temperature, the juicier and tastier the product is and the weight loss is also smaller. Fats start to melt at 95º-104º F (35º- 40º C) and going over 170º F (76º C) internal meat temperature will decrease the quality of the sausage. The fat that binds pieces of meat together has lost its holding power and the sausage is dry and tastes like bread crumbs.

When completed, the sausages should be air dried at low temperatures for a couple of hours. In commercial operations the sausages are hung in coolers to get better air movement around the sausages. At home, this is usually not possible so the sausages should be placed on racks for the drying process. The completed sausages should either be refrigerated until used, or frozen. When refrigerated, most fresh sausages will last a day or two and poached sausages a few days longer. If frozen, the sausages should be tightly wrapped to prevent drying out. If possible, it is best to eat the sausages fresh since some changes in flavor and texture occur during freezing, and though still healthy and nutricious, the unfrozen meat never tastes the same again.

Staying within 154º – 160º F (68º – 72º C) will produce the highest quality sausage.

Methods of Cooking

It really does not matter which method you will use to cook the sausage to 152º-160º F (68-72º C) internal temperature. You could smoke your meat in the most primitive conditions outdoors, then bring it home and poach it in a pot and it will be a great product.


Waldemar cooking in the Catskill Mountains of New York	Sausages poached at 175º F (80º C)

All we have to do is remember that the fat melts down at quite low temperatures and although it solidifies again, its looks are already gone. Fry a piece of solid fat on a frying pan and see what happens when it soldifies, it doesn’t look the same. We can’t avoid it altogether (unless we make cold smoked and air dried products), but there is no reason to intensify the problem by creating unnecessarily high temperatures.

Fat melting	Fat soldifying
Pork - 82º-104º F (28º-40º C)	71º-90º F (22º-32º C)
Beef - 104º-122º F (40º-50º C)	86º-100º F (30º-38º C)
Lamb- 111º-131º F (44º-55º C)	93º-113º F (34º-45º C)

Cooking in Smoker

It makes a lot of sense to cook meat in the smoker as it is already there. Besides, it will have a slightly better taste than by using the poaching method and it will shine more. On a downside, it will loose more weight than other methods. It is also the slowest and the most difficult method that largely depends on technical possibilities of the smoker. Without a doubt the products that have been cooked in the smoker have the best taste and flavor and it is hard to imagine Hunter’s Sausage (Myśliwska) cooked in water as this is the type of sausage that has always been cooked in the smoker.

A slow but regularly increasing temperature inside the smoker will achieve the best effects. Two thermometers are needed – one to monitor the temperature of a smoker, cooking pot or oven (oven has its own dial) and the other to monitor the inside temperature of the meat or sausage in its thickest part. It helps to have a thermometer with an alarm sounder in it, this way we get audible warning when meat has achieved its pre- set temperature. Cooking meats in a smoker is a slow process. While it takes 2 –3 hours to smoke a sausage, it may take an additional 5 hours to cook it inside the smoker. It will largely depend on an inside temperature of the meat when smoking was stopped. If it was 100º F (38º C) we have a long way to go, if it was 150º F (66º C) we are almost there.

That shows a need for some intelligent planning and when cooking in smoker and it is advisable to keep on slowly increasing smoking temperature to about 160º F. When smoking is done, the temperature should be increased to 170 Fº (77º C) and maintained at that level until the inside temperature of smoked meat reaches 152º F (67º C). This way the process will be relatively short. That sometimes might be difficult to achieve and we will have to increase the temperature of a smoker to about 185º F to bring the internal temperature of the meat to the required level. A lot will depend on outside conditions and how well the smoker is insulated.. Of course we take for granted, that our smoker is fully capable of providing heat on demand.

The other easier method will be to increase at once the temperature of the smoker to 170º F (77º C) and wait until the meat’s inside temperature reaches 152º F (67º C).

Poaching

Poaching is a proper, acceptable and professional way of cooking sausages and there are dozens of well known sausages, that are made this way. It is also easier and faster to apply than cooking in the smoker and the meat weight loss is also smaller. When poaching sausages, water is brought to a temperature of 158º - 194º F (70º - 90º C) and the meats or sausages are immersed in it. For instance, home made hams are poached in closed containers at 176º F (80º C) and this temperature is maintained until the meat’s inside temperature reaches 154 F (68 C).

Some recipes call for preheating the water before adding the sausages and some call for adding the sausage to cold water. Most people prefer the latter method. The poaching water should be heated rapidly to 175º F to 185° F (80º to 85° C). A product taken out of the hot vessel might still increase its internal temperature by about one degree. A cooking pot remains uncovered during poaching.

The poaching method is the recommended method for sausages smoked with hot smoke (over 90º F (32º C). The short hot smoking process creates a dry layer on the outside of the sausage, similar to a second skin, that prevents migration of moisture and juices from inside of the sausage to the water in the pot. By the same token when hot smoking, the smoke can never properly penetrate the inside of the sausage. On the contrary, the cold smoked products never develop that hardened skin and smoke penetrates fully the inside. This is the reason why a product smoked with cold smoke for long time will always have superior taste and flavor. Exact times and temperatures of poaching are given with particular recipes. At 176º F ( 80º C) the sausages are poached from 10 - 120 minutes, depending on a type and size of the product.

You can bake your meat or sausages in the oven as long as your unit can maintain temperatures of 190º F or lower (preferably 170º F) and home gas ovens are normally capable of delivering such low temperatures. If the oven’s lowest temperature will be higher than 190º F (notably electrical ovens) switch to the poaching method.

The previously cured meat will develop the best color when heated to 160º F (72º C).

Most sausage recipes contain smoking instructions on required temperatures and times

In many poorly insulated smokers the cooking temperature must be almost 25º F higher than the corresponding meat temperature to notice any practical progress. (The meat temperature follows the smoker’s temperature but is behind by about 25º F).


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