cold smoked paprika sausage

Ingredients for 1 servings:

• 2,000 g minced pork
• 1,500 g minced beef
• 1,500 g pork belly
• 5 g black pepper, ground
• 55 g salt (nitrite curing salt)
• 55 g sea salt
• 60 g sweet paprika powder
• 4 g paprika powder, hot
• 10 g cane sugar
• 5 g garlic powder
• 2 g caraway powder
• Intestine, (pig small intestines) caliber 28/30
• possibly chili

Instructions

Working time approx. 2 hours; Rest period approx. 8 days; Cooking/baking time approx. 7 hours; Total time approx. 8 days 9 hours

Weigh the spices and set aside. Cut the pork belly into pieces suitable for a meat grinder and freeze for about 1 hour. Mince the belly meat using the 5 or 6 mm disk, making sure it doesn’t get too warm. Knead the well-chilled minced meat and the minced belly thoroughly with the spices in a large bowl and mix well. Soak the casing in water at around 40°C for a few minutes to make it supple and warm, otherwise the casing is likely to tear or burst. Tie the casing at the beginning with sausage twine and thread it onto the sausage stuffer or meat grinder with the stuffing attachment. Slowly stuff the sausage mixture into the casing. Air pockets must be avoided! Four hands are a great advantage here. After about 10 to 12 cm, press down on the sausages with your thumb and index finger and twist them off, one anti-clockwise, the next clockwise. If you can’t manage it, you can tie them individually. After 2 or 4 sausages, tie a long piece of sausage twine so they hang nicely on a wooden stick (an old broom handle) and then place them in the smoker. Hang the sausages in a cool room overnight and let them rest. The next day, cold smoke more or less, depending on your taste (max. 25 degrees). The sausages should hang loosely on the wooden stick and not touch each other, as otherwise unsightly spots will appear. For example, I smoke using a stainless steel tray that I place on a gas burner in the smoker. A filling of smoking chips burns on a low flame for about 1.5 hours. I do this 4 to 5 times until the sausages have a nice color. After that, the sausages are hung up again in a cool room to dry for a good week or more, depending on how hard you want them. They can then be frozen in portions and thawed as needed. This recipe yields approximately 40 to 46 mild-tasting sausages that aren’t too greasy and are also popular with children. If you prefer spicier sausages, you’ll have to play around with the spices, experiment a bit, and add chili. We kept this recipe as it was until our fourth attempt, as everyone really enjoyed it.