Cold smoked homemade sausage

This sausage turns out delicious, fragrant and it can even be called useful. And it is also stored for a long time without losing its taste qualities - up to two years. Cooking it is more difficult than hot smoked sausage, but the result is worth all the effort and time spent!

You can take any meat for sausage - both game, and beef or pork. But if game is used, it is better to add a piece of fatty pork - so the sausage will taste better. The fat that is included in the minced meat is necessarily added to the composition (plus the diced fat will be added later). How much? You need to look at personal preferences. The more fat, the fatter the sausage will turn out in the end.

The selected meat is well washed and wet with a dry towel. After the meat is cut into large pieces (about 2.5 cm thick). We put the meat on a tray covered with parchment and put it in a cold place. The refrigerator won't do. because there should be a movement of air - a draft. The temperature should not exceed 5-6 degrees Celsius. We keep the meat on a tray for three days, every day we turn it over on other sides. Game can (and should) be sustained twice as long. Do not forget about insects - they should not be able to fly up to the meat.

Next, we scroll the meat (without fat) through a meat grinder and add garlic and bay leaf to the minced meat. Mix and pass through the meat grinder a second time and add the chopped bacon to the minced meat. We pass the minced meat through the meat grinder for the third time and knead everything thoroughly with our hands.

Now add potato starch, ground cumin and ground black pepper to the resulting mass. Also add nutmeg and ginger, which are three fresh. We cut the fat into small cubes and also add it to the fat. Pour salt into the meat mass. Then pour vodka, which will become a preservative and ensure a long shelf life of the sausage. There is no need to worry - the taste of vodka will not get worse.

Again carefully knead the minced meat with your hands. Knead until the mass becomes more or less homogeneous and all additives are evenly distributed over the minced meat. At this stage, you can add herbs to the minced meat, for example, green onions or dill. Or pieces of chili pepper for piquancy. This is suitable if the sausage is not intended for long-term storage and you plan to eat it in the near future. For long-term storage, it is better to add only spices.

We form sausages by stuffing the intestines with minced meat (it is better to buy it in the store or prepare it yourself). We make sausages of the desired length, tying the ends with culinary twine.

Preparing a smokehouse. It is better to choose firewood from alder. So, the smokehouse is ready, we hang the sausage in the smokehouse at a distance from each other - this is important. First, we warm up the sausage well, and then we maintain smoldering and light smoking in the smokehouse. Thus, we smoke the sausage for 7 days. You can take breaks at night. If the sausage has become hard in the morning after seven days, it is ready. Just squeeze it with your hand at the same time. If it is soft, we smoke another day.

We store the sausage in a cool place. The shelf life is up to two years. As a rule, this delicacy is eaten much faster.