Dry Wors and Cabanossi

[MSR_Gal]

I’ve gone hunting in South Africa the last couple of years and have gotten hooked on these South African sausages. The dry wors (droëwors) is dried antelope sausage. In my case it was kudu. The cabanossi is smoked warthog sausage. This seems like it would be an ideal use of Texas whitetail deer and wild hogs. A couple of whitetail and a wild hog or two and you would have the perfect snack to go with your sun downers for months. I plan retiring to East Texas (Tyler area) in a few years. Does anyone who processes wild game commercially in that area know how to make dry wors and cabanossi? I’d like to find someplace that would do this for me after I retire.

[dinsdale]

I've experimented with this recipe.

http://www.3men.com/droewors.htm

From this site that has all things jerky and such....

http://www.3men.com/index.htm


Taste is good, just wish I had some Kudu to try. My biggest problem is getting a long enough stretch of dry/cool weather to play with. Too humid here when we get warm enough, and to cold when we are dry in the winter. 35-70*F dry days are perfect.....but you need a few in a row. You need alot of fresh air to get the moisture moving. Hanging long or hot is a recipe for rot and illness.

Smoked and/or cured makes them just another snack stick....

I used these casings....sorted them for the smallest size(used the rest for pork breakfast links)....

http://www.sausagemaker.com/22300natura ... -22mm.aspx

These guys have a 18-20 listed....but I have never bought anything from them yet;

http://www.makincasing.com/mm5/merchant ... ry_Code=10

They make smaller 19mm callogen casing....but they don't dry well just hanging. They need cured meats to work. Shop in Natal I was in had smaller casings yet, maybe 15mm at the start; but I couldn't get an answer as to what they came from. I think they guy was scared I wouldn't buy or eat it. I had most of a Impala done for biltong and Droewors, and ate it over the next several weeks I was over there. I'd like to wack a older lamb, I think that size would be about right......but cleaning casings that small would not be that much fun. I have cleaned and prep'd some from a pig, they are easy to turn inside out. I make this much mention of casings because you need something small enough to dry quickly and most US folks are used to larger and adding cure when hanging larger sizes in general. Just what I have seen.....

[skeetshot]

I believe Dinsdale is the most expert and experienced Sausage maker we have on this forum.

He learnt this art from his parents and anyone serious about converting their game or other meats to these mouth watering delicacies should really contact him.

[dinsdale]

[thechamp]

Having grown up on the farm and killing deer since I was 11 or so we used to make our own sausage. I suspect it has some German roots behind it with some slight changes over the years. We always used beef casings and I still prefer them. I found the beef casings are easy to peel and you don't have to eat the casing that way. Noted Dinsdale's comment about turning casings and have to laugh. The old German that taught me how to make sausage here used the beef casings and used them just the way nature did. The inside of the casing is smooth and doesn't stick to the meat where the outside has tallow/fat stuff on it and that sticks to the meat when you stuff them. His term was 'sh*t on sh*t'. We would turn the beef ones and wash them thoroughly to get rid of all the salt and if I remember then turn them again so the smooth side was on the inside. Been a while so I don't recall exactly what the process was. The pork ones do a good job but for some reason are almost impossible to peel. Plus the few times we tried them it seemed like we couldn't stuff the casing as tight as we could with the beef. If the meat is not stuffed tightly you'll get air pockets and they create bad spots in the sausage. Also if the meat is too cold it won't stuff right. A set of beef casings will handle a little over 100 pounds of meat. So they go a long ways too.

We made the sausage usually using 50/50 deer and pork, sometimes 60% deer and 40% pork. Ground it pretty fine, added salt, pepper, red pepper, salt peter, lots of garlic, (powder and or fresh, sometimes cook the fresh garlic on the stove and then poor the garlic water into the meat). We would stuff the casings very tight and smoke it for several days using mesquite and or pecan wood. A rather light smoke keeping the heat way down. After smoking it we would take the sausage we planned on cooking and wrap and freeze it. We'd double wrap, bag, etc., and it wasn't unusual for a sausage to keep for 3 years in the bottom of my mother's freezer... We would let the remainder hang in the smokehouse until it was cured and pretty dry. Not too dry since the freezing will dry it out a bit more. We would then wrap it and freeze it.

Back when I was a kid we'd also butcher our own hogs. We would take that dry sausage and put it in ceramic crocs and poor heated pork fat over it till it covered all the sausage. It would keep all year in the smokehouse that way. Whenever you wanted a dry sausage you'd reach into the pork fat and find one, pull it out and wipe the grease off. Clean it up, peel and eat. Some of the best tasting sausage you could ever have dreamed of eating! Not sure what the pork fat did but it added some flavor to the smoked sausage that made it just awesome. We haven't done that in a very long time since we don't butcher our own hogs now.

I noted Dinsdale's comment about cool dry weather and yes that is a must if you're using mother nature to dry your sausage. Sometimes you'll get the high humidity and then we'd have to wipe the sausages off with a rag and vinegar. It didn't affect the finished product but at times it would be a pain to keep them from spoiling. The commercial processors around here use an air conditioner to keep it cool and keep the humidity out. That does work very well and does allow you to sort of plan how long they'll hang till they are done. With nature the time varies.

This year I had a local place make my mule deer and my red stag sausage using beef casings and adding additional garlic to their 'spicy' recipe. Both turned out fantastic and I'm very pleased with them. It did take a few tries before I figured out just what they did and how I wanted mine to be done. They do not mix your meat with anyone else’s and that is the only way I'll take it somewhere. Most of the other shops around here throw it all together and you get the amount of meat your deer contributed to the pile. I don't care for that at all. I want my animal back! Due to the mule deer and the red stag being as lean as they were we did have additional pork fat added to give it some juice. They are both still very lean so we could have added more and not hurt anything. The mule deer/pork one is almost solid meat. Less than a teaspoon of juice out of a cooked sausage.

I’m quite sure you’ll find a few local processors there in Tyler when you get there. I would try some of their ‘store’ sausage and see how you like it. Everybody does things a little differently which can make a big difference in the finished product. One of the reputable ones close by cuts every scrap of the critter off that they can and throws it in the sausage. The end result is a lot of ground up gristle that is not fit to be eaten. It gets in-between your teeth and is very painful. When I mentioned it to him that I didn’t want that crap in my sausage he informed me they didn’t have time to nitpick and that was the way they did it. So I informed him that they obviously wouldn’t have to worry about wasting time in the future doing mine. I’m about 99% convinced that by cutting the junk up and throwing it in the amount of finished product weighed more so their tab would be higher. I’d rather pay more and have it done right! Talk to your neighbors and see who they use and 10-1 most will give you a sausage of theirs so you can see what the product taste like. Also try and find out if they mix meat or if you get yours back. The percentage of shops that actually process each animal individually is dwindling.

[dinsdale]

Good stuff champ.....kinda makes ya' hungry now doesn't it ?

To process your own casing you have to wash off the outside than turn them inside out, clean them off and salt. Then you turn them the right side out and scrap that fatty suff off and salt them again. You hang them so the moisture dries for storage. The salt is sterlized in the oven when you use it. One person handles the casing and one the salt as to not contaminate them.

It's tons of work, and just buy mine already done except for doing it with my grandfather years ago and once just to see how I could make out on my own.

That salt-peter is a "cure". Its potassium nitrate....same stuff as explosives. Now a days Sodium Nitrate or Sodium Nitrite is used. That's what turns meats red....like bacon,ham, kielbasa from just raw cuts into a cured product. Sometimes you mix it as a powder or soak as a brine(ham).

That crock of fat kept the air off that sausage, and helped keep it from spoiling or drying too much.

This Droewors is like jerky with some fat in a sausage form.......moisture,air, and warm makes for the makings of getting sick from bacteria. Salt or vinegar kills it....so does good air movement. Thats why we want a small casing so it dries fast inside and that recipe I linked calls for a dunk in vinegar to keep it fresh when drying, the vinegar inside tenderizes the meat also.