u/Alarmed-Cockroach-50

I’ve been wanting to get into open fire cooking. Not ready to get a Santa Maria but I have my fire pit with a cooking grate which did the job just fine. I think I may be on to something.

Now I can look like I’ve done something in BGs.

After about 2.5 weeks my pepperoni has finished curing so my wife and I decided to make pizza. We get everything ready and just as we are getting ready to put the pizza in the oven we realize the igniter has gone bad. So we decided to throw them in my traegers. Note: My smokers are almost 20 years old and top out at around 400 degrees, so they are not built to double as pizza ovens. I was very pleasantly surprised. They came out a little stiff because we had to cook them longer at a lower temp but my girls and my wife loved them.

The best part was the pepperoni was really good. Now I just need a slicer because I hand cut them a little thick.

Made jalapeño cheddar and cheddar smoked sausages with high temp cheddar for the first time. It’s nice to have the cheese stay in the sausage for a change.

Was this remotely worth any of the effort?

I have 3 rules for Father’s Day:

1. I watch the US Open
2. I cook whatever I want
3. Leave me the hell alone.

This Father’s Day was a complete success on all fronts.

I’ve played him sparingly as a 6* but not enough to really appreciate what he does.

This was my first time making snack sticks and I gotta say I’m pretty happy with the results. The flavor and texture is insane. I need to dial in the collagen casings since some of them peeled off, but that really was not much of a problem. Maybe sheep casings will behave better. Also I need to make them into a shorter uniform length since my fermentation chamber and smoker were a little short (I had to curl one of them around my hanging rod). But all in all, for my first time, I could not be happier.

I finally get to awaken my Dracula!!

Never made snack sticks before figured I’d give it a try with collagen casings. What am I getting myself into? Anything I need to know before getting started?

Used the Chuds BBQ recipe. I was worried this was going to be too spicy for some of my family but it was really well balanced with a good amount of heat.

And let us never speak of this again. 🤐

My pepperoni has finally reached its ultimate destination. It was really good. Now I need to get some beef middles so I can make proper pizza size pepperoni. The hog casings were a touch on the small side. But now I know I can do it.

After about 3 weeks I think I’m calling my pepperoni done. It lost 36% of it’s green weight and tastes pretty good. Little heat in the back and a nice tang. I made it using 32mm hog casings so I’m not sure if it’s really big enough for a pizza, unless I’m going those cup pepps that seem to be popular now.

I was a little surprised with the grease on the outside. Not greasy by any stretch, just wasn’t expecting it. So as it’s my first time, please let me know what your thoughts are. This is my second successful attempt at fermentation and dry curing (first being a summer sausage I pulled out last weekend) so I think I’m hooked.

I know Spot needs a high sig, but honestly, I’m not crazy about him, so who else?