Difficulty stuffing meat into grinder while making Pepperettes.

[Muskyhunter]

Think this might have contributed to your difficulty. I primarily make dry cure stuff and never freeze, however try to keep it as cold as possible, the meat. Also never season the meat until ready to stuff immediately.

Fins - Sorry I may have not been clear. Just the meat was in fridge and I did not mix spices and cure till I was ready to stuff.

I agree I need to get some better sausage making gear so I will be checking that out in the new year.

Fenelon - Thanks for the great input. Given your knowledge, it sounds like you do a lot of sausage/pepperettes.

[Fenelon]

Lem’s 3/8” steel stuffer tube works well with 21mm casings. The package says it can be used also for 19 and 17mm collagen casings but thats a pile of dung.The smaller casings wont thread onto the tube in the stacked formation. I’d advise getting real sheep casing from the butcher as it’s way cheaper than Lem collagen casings. Nicer to eat as well. I find the collagen casings thick to eat. Get yourself an electric smoker. Watch Kijji and you’ll get a good deal. I just picked up a $700 digital Bradley for 250 bucks! I just smoked 5 lbs of pepperettes yesterday. Set it in my unheated shop by the slightly open doors. Set the oven temp at 320F and it delivered an internal temp of 195F with the cold blizzard blowing. Smoked two pucks of maple. With 4 racks loaded It took about 3hrs 50 minutes to give me a meat temp of 165f when i checked with a digital meat thermometer. Make sure you buy a digital meat probe so you can monitor the stove interior temp. continuously as youre smoking. The set oven temp on the smoker will always read higher than the actual temp in the chamber. I put the probe wire down through the flue hole so the probe hangs in the middle rack. The $40 thermometer that i bought comes with a cool remote. You can take the receiver at least 100ft away from the smoker and you can easily watch the temp as you do other things.

[Fenelon]

The stainless Lem stuffing tube is sold at Peavey

[dean.f]

I see you add quite a bit of water with the spice mix, was that experimental or part of the instructions?

[Fenelon]

As per the instructions that come with the spice. Lots of water gets added to frying/breakfast sausage as the spice mix contains a lot of binder.

[dean.f]

Thanks for clarifying, I haven't ever used a commercial spice mix.

[dean.f]

For the OP, I ran 5 lbs of venison pepperettes through the grinder to stuff over the holiday and tried keeping the meat on the edge of frozen. It definitely made a difference to break the suction pushing the pre ground meat down the tube. I had to reload the horn a couple of times with casing and put the meat back in the freezer between runs.