Smoked Texas Hot Links

Spicy, flavor-packed beef and pork cured sausages.

Course Main Course

Cuisine American

Cook Time 8

Drying out 2

Total Time 2 8

Servings sausages

Calories 307kcal

Author Russ Jones

Ingredients

2.5 lbs pork butt
2.5 lbs beef chuck roast or brisket
5.67 g (0.25%) Insta Cure #1
226.8 g (10%) water
1 cup non-fat dry milk powder

Seasoning - based on % of total meat weight

9.07 g (0.4%) paprika
9.07 g (0.4%) mustard powder
6.35 g red pepper flakes
4.53 g chili powder (regular, chipotle, or cayenne pepper)
34.2 g (1.5%) Kosher salt
22.68 g (1%) coarse ground black pepper
20.41 g (0.9%) garlic powder
15.87 g (0.7%) onion powder
11.34 g (0.5%) sugar

Instructions

Rinse the casings to remove the salt, then soak them in warm water for an hour. Repeat this step for another hour. Alternatively, rinse them and soak them overnight in water and half a teaspoon of baking soda in the fridge.
Cut the partially frozen beef and pork into cubes that fit down your grinder’s throat. Coarse-grind the sausage using a kidney grinder plate, then return the ground meat to the freezer.
Measure out the spices and mix them together, then hand-mix the seasoning into the ground meat.
Place a 10mm plate on your meat grinder and grind the meat again.
Hand-mix the milk powder into the ground meat, then mix the cure and water together and add this. Hand-mix until you start getting protein extraction.
Place the ground meat in the sausage stuffer, packing it tightly to remove air. Wet the horn, thread on the moist casings, then stuff the sausage.
Twist the stuffed sausage to make individual sausage links about 8-10" each. With the sausage pricker, remove any visible air pockets.
Place the sausage links in the fridge for 12 to 24 hours to dry them out and activate the cure.
Loop the sausages on rods and place them in your vertical smoker. Set it to 110℉ to start your 1-1½ hours drying cycle. Ensure the top and bottom vents are open.
Once complete, add the sawdust pan to the smoker's bottom, decrease the bottom vent to a quarter open, and keep the top about halfway open.
Set the smoker to 135°F for two hours, increase to 145°F for two hours, increase to 160°F for one hour, then push it up to 180°F until the sausages reach an internal temperature of 155°F.
Plunge the cooked sausages immediately in an ice bath and let them cool down until they reach an internal temperature of around 100℉.
Place the sausages on a wire rack on a baking sheet and let them sit at room temperature for about two hours to bloom.
Place them in a ziplock bag in the fridge overnight and serve the next day.

Notes

A note on using grams and percentages

While the vast majority of our recipes use imperial measurements, using grams and percentages in sausage making is crucial for accuracy, consistency, and control over the final product.

It makes it easy to scale and adjust recipes, and is important when working with cure. I highly recommend investing in a cheap digital scale that can switch between different units.

Nutrition