Sausage shrinkage!

sincitydisciple01

sincitydisciple01

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Smoked some polish sausage a few weeks ago and was really, really happy with it. One question though... after taking off the drum to cool for a few minutes, the casing began to wrinkle up. No doubt the casing was stretched out a bit and when the pork began to cool, it returned to normal size... leaving the casing less than impressive looking.

I read online somewhere that dunking the sausage in an ice water bath will prevent such shrinkage (the opposite of what happens when I jump in the pool...). Does this work? If so, how long do you dunk it for?

george-costanza-shrinkage.jpg
 
Made some sausage last night with collagen casings. Cooked them on an electric skillet. This leftovers today had the wrinkling effect and I just cut em off. This does not happen nearly as bad as when I smoke/grill the sausage.
 
You need to be careful that you don't get them too hot during cooking, If you want them to look plump, and minimal wrinkles, bring them just up to temp to be safe to eat or slightly lower is fine if you plan to freeze them and then will toss em' on the grill again before eating (so long as you will bring them up to safe temp before eating).

The ice water trick is to stop the cooking process by rapidly reducing the temp. I prefer not dunking them, just cook them to a lower temp.

And remember, friends don't let friends eat wrinkled sausage. :tsk: :mrgreen:
 
I've run 'em through boiling water right after the ice bath to tighten up the casings - just real quick, not long at all. I like Knuck's idea of cooking them to a lower temp - I'm gonna give that a shot next time, maybe let 'em just coast up to where they need to get. :thumb:
 
I agree with lower temps. I have not made a bunch of sausage but we do routinely make summer suasage out of venison. When we smoke that I try to keep the smoker between 170-180. It can take a long time but the results come out good.
 
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