sudsandswine
Quintessential Chatty Farker
I ate bologna and cheese sandwiches fairly regularly when I was a kid, something that my own have not really experienced yet. Instead of buying the ol' Oscar Meyer packaged bologna, I decided to try making my own with "better" ingredients.
I removed the coppa from a Boston butt to cure and had about 6.5lbs of the butt remaining, so I picked up a couple chuck roasts from the store and decided to do a mix of beef and pork for the bologna fodder. I used The Sausage Maker premixed bologna seasoning, and it called for 60/40 beef/pork, although I only had enough beef to make it a 50/50 mix so I went with that. 100% beef or 100% pork probably would've worked fine as well.
I ran the meat through the 1/4" plate and then once more through the 3/16" plate. I was working with 10lbs of meat to stuff in the tube so I didn't think truly emulsifying in a food processor was in the cards. In retrospect, one more pass through the 3/16" plate would've probably gotten it pretty close to an emulsified texture but it didn't bother me to see some fat particles in my "bologna".
Pork:
Beef:
All mixed together with the other ingredients after a second grinder pass:
I don't have access to a true "smoke house" to follow the stepped temp increase process I'd read in a few different recipes, so I just set it horizontally on my Mak on "smoke" and called it good. The big 4 7/8" chub probably took 6-7 hours, the smaller chub containing what didn't fit into that casing took about 4 hours. Once I pulled them off, I rinsed in cold water and then dunked into an ice water bath before putting them in the fridge overnight.
The "bologna" mix in the summer sausage casing:
The 4 7/8" chub:
I pan fried a thick slice off the larger chub and it was pretty tasty. My plan is to slice a lot of it into deli slices but keep a chunk or two for scoring, seasoning, and re-smoking like I've seen many people do before.
The 2 3/8" casing I'll probably use mostly for fried bologna sliders, possibly scoring, seasoning, and smoking that one too.
I removed the coppa from a Boston butt to cure and had about 6.5lbs of the butt remaining, so I picked up a couple chuck roasts from the store and decided to do a mix of beef and pork for the bologna fodder. I used The Sausage Maker premixed bologna seasoning, and it called for 60/40 beef/pork, although I only had enough beef to make it a 50/50 mix so I went with that. 100% beef or 100% pork probably would've worked fine as well.
I ran the meat through the 1/4" plate and then once more through the 3/16" plate. I was working with 10lbs of meat to stuff in the tube so I didn't think truly emulsifying in a food processor was in the cards. In retrospect, one more pass through the 3/16" plate would've probably gotten it pretty close to an emulsified texture but it didn't bother me to see some fat particles in my "bologna".
Pork:
Beef:
All mixed together with the other ingredients after a second grinder pass:
I don't have access to a true "smoke house" to follow the stepped temp increase process I'd read in a few different recipes, so I just set it horizontally on my Mak on "smoke" and called it good. The big 4 7/8" chub probably took 6-7 hours, the smaller chub containing what didn't fit into that casing took about 4 hours. Once I pulled them off, I rinsed in cold water and then dunked into an ice water bath before putting them in the fridge overnight.
The "bologna" mix in the summer sausage casing:
The 4 7/8" chub:
I pan fried a thick slice off the larger chub and it was pretty tasty. My plan is to slice a lot of it into deli slices but keep a chunk or two for scoring, seasoning, and re-smoking like I've seen many people do before.
The 2 3/8" casing I'll probably use mostly for fried bologna sliders, possibly scoring, seasoning, and smoking that one too.
