Firing up the smoker .......................

On Saturday we decided that it was high time we used our smoker for the first time. It has been set up for a few months now and for one reason and then another we hadn't used it until now. So the wood was sort and a fire lit.

The day before all the meat is minced together ( 6kg pork shoulder & 1kg beef mince) to this we added garlic (of course) black pepper and the smallest amount of preserve. It is all mixed and then left in the fridge overnight.

Our Polish neighbours came the next morning to help us with the actual sausage making and we got to use our newly acquired mincer. The sausage skins were rinsed off and filled to make sure there weren't any holes, the meat was then made into balls to fit into the mincer hopper. Filling the sausage skins is a two person job, one to operate the mincer and one to handle the actual sausage.

Once all the meat was done the sausage was then placed onto the smoking rack and then placed into the smoker which has been heating while we've been inside making the sausages.

The actual time to smoke polish sausage depends on the quantity of sausage and outside weather, for us we were looking at a time frame of about 3 hrs. During this time the fire is checked periodically.

This is what the sausage looks like when it has been smoking for about an hour and a half.

When the sausage is finished, we then took it inside and washed it to remove any ash etc and then it was wiped with paper towel and left on the bench to cool, of course after everyone had a taste test that is ........ What was left we placed in bags and placed in the freezer. It is a time consuming task but well worth it.