Lucanian sausages - beginners question

[pavka]

I am going to try and make Lucanian sausages, but need some things explained in more details ("Apicius for dummies", sort of thing).

How exactly do you smoke them, for how long and what happens if you don't - they spoil or just taste different?

As an aside, there's the contemporary off-shoots like the Greek "loukaniko" and Bulgarian "loukanka" (which my grandparents used to make in significant quantities) which are not smoked at all.

[kazeryu]

I believe smoking adds flavour (depending on the wood used) as well as lengthening the "shelf life" of the meat by drying it out a bit. Sort of like making jerky, but less extreme.

[M. Demetrius]

Lucanian sausage that we made is surprisingly almost the same ingredients and process as Pemmican, a meat/fat/blueberry sausage made by AmerIndians and frontiersmen. It seems to keep pretty well. Smoking does add to its shelflife, like other meats, and some theorize (though I don't) that the heat and the chemicals in the smoke kill bacteria in the food. All I know for sure is if you use oak or mesquite or pecan wood, it makes it taste marvelously better.

We made some for a camp, but didn't put it in casings...just made meat balls and served them as a side dish. Pretty good feed.

Don't use willow, cottonwood, or oleander. The first two taste bad, the third is toxic.

[Medicus matt]

In the past, I've smoked sausages by just draping them on a tripod over an oak chip fire. You need to keep the fire low, so that the sausages don't burn or dry out, so I used dry oak that I soaked in water for a bit.
Obviously this is pretty inefficient as the smoke needs to be concentrated to be really effective. If you want to do it properly, make yourself a 'smoker'...which is really anything that you can put over the fire to funnel the smoke upwards. A (non galvanised) metal dustbin works well.

Some good information here:-
http://www.wedlinydomowe.com/meat-smoking

[pavka]

My wife is a fermentation enthusiast, so what I learned from her is that the casings are actually the important part... It's not specifically said in "Apicius" (as usual - "obvious" things are not mentioned, so you end up "reconstructing" a different thing if they are not so obvious to you), but the casings are supposed to be pig guts, washed but not dried (at least that's what my grandparents used). When you put the meat in them, the bacteria from the guts start a fermentation process; so it's not really a good idea to kill them off at this stage by smoking - maybe wait a day or two for them to move inside the meat first?

I'll try what Medicus matt suggested and get some sort of funnel over the fire.

I read somewhere that in the past (admittedly - Medieval times) they used to just hang the meats and sausages high in the fireplace, where they were constantly smoked for months as the fire never went out. But, as I said, I have no personal experience or much knowledge (or fireplace); will have to do some experiments :-)

[Medicus matt]

Hanging meat for weeks/months will preserve it by slowly drying it. I think Lucanian sausages were only smoked to give them flavour?

The fermentation method is only used when you're making a preserved sausage (like salami/chorizo) not what you want for an ordinary sausage that you're going to cook on a grill/barby.

[pavka]

My grandparents did a combination of both - the sausages could keep for a long time (a couple of years), but on the other hand they would never eat them "as is", they usually fried them in a pan before eating (they were neither dry nor BBQ sausage-like but somewhere in the middle). On the other other hand, the Bulgarian "loukanka" is maybe too far from the original now and just the name is the same...

[Medicus matt]

The name does seem to give rise to a number of local variants, both fresh and cured.

Thinking about it though, if soldiers really were bringing these sausages home to Rome from Lucania, I suppose they must have been smoke cured. Fresh sausages don't taste or smell too good after a couple of days without refrigeration, let alone a few weeks.

[FenrisLokison]

Another method to concentrate the smoke in a more traditional way that is still used by survivalist's today - Over the fire-pit construct a tripod ( or 4 sided { Quadripod? } over your fire using whatever comes to hand, green branches, vines (hand made rope) etc. Then lash a platform, again made from whatever comes to hand ie by thatching/weaving thin branches together high enough to not catch fire on which to place your meat. For sausages/meat joints etc you can just hang them from the top of the tripod, although a platform will strengthen the tripod. Then thatch the sides with bark/leaves etc leaving a gap around the bottom and a chimney hole @ the top for air circulation. Obviously this is only a temporary set up that need to be constantly tended, but I think it would be more historically accurate than a garbage can enclosure. This type of hot smoker has been used for centuries & fishermen, hunters, survivalists (check out The SAS Survival Handbook ), myself etc. and works great in the field or even @ your backyard BBQ.

As to smoking times personally I tend to look/taste at intermittent intervals to test the product till I'm happy with it. Everything spoils eventually it's just a matter of time. Under smoked products will spoil quicker, but if you're not making long lasting field rations etc, just eat it before it does.

For taste as with all cooking this all comes down to your recipes,preparation and/or cooking methods, which obviously involves a bit of experimentation. As M. Demetrius said be careful with the wood you use for smoking as it can not only can cause bad tastes but death as well.

[pavka]

I'll just make a small experiment next week. Long-term though, I want to have a proper fireplace (maybe out on the patio, our house is the brick/veneer type so it can catch fire from a real fireplace inside). So, Medicus Matt gave me a good idea when planning it - to have a high and wide chimney where I can hang stuff far enough from the flames.
Building it will cost a fair bit, but... it will probably be worth it in the long run.

p.s. Re wood - we have a couple of dead gum trees (eucalyptus) in the backyard that have to be cut down anyway, I guess they will be all right (their leaves are toxic, but only if you eat them directly :-)).

[Medicus matt]

Do you really want your sausages to taste of eucalyptus?

[FenrisLokison]

With the chimney set up make sure you don't hang the meat too high as the smoke will cool down and you'll end up cold smoking the product which only flavours it but doesn't cook it. For some products this is ok, as the early prep work takes care of this.

Hot smoking, is literally that and cooks and flavours with hot smoke. The choice of which method to use is usually determined by what product you are making.

Check out wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoking_(cooking), for a more detailed explanation of the differences also check out the National Center for Home Food Preservation @ http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/cure_smoke.html (Recipes as well as info). For more techniques/recipes an old but good book is Don Holm's Book of Food Drying, Pickling and Smoke Curing which you can get @
http://www.booktopia.com.au/don-holm-s-b...42508.html

I think I'll give the chimney idea a go when I finish my outdoor kitchen, I,m thinking that with a long enough chimney you'll be able to both hot and cold smoke. Two way's of doing this I can think of by placing a door(s) with grates across the chimney inside them. The lower ones for hot smoking,upper for cold.

Alternatively by rigging a pulley system of some kind over the chimney to lower the product to the correct height. Either just hang the product or suspend it in a basket. Have to do some experimentation with thermometer etc.

[FenrisLokison]

Also I've never used Eucalyptus for smoking before as what people call a gum tree varies wildly from place to place, the US even has gum trees that aren't even in the Eucalyptus family (Liquidambar styraciflua, Redgum).

The main reasons I haven't used it is that there are many different species of Eucalyptus, all of which are usually simply called gum trees because they belong to the Eucalyptus family. Also all of the Eucalyptus products that I know of that are produced from the resins and sap in the wood are toxic if consumed. Smoking food utilizes the sap and resins in wood for their antibacterial and preservative properties as well as flavouring. I could be wrong about this but I intend to find out for sure ( no not by animal experimentation - lol ) and'll get back to you.

For a safe source of various different types of wood just go to your local fishing tackle store, most of them (in Oz anyway) sell packets of wood cheap as chips, lol specifically for smoking. This is a quick way to learn some of the safe varieties and let's you get started while you research more exotic varieties. Most of these stores also sell small smokers but these have rapidly got more expensive over the years as the practice has become more popular.

For a cheaper home made smoker check out http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-Smoker/

This site has a plethora of free designs and instructions for smokers (small & large), including some made from Terracotta ( for a more authentic touch ).It also has numerous instructions and links for making armour (maille + plate), cooking, clothing (costumes too), even some weaponry. Some good some not so.At the very least it's a good source of info for home made (cheap,authentic?) construction methods and designs. One of the plate armour instructables is what led me here in the first place. Sorry about the lengthy explanations - cheers :-D

[pavka]

OK, will go to a fishing shop and ask about wood for smoking. I thought what they sell is just wood for BBQ.