Semi-Dry Cured Smoked Pepperoni

Ingredients:

  • 5 pounds, lean pork or beef or combination of the two
  • 3 Tbsp salt
  • 1 Tbsp powdered dextrose
  • 1/2 Tbsp hot pepper flakes
  • 1/2 tsp ground allspice
  • 2-1/2 tsp ground anise seed
  • 1/2 cup soy protein concentrate or non-fat milk powder
  • 1 cup water
  • 6 Tbsp Fermento
  • 1-1/2 Tbsp corn syrup solids (1/2 to 3/4 Tbsp of Splenda no calorie sweetener can be substituted)
  • 1 tsp pink salt (InstaCure #1, Prague Powder #1, DQ #1, etc.)
  • 32-35mm hog casings or 32mm collagen casing

Directions:

  1. Make sure the grinding equipment and meat are cold, before grinding meat. Place ground meat and the rest of the ingredients into a bowl, and keep your bowl set in another bowl of ice while working. This prevents breaking your mixture. Mix all the ingredients extremely well. When all ingredients are well mixed, keep your meat in the refrigerator until you are ready to stuff in casings.
  2. Stuff the casings into lengths that will easily fit and hang inside the Bradley Smoker. Use butchers twine to tie hanging loops on the end of the sausage, making sure that the loops are large enough so the wooden dowel will easily slip through.
  3. Keep the temperature at 125 degrees F until the sausage casings are dry. Natural casings will take longer then the collagen casings to dry.
  4. Once the casings are dry, close vent to 1/4 opening, raise the temperature of the smoker to 165 degrees F, and hold until internal temperature of the pepperoni reaches 145 degrees F.
  5. Remove sausage from the smoker once the internal temperature has reached 145 degrees F. Chill with cold water until the internal temperature is reduced to 90-100 degrees F.
  6. You can eat the smoked pepperoni right away, store in refrigerator, or freeze.