Who makes good smoked summer sausage?

[IronWing]

I'm looking for good smoked summer sausage. The stuff I used to be able to get was dry, tough, chewy, meaty, and flavorful. Most everything I'm seeing today is a tube of fat and MSG squeezed into a casing under lithostatic pressure to make it seem denser than it really is. I cut into the casing only to be disappointed by the spongy flavorless mass therein.

 

[Ruptga]

I have no idea, but this is relevant to my interests as well.

 

[NesuD]

I'm looking for good smoked summer sausage. The stuff I used to be able to get was dry, tough, chewy, meaty, and flavorful. Most everything I'm seeing today is a tube of fat and MSG squeezed into a casing under lithostatic pressure to make it seem denser than it really is. I cut into the casing only to be disappointed by the spongy flavorless mass therein.

Your looking for a summer sausage cured in a cloth bag. That is an old school way of doing it but the makers that do it that way are real craftsmen. I used to have a small country market process venison for me and make summer sausage that way. It was always fantastic. Find a specialty meat market that smokes and makes their own sausage. Oh even this stuff needs a little time to hang and age. usually just a few days so any leftover excess moisture can evaporate. Good sausage maker wont put it up for sale until its ready though. Amish made sausage is usually done this way. any good specialty sausage maker should offer samples as well so you could make sure it is to your liking.

 

[ElFenix]

why's it called summer sausage when it comes out in the winter?

 

[nakedfrog]

why's it called summer sausage when it comes out in the winter?

What?

 

[ElFenix]

What?

Seems like I only see it in the winter. Although that's probably only due to proliferation of gift baskets.

 

[nakedfrog]

Perhaps that's it. I know I see it year 'round here.

 

[IronWing]

why's it called summer sausage when it comes out in the winter?

The original name was Sumer sausage as the recipe was discovered on cuniform clay tablets unearthed by German archaeologists working in Mesopotamia in the nineteenth century. Articles highlighting the plethora of discoveries appeared in popular magazines at the time, including the recipe. It became chic for butchers to offer the Sumer sausage as a novelty. The German immigrants of the 1880s brought the recipe to America where it remained popular in the upper Midwest and the name morphed to Summer sausage.

 

[feralkid]

http://schmidtsmeatmarket.com/

But they don't ship.

 

[IronWing]

As you might realize, I pulled the above out of my butt. But...

The Mesopotamians really did invent Sumer sausage!

 

[nakedfrog]

Bitchin'

 

[Scarpozzi]

I'm all about cheese plates and charcuterie. Avoiding the commercially processed stuff doesn't guarantee that you'll get good stuff, but it definitely helps avoid the mass produced, low-end meats, seasoned with bulk dry spices and vinegar. At some level, it's good because they monitor the moisture levels, etc...but the opportunity for variation (aside from it being bad) seems to be lost because the process is monitored so heavily in large batches. I had a really bad batch of salami recently that I couldn't eat....it came from an international food chain. Try looking in organic food stores that have dried italian sausage and other meats. Some hispanic markets have a lot to offer too.

Good read:
http://www.epicurious.com/expert-advice/how-to-build-a-charcuterie-board-like-a-pro-article

 

[GoodRevrnd]

Olympia Provisions makes a summer sausage. I haven't tried it but a lot of their other stuff is pretty good.

 

[nakedfrog]

But is it a smoked summer sausage?