Lebanon bologna

So this round it was use up all the deer meat as hunting season is coming! Two other recipes to follow also. This is a standard recipe is our house as it is my wife’s favorite and we all know this better get made. Now, this is HER recipe that she made and altered to her liking. It’s not a traditional one using a culture or using ECA (Encapsulated Citric Acid) to add the bite. I tried to get her to try ECA but was told NO. I cannot share this recipe, but I can point you to this one which is similar.

Ours would be different as I stretch our meat and cut it for people that do not like wild meat as much. I like about 13% fat in my bologna and I cut it 50/50 with 73% ground beef. My bologna is always cut with beef and sausages cut with pork. In my opinion beef doesn’t make great sausages and I just have not tried pork for bologna.

So I mix it up and put in a 2 gallon ziplock bag since this was a ten pound batch. Now it needs to rest over night and let the nitrate work the meat. I use pink #1 cure and salt, not Tender Quick. 1 tsp pink cure and 3 Tbsp kosher salt per 5 pounds of meat.

It’s hard to see for the hotdogs but there is 4 24″ bologna rolls under there with a 2 3/8″ diameter.

This was the interesting part. I ordered 2.4″ 24″ casing and bought 20 and didn’t bother to look at them. I like these casings from The Sausage Maker but I don;t need hog ring pliers and bought a better pair and I use these hog rings.

I ordered casings without the pre-tied top. I folded the top in half and then folded each side to be 1/4″ wide over and over. I looped my string and cinched it down and knotted again. Long end of the string out and I looped it to make a single knot but left it open and slide it to be below the knot on the casing and doubled it and tied it with the first loose them and around the casing and double tied aagin and they held. I thin next time when I do the last knot I will fold over the casing top and tie it to really lock it in. I was worried on this one. I screwed up Lebanon before and made lots of dog treats being cheap and not leaving enough casing for the hog rings to grab.The casings opened and released their meat into the drip pan.

Now all of it hanging in the smokehouse. One probe in the top and one in the middle to make sure it’s cooked even.

The smokehouse fire box was warmed up so we settled into a 120° smoking area. Let that run for an hour and then slowly bumped up to 160 – 165 to finish the hotdogs. Ran that for an hour and pulled the hotdogs. Then ran the smokehouse up to 175 and staying no higher than 180. They got to 145 and started dropping back into 142 and even 140. They had been over 140 for well over an hour and all bacteria threat was gone.

In the house and stripped to cool off. My daughter cut the 24″ logs into thirds and then I vacuum sealed them. She sliced one up and shared it with everyone and they just loved fresh out of the smokehouse bologna!

Enjoy.