How Much High-Temp Cheese Per Pound of Sausage?

Short answer:

Cheese is the most requested add-in at deer camp, and it's also the one that goes wrong the most. The amount is the easy part. Where people get burned is using the wrong cheese, adding it too early, or letting it get warm. Here's all of it.

What is high-temp cheese, and why does regular cheese melt out?

High-temp cheese is cheese made to hold its shape at cooking temperature. It comes diced, usually in 1/4 inch cubes, and it softens in the smoker without turning into liquid. Slice the finished sausage and you get clean little pockets of cheese.

Regular cheese wasn't built for that. A summer sausage spends hours in the smoker and comes up to 155°F inside. Long before that, regular cheddar goes soft, oily and runny. It melts out of its pocket, runs to the casing, and leaves you with holes in the slice, grease under the casing, and sometimes cheese leaking out of the ends. That's why the cheese recipes in the DeepWoodz app call for high-temp cheese.

How much high-temp cheese per pound of meat?

10% of the meat weight. Every cheese recipe in the app uses high-temp cheese at 10%, except Käsekrainer, where regular Swiss at 20% is the point: it's made to melt. 10% is enough that nearly every slice or bite has cheese in it, without so much that the sausage won't hold together.

Meat weight	High-temp cheese (10%)
1 lb	1.6 oz (45 g)
5 lb	8 oz (227 g)
10 lb	1 lb (454 g)
15 lb	1.5 lb (680 g)
25 lb	2.5 lb (1,134 g)

Figure the cheese off the meat weight (venison plus pork), not the meat plus everything else. The same goes for the Cure #1. Cure is figured at 0.25% of the meat weight (156 ppm), and adding cheese doesn't change that number. See how much Cure #1 per pound.

Weigh it. A cup of diced cheese weighs different amounts depending on the dice and how it packs. A kitchen scale takes the guessing out.

Can I use more or less cheese?

Less is fine. Drop to 5% and you'll still find cheese, just not in every bite. More is where it gets risky. Cheese doesn't bind, so every pound you add is a pound of the batch that isn't holding the sausage together. Past about 10% the slices start to fall apart around the cheese, and the sausage can come out drier, because cheese dilutes the pork fat you worked to add. If your venison sausage is already on the dry side, that's worth knowing. See why venison sausage comes out dry.

When do you add the cheese?

Last. The order goes like this:

1. Grind the meat cold. Cheese never goes through the grinder. It smears into paste and gums up the plate.
2. Mix in the seasoning, then the Cure #1 dissolved in ice cold water, and mix until the meat turns tacky and sticks to your hand.
3. Fold in the cold cheese by hand, just until it's spread through the batch. Stop there.
4. Stuff right away.

Why last? Mixing is what builds the bind (see sausage texture problems for why). If you mix with the cheese already in there, the cheese takes a beating, smears and breaks down, and you lose those clean pockets. Get the bind first, then fold the cheese in gently.

If you're using encapsulated citric acid for tang, it also goes in at the end by hand. Fold the cheese and the ECA in together, then stuff and smoke the same day. See ECA vs Fermento.

How do you keep the cheese cold?

Treat the cheese like the meat. Keep it in the fridge until the second you need it, and don't let the bag sit on the counter while you grind. Cold cheese folds in clean. Warm cheese smears, and smeared cheese coats the meat and weakens the bind.

• Keep the meat near freezing, 32 to 34°F, through grinding, mixing and stuffing, and never let it sit above 40°F. That's both a texture rule and a food safety rule.
• On a big batch, fold the cheese into one tub at a time and keep the rest in the fridge.
• Many cheese suppliers say not to freeze the unopened cheese. Freezing can make it crumbly. Store it in the fridge and check the package.

Which high-temp cheese flavors work best?

Cheddar is the standard and it's hard to beat. Here's where each one fits:

Cheese	Where it shines
Cheddar	Snack sticks, summer sausage, ring bologna, bologna, hot dogs, brats, kielbasa
Pepper jack	Jalapeño snack sticks, pickle brats, anything you want a little heat in
Provolone	Philly-style brats with peppers and onions
Swiss, mozzarella and hotter pepper blends	Also sold as high-temp. Swiss is good in brats and ring bologna; mozzarella in Italian-style sausage.

Jalapeño and cheddar is the most popular combination for a reason. If you're adding diced jalapeños too, pat them dry first so they don't add extra water.

Can you use regular cheese if you freeze it first?

You can, but it won't act like high-temp cheese. Freezing only buys time. Regular cheese is going to warm up and melt once the sausage climbs toward its pull temperature, and in a smoker that takes hours. You'll get holes, greasy pockets and cheese leaking out of the casing.

Where regular cheese does okay is fresh sausage that cooks fast, like a brat that goes straight to the grill. Freeze the cubes, fold them in last, and don't poke the casing while it cooks. For anything smoked (snack sticks, summer sausage, ring bologna), buy high-temp cheese. It's the difference between a batch you're proud of and one you apologize for.

Cheese in snack sticks vs summer sausage: what's different?

	Snack sticks	Summer sausage
Casing	19-21 mm	2.5-3 inch
Cheese rate	10% of meat weight	10% of meat weight
Cheese size	1/4 inch cubes	1/4 inch cubes
Pull temp	152°F internal	155°F internal
Smoker ceiling	175°F	170°F

The rate is the same. The difference is the stuffing. A snack stick casing is narrow and so is the stuffing tube, so cheese cubes can bridge in the tube and the sticks come out with gaps or blowouts. Stuff slow and steady, keep the cheese cold so the cubes stay firm, and if your tube keeps jamming, go to a smaller dice.

Summer sausage is easy by comparison. The wide casing takes 1/4 inch cubes without any trouble, and you get those big cheese spots in the slice everybody wants. See how to make venison summer sausage and the snack stick smoke schedule.

Either way, cool them promptly when they hit temperature. A cold water shower or ice bath stops the cook so the cheese doesn't keep softening. Cooling at room temperature works too. Just don't leave them sitting warm.

Does cheese change the internal temperature?

No. The pull temperatures are the same with or without cheese:

• Cured summer sausage: 155°F internal (why 155°F).
• Cured snack sticks: 152°F internal.
• Fresh sausage like brats: 160°F internal, the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service minimum for sausage made from ground meat.

One thing to watch: put the probe in meat, not in a cheese pocket. If the reading jumps around, move the probe.

Does cheese change how long the sausage lasts?

Cheese doesn't buy you any extra time, and it does not make homemade sausage shelf stable. Treat cheese summer sausage and cheese snack sticks like any homemade cooked sausage:

• Fridge, opened: about 1 week.
• Fridge, still vacuum sealed: up to about 2 weeks.
• Freezer: vacuum seal and freeze anything you won't eat in that window. At 0°F it stays safe; USDA's 1 to 2 months is about best quality.

Those are the USDA times for cooked sausage, and they're the conservative ones I go by. The cheese may get a little crumbly after a long freeze. It still tastes fine. More detail in how long venison sausage lasts.

Every cheese recipe in DeepWoodz works the cheese out for you. Enter 7.4 lb of meat or 32 lb and the cheese, seasoning, water and cure all recalculate, with the cure locked at 0.25%. The recipes are free on iPhone and Android.

Bottom line

High-temp cheese at 10% of the meat weight, 1 lb per 10 lb. Keep it cold, never grind it, and fold it in by hand last. Use high-temp cheese for anything smoked, keep the same pull temperatures, and refrigerate or freeze the finished sausage like any other homemade batch.

Common questions