Summer Sausage

Sicilian Cut Summer Sausage

Mediterranean Style Summer Sausage

Sicilian Cut Summer Sausage is a summer sausage built on a 50% lean meat / 50% pork blend, using lean wild game or lean beef. Smoke at 130-170°F (54-77°C) and finish at an internal 155°F (68°C), stuff into 2.5-3 inch fibrous casing, grind at 1/8". Exact amounts scale to any batch weight in the DeepWoodz Smokehouse app for iPhone and Android.

The capers are why this one works and the only way it goes wrong. Buy salt-packed rather than brined — they stay firm and they do not drag vinegar through the mix — but they come out of the tub carrying a serious amount of salt, so they get rinsed and soaked first. Taste one before it goes in. They fold in by hand at the end with the provolone and the sun-dried tomato, never through the mixer, or they crush and run brine through the whole loaf. Cracked fennel and oregano carry it, and it eats better on day two than the day it comes off.

• Savory
• Herby
• Briny
• Cheesy

Internal temp

155°F (68°C)

Smoker temp

130-170°F (54-77°C)

Casing size

2.5-3 inches

Casing

Fibrous

Bloom

2-3 hours

What goes in it

• Kosher Salt
• Cure #1
• High-Temp Provolone (1/4" cubes)
• Sun-Dried Tomatoes (rehydrated)
• Salt-Packed Capers
• Garlic Powder
• Coarse Black Pepper
• Dried Oregano
• Sweet Paprika
• Fennel Seed (whole or cracked)
• Dried Basil
• Onion Powder
• Red Pepper Flakes
• Ground Coriander
• Ground Rosemary
• Dextrose
• Ice Cold Water

Amounts are calculated for your batch weight in the app — including the cure, which is held at a fixed, food-safe rate.

The meat

Lean Wild Game · Lean Beef · Pork Butt · Pork Shoulder

Bear or wild hog: take it to 160°F and hold 3 minutes. Freezing, smoking and curing do not kill trichinella — only heat does.

How it's made

1. Grind the meat and pork through a 1/8" plate. Everything stays below 34°F - edges firm before it goes into the grinder.
2. Buy salt-packed capers, not the jar in vinegar. Cured in dry salt, they stay firm through four hours of smoke and they taste of caper - floral, almost meaty - instead of sour. Brined capers will work if that is all you can find, but expect a sharper vinegar note, a softer bite, and less caper behind it.
3. Prep the capers first, because they need time. Out of the tub they are genuinely salty: rinse under cold water, then soak in clean cold water for 20 minutes to an hour, changing the water once. The soak is your dial - 20 minutes leaves them assertive, a full hour lands them mild. Taste one before it goes in; it should taste like a caper, not like salt. Leave them WHOLE either way. A whole caper is a bite you notice; a chopped one is a smear.
4. Rehydrate the sun-dried tomatoes. This is not optional. They come out of the bag around 10-20% moisture, so dropped in dry they pull water straight back out of the batter and leave you with a dry sausage. Cover them in warm water for 10-15 minutes until they are pliable, then drain and pat dry. Oil-packed are already soft - just drain them well and blot them, or the oil fights the bind.
5. Cut the rehydrated tomatoes into 1/2" pieces - halves and quarters of a whole tomato, not a dice. This is the whole reason you can see them on a cut slice. Anything smaller disappears into the grain and reads as a fleck of paprika. The weight in this recipe is the REHYDRATED, drained weight, so buy about half that in dry tomatoes: soaking roughly doubles what you started with. Set them aside cold with the capers and the cheese.
6. Mix all the dry seasonings together thoroughly before they touch the meat, cure included. Crack the fennel seed just before it goes in - it is the backbone of this one, and pre-ground fennel is a ghost of itself.
7. Add the dry seasonings to the ground meat and mix to distribute evenly. Dextrose is used here instead of table sugar because it is less sweet and dissolves clean - it rounds off the salt rather than reading as sugar.
8. Dissolve the cure in the ice cold water, then add it to the meat. Mix hard until the meat is very tacky and pulls back at your hand. Do not cut this short - there is better than 18% cheese, tomato and caper going into this batch, and protein extraction is the only thing holding the loaf together around it. Water sits at 9.5% because the soaked capers bring a little of their own, while rehydrated tomatoes bring almost none.
9. Fry a small test patty and taste it before you stuff anything. Capers and provolone both carry salt, and how hard you soaked the capers moves it more than any decimal in this recipe does. If it tastes flat it is under-salted, not under-spiced. This is the last moment you can fix it.
10. NOW fold in the tomatoes, capers, and cheese by hand, until they are just distributed. Do not run them through the mixer. The mixer chops the tomatoes down to nothing and crushes the capers, and then you have a pink loaf with a brine streak through it instead of the cut face you were after.
11. Stuff tightly into 2.5-3" fibrous casings and remove all air pockets. Pack it firm - big inclusions leave voids in a loose stuff, and tomato pieces that sit against an air gap will darken.
12. An overnight rest in the refrigerator is optional. It lets the cure even out and the color set uniformly, but nothing in this recipe requires the time: Fermento is already-cultured dairy, so there is no live culture waiting to work. If using ECA, do NOT rest overnight - ECA must be stuffed and smoked the same day, or the capsules release their acid early and turn the sausage crumbly and sour.
13. Hang at room temperature for 2-3 hours to bloom until the casing feels dry to the touch, then smoke. If you go straight from stuffing to the smoker, the first stage does this job for you - just hold at 130°F with the damper open until the casing is dry before any smoke goes on. Wet casing plus smoke gives you streaky, bitter color.
14. Place in the smoker at 130°F for 1 hour with the damper open.
15. Raise to 150°F and apply smoke for 3 hours.
16. Raise to 170°F until the internal temperature reaches 155°F.
17. Cool them down promptly. (Optional - an ice bath is not required. It is personal preference; many just let them cool at room temp, or outside in cold weather. Just cool them down promptly.)
18. Hang at room temp for 1 hour, then refrigerate overnight before slicing. Slice it at about 1/4" - thinner and the big tomato pieces tear out of the face instead of staying in it. This one is better on day two than day one: the oregano and fennel settle in and the tomato stops tasting separate from the meat. Salt sits at 2.6% rather than the usual 2.75% because the capers and the provolone both bring their own.

Wood

Oak · Cherry · Apple

Before you start

• How much Cure #1 per pound
• Summer sausage internal temp
• Venison to pork fat ratio