Summer Sausage

Sunday Bloodies Summer Sausage

Bloody Mary Style Summer Sausage

Sunday Bloodies 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.

Summer sausage is already one of the three things stabbed into a Wisconsin bloody mary, alongside the cheese and the pickle, so this is the sausage made to taste like the drink it garnishes. The trick is that tomato is not what makes a bloody mary taste like one — celery seed, worcestershire and horseradish are, and tomato on its own just reads as pizza. Everything arrives dry or drained because the glass version is mostly water and acid, and acid added before the protein is extracted costs you the bind. Pickled asparagus, pimento olives and dill pickles go in whole enough to see on the cut face.

• Savory
• Briny
• Tangy
• Peppery

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
• Tomato Paste
• Bloody Mary Mix (ice cold)
• Prepared Horseradish
• Worcestershire Sauce
• Pickled Asparagus (cut in thirds, drained)
• Pimento-Stuffed Manzanilla Olives (halved, drained)
• Baby Kosher Dill Pickles (halved, drained)
• Coarse Black Pepper
• Dextrose
• Celery Seed
• Smoked Paprika
• Garlic Powder
• Ground Mustard
• Onion Powder
• Celery Salt
• Red Pepper Flakes

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. Prep the inclusions first, because all three need draining. Cut the asparagus spears into thirds, halve the olives, and halve the baby dills. Spread all of it on a towel and press. Set it aside cold. None of it goes in until the end.
3. Mix all the dry seasonings together thoroughly before they touch the meat, cure included.
4. Salt and cure go in FIRST, with only the Bloody Mary mix. Dissolve the cure into the cold mix, add it to the meat, and mix hard until the meat is very tacky and pulls back off your hand. Do not cut this short. Every acidic thing in this recipe is waiting on deck, and acid added before the protein is extracted will cost you the bind. That is the one way this recipe fails.
5. Now add the tomato paste, Worcestershire, horseradish, and the rest of the dry seasonings. Mix until it is even. The batter turns a deep brick red, which is what you want.
6. Fry a small test patty and taste it before you stuff anything. How hard you drained the vegetables moves this more than any decimal in this recipe does. If it tastes flat it is under-salted, not under-spiced. If it tastes like pizza, it needs more celery seed and more Worcestershire - those two are what make it read Bloody Mary instead of tomato. This is the last moment you can fix it.
7. NOW add the olives and pickles, and work them in only until they are just distributed. Then fold the asparagus through by hand at the very end. Asparagus is the most fragile of the three and it will go to mush if you keep working it.
8. Stuff tightly into 2.5-3" fibrous casings and remove all air pockets. Leave the asparagus in thirds - the stuffer lines long pieces up with the direction of flow, so they sit lengthwise in the log and slicing the sausage cuts them into coins on its own. Inclusions settle as you work, so the last casing off the stuffer runs leaner than the first. Fold what is left in the hopper back through by hand partway if you want all the logs to read the same on the cut face.
9. ECA and Fermento are OPTIONAL here rather than the default - see the tangy flavor section for amounts. This sausage already carries real acidity from the tomato paste, Worcestershire, pickles, olives and asparagus, so it does not need them the way a plain summer sausage does, and stacking a full dose on top is where you risk sour and crumbly. If you use ECA, it goes in last and the batch must be stuffed and smoked the same day. If you skip both, you are on no clock at all - rest it overnight in the refrigerator if you want the cure to even out, or go straight to the smoker.
10. 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.
11. Place in the smoker at 130°F for 1 hour with the damper open.
12. Raise to 150°F and apply smoke for 3 hours.
13. Raise to 170°F until the internal temperature reaches 155°F.
14. 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.)
15. Hang at room temp for 1 hour, then refrigerate overnight before slicing. Slice it thin, about 1/4" - that is what turns the asparagus into coins and keeps the olives in the face instead of tearing them out. On the horseradish, honestly: you will not get nose-burn out of a cooked sausage. That heat is volatile and three hours of smoke strips most of it. What stays is the earthy, mustardy body underneath, which is most of what horseradish actually does in a Bloody Mary anyway, since that drink is cold and the burn is a top note. The ground mustard is in there to prop up what is left.
16. On the heat: it is meant to come from three places, not one. Red pepper flakes in the mix, a SPICY Bloody Mary mix, and one of the two jars of asparagus hot. Build it with a mild mix and mild asparagus and you will get a noticeably tamer sausage than this recipe intends. Flakes give you pockets of heat, the spicy mix gives the even background underneath them.
17. Notes on the numbers. There is no added water in this recipe - the tomato paste, Bloody Mary mix, horseradish and Worcestershire come to about 9.6% between them, so every drop of liquid in this sausage is carrying flavor. Salt sits at 2.4% rather than the usual 2.75% because the olives, pickles, asparagus, Worcestershire and celery salt all bring their own. Hold back a few ounces of the Bloody Mary mix and only add it if the batter looks dry - that is easier than saving a wet batch.

Wood

Hickory · Oak · Cherry

Before you start

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