Since we began butchering our own pork, we’ve had to experiment with recipes, trying different things for meats like bacon, ham, and sausages. We were very pleased with the homemade smoke kielbasa we made using the natural casings prepared from our hog.
In fact, I would easily call it spot on.
Before I show you my recipe, allow me to give you one to compare it to:
Doesn’t looking at that make the small effort worth the while?!
No GMO-free sticker on that sausage! And I’m sure that with the few ingredients in the recipe I’m sharing, homemade smoked kielbasa is not only more natural but more economical as well.
If you’d like to make pork butter with me along with many other amazing prepared and cured pork recipes including prosciutto, capicola, bacon, guanciale, pate, rillettes, and more join us December 8-10 for our Homestead Hog Butchering Workshop in Brinkhaven, Ohio!
{Smoked Kielbasa}
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Homemade Smoked Kielbasa
Ingredients
Scale
- 14 feet of natural hog casings (buy hog casings here or learn how to prepare your own casings )
- 4 pounds of ground pork
- ½ cup water
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 4 teaspoons sea salt
- 1 teaspoon coarse black pepper
- 1 teaspoon marjoram
Instructions
- Mix the pork with water, garlic, and seasonings. If you’d like to taste test, fry up a little piece and then adjust the seasonings as you’d like.
- Stuff the casings according to manufacturers instructions on your sausage stuffer.
- Twist the casing into desired lengths or weight (Or don’t, if you’d rather cut the sections when you’re done. Flexibility is the name of the game.)
- Prick with a pin all over the sausage to prevent them from bursting.
- Set the sausage in the refrigerator for about a day to let the flavors all marry.
- To smoke the kielbasa, place in your smoker setup with your wood of choice. We started with oak and finished up with a bit of cherry.
- Smoke for 2-3 hours depending on how smoky you like them. We did ours for 3 hours this year and it was borderline too smoky. The goal is to get your internal temperature to 155 degrees. Our DIY smoker is apparently running too cold so after the 3 hours, we brought them in and finished baking them in the oven until they were brought up to temperature.
- And that’s it! Prepare them as you wish in your favorite recipe or freeze them for later!
Recipe Credit
Enjoy!
I read quite a few homesteading blogs but I gotta tell you Quinn…you are one of the only ones (THE only one?) that does it right. When you are butchering your own meat and making your own sausage…now THAT is serious homesteading.
(And by RIGHT-I don’t mean perfectly. Everyone makes mistakes and all-but you and your hubby aren’t afraid to get your hands dirty and don’t shirk at the REAL work- the hard things. I really admire that.)
Good for you!
I am a huge kielbasa lover- especially roasted with root vegetables or with saurkraut and potatoes. I’ll be looking forward to trying this out when we have pigs again. (This year, PLEASE Lord!)
Is the pork ground fine or coarse ????????
You could do either, but ours is coarsely ground, just like making ground pork.
Great post Quinn. I have approx. 30 lbs of ground pork in the fridge still to process. Some will turn into breakfast sausage, Italian sausage, but we might have to try this too. If not with this hog, the next one.
Ohh!!! This sounds so good! My family hasn’t made sausage or done a pig for a couple years now and I miss the boudin so much. Next time we do one we will have to try your Kielbasa.
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I only have access to fresh ground pork at the Amish meat locker, but am definitely going to make the Kielbasa. Thanks for perfecting the recipe.
Where is the cure in this recipe.. If its smoked you have to put curing salt in it…. Period
Why? At 155 degrees it's fully cooked and if we freeze the meat to preserve it, a cure isn't necessary. The smoking adds flavor.
Three hours at 155° is not safe without a cure. Bacteria can grow quite rapidly with ground meat!!!
Actually you are smoking at an internal temperature below 155°, for three hours. Definitely a breeding ground for bacteria without cure. Even when you bring meat it should be icy cold to reduce bacteria growth.
The concern with smoked sausages is botulism. “This bacterium (botulism) requires a moist, oxygen-free environment, low acidity (pH greater than 4.6) and temperatures in the danger zone (38-140°F) to grow and produce toxin.” https://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/nchfp/lit_rev/cure_smoke_fs.html