Ingredients
Total meat plus fat. Everything below rescales.
Meat & Fat
Cure & Seasoning
Weigh the cure on a scale that reads to 0.1 g. Not something to measure by spoon.
Cure Safety
United States (USDA), 9 CFR 424.21(c)
Open in the Cure CalculatorEquipment
One cut of pork, ground fine and hand mixed with cure, cracked pepper, garlic, thyme and cayenne until it just starts to bind. An hour of drying gets the casing ready to take smoke, then two hours of hot smoke does the rest. It comes off the smoker colored and firm but still raw, so cook it through before serving.
How To Apply It
Grind the pork butt on a fine plate, then hand mix it with the salt, Cure #1, cracked pepper, garlic, thyme, cayenne and cold water until the mixture is uniform and binds slightly. Stuff into hog casings.
Instructions
Grind the pork butt through a 6 mm plate (5 mm works too).
Mix the ground pork with the salt, cure, spices and cold water until evenly distributed and slightly tacky.
Stuff into hog casings, either as a continuous rope or linked into 30 cm lengths.
Dry the links for an hour, either at room temperature or hanging in a smoker preheated to 54C with no smoke, until the casings feel dry to the touch.
Apply hot smoke for two hours. This produces a smoked sausage meant to be cooked before eating, not a ready to eat product.
Optional, and only if you want a ready to eat sausage. Carry straight on from the smoke: either raise the smoker to 76C, or poach in water held at 80 to 85C, and hold until the center reaches 68C. Skip it for traditional andouille, which comes off the smoker raw and gets cooked later in a gumbo or jambalaya.
Cold water shower to knock the surface temperature down quickly and firm up the casing.
Refrigerate once cooled and use within 1 to 2 days, or freeze. If you skipped the cook step the sausage is still raw, so cook it until the center reads 71C before serving.
Then What
Dry the stuffed links briefly, then hot smoke for two hours, shower with cold water and refrigerate. This is a smoked sausage that still needs cooking before serving unless you take it further to a fully cooked internal temperature.
About This Recipe
A fixture of Cajun cooking in south Louisiana, where it goes into gumbo and jambalaya. The name came over with French settlers, but no two Louisiana cooks season it the same way, so this version keeps to the short list almost all of them share: pepper, garlic, thyme and cayenne.
Curing salts are toxic in quantities you could measure casually with a spoon. Weigh every dose and mix it through evenly. Adapted from Andouille Sausage; all wording here is our own. We have not made this one ourselves yet, so treat the timings as a starting point.
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