I made hot dogs before. Stuffed in sheep casings. But this time, I took a shot at making caseless hot dogs. The result was spectacular (and I don't say that about all my efforts 
) I made 6# of them. Just pulled some off the grill and slathered with some homemade brown mustard and chopped onions. Yummers.
The three main differences between normal sausage making and caseless hot dogs is a) meat must be emulsified, b) add lots of water during the emulsification process, c) remove the casing after the dogs have been smoked.
Emulsification mechanically dices the protein and fat parts of the sausage until they are indistinguishable. Homogenization. It's pretty easy to do this with a food processor, but you have to do it in batches (each batch was about the size of a baseball I'd say). I ground the meat and fat through the course plate on my grinder, then twice through the fine plate, then into the food processor (each batch got "puree'd" about a minute or two). During the emulsification, I added ice-cold water.
The result of the emulsification is a paste about the consistency of mayonnaise. I stuffed that into some sweet cellulose casings I got online. The casings will twist to form individual links, but they untwist on their own too easily, so I just used butcher's twine to tie each one off. Looks like a lot of work, but really isn't.
The links get cooked slowly (3 hrs) until the internal temp reaches about 160F. I did that on my smoker. When done, I tossed them on the patio deck and hosed them off till cool. That took about 5 minutes. Casing gets tossed later, so no worries about the edible parts getting dirty.
Then the casings get peeled off. It's super simple to pull these cellulose casings off. I packed them into vacuum bags and they are in the freezer now.
They are much better than I expected. You can see that some of them got a little hotter than others, which explains the difference in color. Also, there are what looks like liverspots on them. That is some fat on the outside. When cooked on the grill, those spots dissapear. My son and I ate several off the grill tonight and they are... well, hot dogs
) I made 6# of them. Just pulled some off the grill and slathered with some homemade brown mustard and chopped onions. Yummers.The three main differences between normal sausage making and caseless hot dogs is a) meat must be emulsified, b) add lots of water during the emulsification process, c) remove the casing after the dogs have been smoked.
Emulsification mechanically dices the protein and fat parts of the sausage until they are indistinguishable. Homogenization. It's pretty easy to do this with a food processor, but you have to do it in batches (each batch was about the size of a baseball I'd say). I ground the meat and fat through the course plate on my grinder, then twice through the fine plate, then into the food processor (each batch got "puree'd" about a minute or two). During the emulsification, I added ice-cold water.
The result of the emulsification is a paste about the consistency of mayonnaise. I stuffed that into some sweet cellulose casings I got online. The casings will twist to form individual links, but they untwist on their own too easily, so I just used butcher's twine to tie each one off. Looks like a lot of work, but really isn't.
The links get cooked slowly (3 hrs) until the internal temp reaches about 160F. I did that on my smoker. When done, I tossed them on the patio deck and hosed them off till cool. That took about 5 minutes. Casing gets tossed later, so no worries about the edible parts getting dirty.
Then the casings get peeled off. It's super simple to pull these cellulose casings off. I packed them into vacuum bags and they are in the freezer now.
They are much better than I expected. You can see that some of them got a little hotter than others, which explains the difference in color. Also, there are what looks like liverspots on them. That is some fat on the outside. When cooked on the grill, those spots dissapear. My son and I ate several off the grill tonight and they are... well, hot dogs
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