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of the fresh sausages in the first part of this chapter can be hot-smoked. Chicken Sausage with Basil and Tomatoes (page 124) is particularly excellent smoked. If hot-smoking any of the recipes in the fresh sausage section, it’s essential to add 1 teaspoon/6 grams pink salt (sodium nitrite) to the seasoning mixture for each 5 pounds/2.25 kilograms meat and fat to protect against potential botulism poisoning. All smoked sausages and dry-cured sausages require the additional nitrites (see pages 177–178 for a complete discussion of nitrite and nitrate), because sausages held for long periods at temperatures between 40 and 140 degrees F./4 and 60 degrees C. can become corrupted by bacterial growth. If smoking any of the recipes in the fresh sausage section, you can also add 1⁄2 cup/70 grams of milk powder or another powdered product, soy protein concentrate (see Sources, page 301) per each 5 pounds/2.25 kilograms of meat (the powders help the sausage retain moisture during and after cooking, and sausages using one of these will be plumper and juicier, but it’s not essential). All hot-smoked sausages follow the same general smoking method, though times and temperatures may vary.

Basic Smoked Sausage Technique

The salient facts about smoking sausages are these: We smoke sausages for flavor and color, not for preservation (though acids from the smoke that will stick to the skin will prevent molds to some extent); and, in order for the smoke to flavor and color the sausages, it’s got to be able to stick to them—thus the need to dry the sausages, to form a pellicle, a tacky surface that the smoke compounds will adhere to. Most sausages need to be dried for a couple hours or overnight before being smoked, till their skin feels dry and slightly tacky.

Other matters are mostly common sense. Hang the sausages on sticks that keep them separate, smoke sticks, so they aren’t touching one another (triangular dowels work best). Areas that touch won’t be smoked, and taste and appearance will be affected. Try to be sure that you have an even number of links, or you’ll find you’ve got an extra link hanging where it shouldn’t.

The following guidelines refer to hot-smoking, that is smoking at temperatures of 200 degrees F./93 degrees C. Monitoring the temperature of the interior of the sausages is important. It’s helpful to have a probe thermometer attached to a timer/alarm that can be set to go off when the sausage registers 150 degrees F./65 degrees C. (This is handy for all roasted meats.) Otherwise, you will need to check continually with a standard instant-read thermometer, which is inconvenient, allows for error, and results in both loss of juices from piercing the sausage repeatedly and loss of smoke from opening the door.

Try to keep your smoker below 200 degrees F./93 degrees C., a nice gentle heat. Unless you have a professional smokehouse, you’ll have to watch the temperature carefully; heat will usually be struggling to thwart you. But the longer you can keep the temperature down, the better the results will be.

When cooked smoked sausages are taken out of the smoke, they are, like poached sausages, usually chilled in ice water. This stops the cooking and can also prevent shrinkage. Because smoke is so sticky (as you know if you’ve ever cleaned a smoker), very little flavor is lost in the ice bath.

There are various other particulars with the individual smoked sausages. Some, for example, are taken out of the smoker and left at room temperature to “bloom”—that is, to take on a beautiful rich brown hue). Any such issues will be addressed within the recipes.

KNACKWURST

This is the most straightforward of the smoked sausages—a fresh sausage that’s hot-smoked. The only additional ingredients are the pink salt, which protects against the possibility of botulism, and nonfat milk powder, which helps the sausage retain moisture.

Our friend Marlies Bailey, a native of Germany now living in our heartland, smack in the middle of Oklahoma, and a great fan of sausages, wrote this in response to our question about the name of the sausage: