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Brian
2044 posts
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in over 10 years
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Sausage drying rack
Not much to explain here. The title is self explanatory. Nothing much to look at either. Made from two scrap 2×6s that I bought for door making a long time ago and never used because they twisted badly as they dried out. I figured this is a good way to get rid of them. I didn’t do anything to fix the twisting so that led to the cross members being slightly out of alignment, but it’s pure utilitarian and it still works. I even threw on some casters I had laying around. The only thing I bought was six 1/2" dowels at about a buck each. Need 2 more to complete.
Last year I made about 25 lbs of Hungarian paprika kolbasz in 2 batches of 10 and 15 lbs. The 15 lb batch just barely fit on an 8’ long cutoff set on 2 garden chairs. This rack has about 30 linear feet of rack space. I want to make 50 lbs this year and I had to come up with a better drying rack. Each dowel is cut to fit inside my smoker so I can just grab and go.
Another improvement over last year was installing a ceiling fan in my back porch. This will cut a few days of curing time, I’m sure.
I’m pretty sure that I can do more than 50 lbs in batches since some will go in the freezer and some will be cured. All of it needs to be dried before smoking, but only the stuff to be cured stays on the rack after smoking.
Here’s last year’s rack and a sample of the finished product.
I’ll be sure to update with a photo of this thing filled in about 3 weeks when I start production!
Losing fingers since 1969
9 Comments
Super Rack Brian, that sausage looks amazing .
woodworking classes, custom furniture maker
That sure brings back good memories.
In my early years, I have 17 years in retail & wholesale meat business.
One of my jobs was to grind, stuff, twist & smoke sausage.
Every morning we would unload the smoke house & It smelled so good.
Great job on the rack & the sausage!!
Jaybird
problem solved , and looks good too
Wheaties
Jay, I know what you mean. My back porch smells so good when this is going on.
Losing fingers since 1969
I posted this project on the Hungarian food group on Facebook and someone mentioned a tray to catch the grease that drips out, so I did that last night before I went to bed. If you look in the picture from last year you’ll see some wax paper doing that job. I used 1/4" ply I had leftover from some other project.
Losing fingers since 1969
nice
jim
First we got the pâté now the sausages… Man I feel hungry:)
It’s nice you can do all that.
just out of curiosity, any picture of the smoker? I am just wondering how big it is.
I assume you move the dowels with the sausages to the smoker and not the entire rack.
Abbas, Castro Valley, CA
Here’s a picture of a batch last year. It’s pretty small, I can only do a little at a time. Man, I wish I could just roll that rack in and do it all at once! I talked to my wife about simply doing the smoking in the back porch but it would stink up the whole house. Maybe one day I’ll build a real smoke house.
In the picture you can see my old rack. I had to continually transfer the sausage from the drying rack to the smoking rack and back. This year I set up some bricks inside the smoker that will hold the dowels. The bricks also cover the opening to the fire box to keep the heat down. That works pretty well. I was burning apple wood in the firebox last year but this year I’m going to try using charcoal briquettes and soaked apple wood chips. That should further help keep the temperature down. This is cold smoking, baby! Going for the cure, not the cook.
Speaking of apple, I out the wood from a friend nearby whose next door neighbor is the widow of a man that was very very serious about smoking. The wide let’s is take what we want since it doesn’t get used anymore. This guy had a beautiful smoke house. I should go there and ask to copy the plan.
Losing fingers since 1969
Thanks Brian.
Abbas, Castro Valley, CA
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