ielbasa With vs Without Cure #1 – Can You Taste the Difference?

Sausage with curing salt and the same sausage without curing salt. To find out the taste and how they look like after smoking, don't go anywhere, sit back, relax, cause here comes the sausage. What's going on everybody? On today's episode I'm going to be doing a Polish Kielbasa sausage, delicious, which I've done it before. However, I'm going to do it half with curing salt and half without curing salt. I want to know the main differences on color and flavor, the overall appearance of the sausage. So of course for smoking here I will do in a safe manner so the sausage that does not have curing salt has no risk of contamination whatsoever. And again today, this video is not for us to discuss about curing salt, what it is for. The main purpose today is just for comparison. So to get started, let's go with our seasonings today. The first one is garlic powder, smoked paprika, black pepper, white pepper, all spices, marjoram, And lastly, skim milk powder to help with the binding. Mix it well. And like I said, no salt or curing salt in here. Before I speak about the meats here, I just want to remind you all that the recipe for this sausage is on the video description. For today's sausage, I'm going to be using beef brisket as well as pork collar butt and I will be grinding on a six millimeter disc. So now I'm going to start making the mixture here. I'm going to add the seasoning on top. No salt, no curing salt at all in here. Let's mix it really well until it's very sticky, very tacky. So it's not going to get very sticky. There's not going to be much protein extraction here right now, just because there's no salt yet. But the main purpose here is to mix it really well, so it's evenly distributed, so we can add the salt and curing salt to the batches. Let's put this on a scale, see how much it weighs, and split it in two. All right, so let's put the entire mixture here. So if I divide it by two that's 680 grams. So each batch is going to have 680 grams. There you go, that's good enough. 679, 680. Right, so that's going to be one. And I have the second one in here. Let's start the first batch only with salt. So what I'm gonna do here have cold water which is my liquid component as well as salt. I'm gonna just throw it in here and try to dilute it as much as I can. Throw on top here. I think that's good guys. It's very sticky. Look it sticks to the hand. That's the one with salt only. I'm gonna hold this. Put the other one in here. So now I'm gonna add salt and curing salt to this mixture here. But I'm just gonna throw it straight into the meat this time. Reminding you all there's a little bit less salt in this batch here because we're using curing salt. And curing salt number one. And our water component here. Now it's important to mix it really well so the curing salt can spread evenly in this mixture. That's it guys, it's very sticky, very tacky. This one is going to go to the fridge now and I'm going to start with the one with only salt. So first without curing salt. Give it a knot. So this is our first one ready to go. I'm gonna tie a knot here. I'm gonna use my sausage pricker here to make some Small holes in the sausage, remove all the air pockets that may be in here. That improves the overall quality of the sausage. Let's leave it to the side here and start the one with curing salt. I finished both here and the first thing I noticed straight away is that the sausage with curing salt is already a lot darker. Have a look at this with curing salt and without curing salt. It's noticeable the difference here. This one here is a lot more... pinkish whereas this one here is more like more like in a gray side. Now both of the sausages are going to go to the fridge so the casing can dry up really well the curing salt can do its job can do its thing will be cured by tomorrow and of course so all the seasonings can really penetrate on the meat giving even more flavor to it and tomorrow I'll come back to do the smoking. Next morning here after about 16 to 18 hours in the fridge let's check it out our sausages here. This one here with curing salt we can clearly see it's still darker, it's grayer than the second one which has no curing salt, got more like a pinkish color. So now let's take both of them. Today smoking. For our smoking process today I'm gonna turn on my smoker on the smoke settings here. The temperature is going to raise to about 50 to 60 degrees. I'm gonna leave it for two hours then I'm gonna raise the temperature to 95 degrees celsius and leave for another hour until our sausage gets an internal temp of about 70, 71 degrees. For our smoking today I will use I'm going to use pecan sawdust as well as American oak spade Pellets which should give a really nice smoked taste to our sausages. This one is without the curing salt and this one is with curing salt. So it's been two hours our sausages have been smoking here. The temperature has stayed pretty stable around 80 degrees Celsius. So it is out of the danger zone to avoid any contamination with the sausage without curing salt. However as I said I'm going to increase the temperature now to 95 degrees Celsius. Let's show you guys how it looks like and I'm gonna flip them over as well As well so it smokes evenly on both sides. This one here is with curing salt. This one here without curing salt. They look the same right now. They both have the same color. Check it out. Now I'm gonna flip them over. They're already firm and plump. And leave here for one more hour. Increase the temperature. There we go. So our sausages are ready. This one is with curing salt. Goes straight into an ice bath, so it stops the cooking process. This one here is without the curing salt. Also goes to an ice bath. They're gonna be here for 15, 20 minutes until it loses temperature completely. Then I'll dry them up and reheat again so we can try. It didn't stay the full three hours. It was about two hours and 45 minutes in the smoker, just because today is really hot outside. So... I planned to finish at a 95 degrees celsius the internal temp of the smoker, however because it's so hot outside today it cooked around 100 degrees, 105 degrees most of the time after I increased the temp, so it was a little bit less time smoking than I had planned. Nonetheless it still looks really good. After drying they both look like the same to be honest, same color despite having a different color prior to smoking. Now they pretty much look the same, this one here is with curing salt, This one here is without curing salt. Let's take them back to the smoker now to see how they feel like, how they look like and how they taste like after we heat them up again. Let's start with the sausage that has curing salt. Cut it up here. So it looks like a typical cured sausage. It's very pink on the inside as it usually is. Check it out how beautiful. Very pink, very moist as you can see as well. Now let's try, let's see the one without curing salt. So the difference is very clear in here. The inside of the sausage here is much grayer because it hasn't been cured. Let's cut in the middle. It's a lot grayer and even has a smoke ring here as well. If you can notice there's a bit of a smoke ring as well. Let's Let's compare this one here with curing salt, this one without. The one with curing salt is clearly more appealing, more beautiful that's for sure, more appetizing. So now let's do the taste test and see how it compares when it comes to flavor. One more time for you to compare no curing with curing. Let's see the aromas if there's any difference. I don't know why but this this one here seems to have a more meaty aroma than this one here. Let's go to the taste test. First, with without curing salt. This sausage got a really nice snap, it's so crunchy, it's beautiful, very well seasoned, very well balanced. Not very smoky though, it was just nearly three hours in the smoker, so it doesn't really taste like a real smoked sausage. It's very subtle in the end, but it does have a very meaty flavor. It almost feels like we're eating like minced beef or ground beef, with a lot of really nice balanced seasonings. Overall it's a really nice sausage, and let's see how it compares with the cured one. Wow guys there is a clear difference here like very very clear difference on the flavor profile between these two sausages. This sausage here with curing salt definitely wins in my opinion. I don't know why but the flavor is so much more potentialized. It's very enhanced. You can clearly tell this got a very distinctive flavor compared to this one. This one without curing salt it's got more of a meaty flavor where this one here has got more of a charcuterie flavor, cured meat flavor, like a hammy kind of flavor, which enhances the overall profile of the sausage for sure. My favorite, no question, with curing salt. Again, looks much better, tastes much better, much better eating sausage. Again, in this video, I'm not discussing when to use curing salt or when not to use it. There are other videos for that. In this instance, In this instance, I just wanted to compare appearance, color. flavor to see how they both compare. Looks much better, tastes much better in my opinion. If you like this video, please don't forget to like it, subscribe, and comment if you can. It does help our little channel to grow. Thank you so much. My name is Felipe here from the Gold Coast in Australia, and I'll see you in the next Sausage Rule.