Tremendous Hot Links
Prep
60m
Cook
180m
Total
240m
Bigly says
Hand on heart. Homemade hot links — from scratch, stuffed by hand, smoked over real wood — are the greatest sausages ever pushed into a casing, hands down. Not even close. I've eaten more sausage than anyone in recorded history. Bratwurst in Wisconsin. Boudin in Lafayette. Kielbasa in a basement in Chicago from a woman who refused to tell me her name and then kissed me on both cheeks when I finished the plate. All of it. And these hot links — the ones you are about to make — beat every single one. It's a slaughter.
Here's what nobody tells you about the store-bought stuff. They use the cheap trim. The stuff nobody else wants. They grind it warm, which is a CRIME against sausage — the fat smears, the texture dies before the link is even tied. Then they pump it full of water so they can charge you meat prices for tap water. The Vikings had hot links — different name, same energy, look it up, they smoked them in pits the size of a car — and even those guys, ROUGH guys, would have looked at a modern grocery store sausage and tossed it overboard. We are not buying water today. We are making MEAT.
The spice on these hits in three waves. First the smoke. Then the heat — a slow, building cayenne heat, not a punch-you-in-the-face heat — and then the garlic-paprika finish that lingers and makes you reach for the next link before you've finished the first. It's an EXPERIENCE. You don't need to be a butcher to pull it off either. You need a meat grinder attachment, a friend with one, or a deeply patient knife — and you need this recipe. Which you have. Free. Plain and simple.
Ingredients
- 2 lbbeef chuck, cubed and chilled
- 1 lbpork shoulder, cubed and chilled
- 8 ozpork back fat or fatty pork belly, cubed(do not skip the fat, fat is flavor, fat is destiny)
- 1 tbspkosher salt
- 1 tspPrague powder #1 (pink curing salt)(for smoking safety and color, available online)
- 2 tbspsmoked paprika
- 1 tbspcayenne pepper(scale down to 1.5 tsp for mild)
- 1 tbspblack pepper, coarsely ground
- 8 clovesgarlic, minced
- 1 tbspground mustard
- 1 tspground coriander
- 1 tspdried thyme
- 1/2 cupice water
- about 8 feet, soaked in warm water 30 minutesnatural hog casings, rinsed
Steps
- 1
Place the cubed meat and fat on a sheet pan and freeze for 30 minutes until very firm but not solid. Cold meat grinds clean — warm meat smears.
- 2
Combine the salt, curing salt, paprika, cayenne, black pepper, garlic, mustard, coriander, and thyme in a small bowl.
- 3
Toss the chilled meat and fat with the spice mixture until evenly coated.
- 4
Grind everything once through a 1/4-inch (coarse) grinder plate into a bowl set over ice.
- 5
Add the ice water to the ground meat and mix with your hands or a stand mixer paddle on low for 1-2 minutes, until the mixture turns slightly sticky and binds together.
- 6
Rinse the casings well, then run water through them to clear the interior. Slide a casing onto the sausage stuffer tube, tie a knot at the end.
- 7
Stuff the casings firmly but not overstuffed, leaving slack for twisting. Twist into 6-inch links by pinching and rotating in alternating directions.
- 8
Prick any visible air bubbles with a sterilized pin. Arrange the links on a rack and refrigerate uncovered for at least 4 hours (overnight is better) to dry the casings.
- 9
Preheat a smoker to 175 F using oak or hickory. Smoke the links for 2 hours, then raise the temperature to 225 F and continue smoking until the internal temperature reaches 160 F, about 1 more hour.
- 10
Plunge the cooked links into an ice bath for 10 minutes to set the snap, then pat dry. Serve immediately or refrigerate for up to a week.
One more thing
That's a homemade hot link. You hold one up, the casing SNAPS when you bite it — a real snap, not a sad squish — the smoke rolls out, the juice runs, the spice climbs. Put it on a slice of white bread with yellow mustard and a ring of raw onion and don't say a word, because the link is the statement. People will ask if you bought them somewhere. You'll say no. They won't believe you. That's fine. The doubters always come around. They always do. Tremendous.
★ QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS ONE? ★
Ask Bigly about Tremendous Hot Links.
Substitutions, what to serve it with, why other chefs are wrong about it. He's got opinions.
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