Make sure the grinding equipment and meat are cold, before grinding meat.

Place ground meat and the rest of the ingredients into a bowl, and keep your bowl set in another bowl of ice while working. This prevents breaking your mixture. Mix all the ingredients extremely well. After that, keep your meat in the refrigerator until you are ready to stuff in casings.

Stuff the casings into lengths that will easily fit and hang inside the Bradley Smoker. Use butchers twine to tie hanging loops on the end of the sausage, making sure that the loops are large enough so the wooden dowel will easily slip through.

Next you will need to dry the casings. Preheat smoker to 125ºF, with vent wide open. Using hickory dowels that are cut to fit inside the Bradley, thread dowels through the hanging loops. Hang the pepperoni inside the smoker, by resting the dowels on the top shelf support.

The Smoking Process:

Keep the temperature at 125ºF until the sausage casings are dry.

Natural casings will take longer then the collagen casings to dry.

Once the casings are dry, close vent to ¼ opening, raise the temperature of the smoker to 165ºF, and hold until internal temperature of the pepperoni reaches 145ºF. If you like, you can add wood bisquettes at this stage. Pepperoni is usually not smoked but I used 6 apple bisquettes for a mild smoke flavor.

Remove sausage from the smoker once the internal temperature has reached 145ºF. Chill with cold water until the internal temperature is reduced to 90-100ºF. I like to check at least 2 of the sausages on different sides of the smoker. Using a remote probe system like the Maverick really makes this a snap.

You can eat the smoked pepperoni right away, store in refrigerator, or freeze.

From Stickbowcrafter – Brian

Adapted from; Great Sausage Recipes And Meat Curing, by Rytek Kutas