Poaching times and temps-vending on street

[BeijingBob]

Hi all,
I have been reading about sausage for a few years and thanks to all the amazing people on this board I got started a year ago and now make quite a bit of sausage.

I am teaming up with a friend to open a night tIme sausage vending operation in front of another shop. In the past when I vend at events I poach in advance and cook them up on a flat grill on the day along with peppers and onions. I normally sell out quickly. In this new environment I won't have the captive audience so I'm looking for the following advice in relation to delivering the best tasting product and also being safe as possible.

Goal- deliver amazing sausages to the drunks wandering the bar area where I live

Questions-

Poaching times and temps- I have read quite a few posts and things in books about poaching and find myself still ending up with fat melting in the casings sometimes. This is at 80c. I realize I may have some degree of smaearing of fat which could be part of the problem, but I have endevored to keep the process of mixing colder to prevent this. In general my grind results in good color definition.

What water temp and to what internal temp would be best? I have aquired a temperature gun to start logging other temps during the production process so I have that handy to control things.

How many days at what temp can I safely store my poached sausages. When in doubt I just throw things out.

Thanks in advance for any advice on these subjects.

PMs also welcome
Beijing Bob

[vagreys]

What kinds of sausage are you poaching?

[BeijingBob]

At least Spicy Italain, and Lincolnshire. Pork 70/30

BB

[Greyham]

goal- deliver amazing sausages to the drunks wandering the bar area where I live

I dont wish to be rude but [...you decided to be, anyway. Comment removed. Ad hominem attacks are not welcome. Criticize ideas, not people. Flaming will not be tolerated. You have all the time in the world when writing (as opposed to speaking), to think about how to say something and rephrase it, so there is no excuse for ad hominem attacks or intemperate language, however passionate you may feel about something. - vagreys]

[wheels]

Hi BeijingBob, and welcome.

Can you tell us more about the 'set-up' that you'll be trading from: the cooking facilities and storage facilities etc. I'm sure that we could help more if we had full details.

We have a number of members, who although not serving the late night trade, face similar problems.

Phil

[BeijingBob]

Basic setup is a large electric flat grill for doing peppers and onions and cooking off the links.
I experimented with doing a Bain-Marie on the grill to do the poaching on site and the results were very good, I do wonder however how long they can stay without ruining the product and what the safe temperature range is.

In the past I would just poach the night before an event, store in the cooler and heat up at the event. I'm trying to not learn the hard way that something was dangerous for a customer.

For now I'll have a few eskies with ice packs and ice to keep things cold. I may be able to have my own fridge once we build a strong box outside the shop to store things.

The shop I'll be sharing with is an outlet of a bagel company, their window is just 2sqm or so no room to put fridges inside thier place for me.

I'll make a few photos to give you a better idea of what I'm working with.

[RodinBangkok]

A lot of options for this.

If your volume is sporadic and your griddle has zones, we probably would not poach at all, just takes some practice to get your griddle setup such that you can hold for a period of time on a cooler side, perhaps with your peppers and onions. If you need to you can then put them in a steam pan with a perforated insert and hold them in a moist environment, and serve from there. I've set up to brown first, then move to a lower heat area and finish, then hold in an even cooler zone.

Or you can poach then mark or brown. We do this if there is a big rush such as concert breaks where you know the sausage is fully cooked and you can easily tell that they are done by looking at the browning and you need to turn a large quantity fast. This is also a good way when doing large grilled quantities for a buffet service, poaching insures they're done, when doing a couple hundred its good insurance.

I always try to grill without poaching if possible, after all your loosing a lot of flavor by simmering in a liquid, where's the flavor going, into the liquid, it also takes away from the browning flavors maillard reaction will give you by grilling raw and using that rendered fat for browning rather than having it rendered into a pan of greasy water.

Poaching to me is something not done on a regular basis to fresh type sausages, you loose a lot to the water.

They'll be pretty forgiving for holding if in a moist environment for a long period, as far as time, you can hold forever above 60c 140f if you only considering safety, how long for quality depends on your formulation and how well done you cooked them in the first place.

Just takes practice to know your griddle, once you get that down its not difficult to do without poaching. If you don't have a zoned griddle, then I'd invest in one versus poaching.