Curing salt contains salt, sugar, nitrites, and nitrates. The nitrites and nitrates cure the ground meat; without them, you have fresh sausage which should be used within a few days. Tender Quick is not the same as table, sea, kosher, etc. If you used table salt in this recipe, you have a very salty fresh sausage. One tablespoon of Morton Tender Quick is the usual amount used per pound of meat. If you order Instacure online and use it instead of the Tender Quick, you can then adjust the amount of salt and still have a cured bologna.
This is more like a Summer Sausage. I too added a little more cooking time and also reduced the salt a bit only as a matter of preference since I am not a big fan of salt. Very good flavor.
My children usually do not like bologna. I put this recipe in cloth sleaves. It turned out fantastic. I added time onto the 200 degrees(about 1 1/2 hours). The recipe is gold!!!
I found the texture was a bit 'chunky' so i tossed it all into my processor not only did it mix it really well it came out smooth. good flavor.
I have not tried it yet but I have made summer sausage out of amost the same recipe and it's mmm mmm good! So I'm excited to try it. For all you people that CAN'T read directions...you need to use tender quick CURING salt, not sea salt, not iodized salt. That's why your stuff is so salty...duh, idiots. It's NOT the same at all. Use the correct ingredients and you get the results you're looking for. The bologna we buy now is JUNK...real bologna back in the day was more like a sausage. Mmmm, I can't wait to have a fried bologna sammich like my grandma use to make! Thank you! Will post again. :)
Tried this a couple of weeks ago. Although the over all flavor was good it was VERY salty. Will try again with some modifications.
Its not so much I couldn't eat it, but this isn't bologna. Bologna is an emulisfied sausage. Bologna is all about smooth uniform texture. This recipe is summer sausage. Bologna should have a lot more fat and the sausage should be ground finely then pureed in a food processor and then mixed with a paddle mixer for 5 minutes prior to being stuffed all well keeping the meat and fat at near freezing temps to avoid the fat seperating from the water. True Bologna is much more of a process then this.
I scaled the recipe back to 16 servings so you only need 2 lbs of hamburger and i made it in a loaf pan and cooked it to an internal temperature of 160 which took abought 1-/12 hrs @ 300 and it turned out very tasty
Not the ideal lunch meat but awesome snack meat. Similar to deer bologna. Hard to screw this one up.
