This homemade bologna is absolutely delicious and REAL! My mother received the recipe from my grandmother, who also prepared it, and she transmitted it to me. It has been passed down, if you will. Bologna isn’t really my thing, but after you try this, you’ll fall in love with it all over again!
| Prep Time: | 15 mins |
| Cook Time: | 1 hr |
| Additional Time: | 1 day |
| Total Time: | 1 day 1 hr 15 mins |
| Servings: | 24 |
| Yield: | 24 servings |
Ingredients
- 3 pounds ground beef
- 3 tablespoons sugar-based curing mixture (such as Morton® Tender Quick®)
- 1 cup water
- ⅛ teaspoon garlic powder
- ½ teaspoon onion powder
- 1 ½ teaspoons liquid smoke flavoring
Instructions
- In a large bowl, mix together the ground beef, curing salt, water, garlic powder, onion powder and liquid smoke using your hands. Divide in half, and form each half into a roll. Wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 24 hours.
- Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C). Unwrap the beef rolls, and place them on a greased baking sheet or roasting pan.
- Bake for 1 hour in the preheated oven, turning the meat over after 30 minutes. Cool to room temperature, then refrigerate until chilled. Slice, and eat on sandwiches.
Reviews
Followed this recipe to the letter other than I did cook it about 30 minutes longer. It is fabulous! Will never buy store bought bologna again. For 3 lbs of store bought runs approximately 28.00, this runs around 14.00 for the same amount and tastes great!
Love it! Good all year but great to give as a Christmas/hostess gift with crackers and cheese. I prefer Wheat Thins or Town House. I love it with a good mustard.
It was a little too salty but not bad.
This did not turn out as expected. I would not make this again.
Made recipe exactly as written. Had 5 tasters and all agreed it was way too salty. They wouldn’t even feed to their dogs. Way to SALTY. Wasted of time and money.
For a smoother texture more like store bought, use a super fine grind and add a few tablespoons of milk then put the mix in the food process it will be more like a thick paste, use a extra large casing and slow smoke it
made ring bologna added mace and marjoram cooked in a smoker at 200 degrees 4 hours to 161degrees
morton’s tender quick is used 1/2 Tbsp per pound of ground meat.this is calling for twice as much as needed.MTC is 79% salt, so this is why it is tasting salty.scale back the MTC and the recipe should taste fine.
Not the ideal lunch meat but awesome snack meat. Similar to deer bologna. Hard to screw this one up.
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. 🙂
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.
Since I can’t edit my original review here are the results of my latest attempt with the recipe. To give the recipe another chance I followed the recipe ingredients exactly as written, but once again I emulsified the beef mixture. I now agree with Joe. This recipe, as is, is the worst bologna I have ever tasted. It does not taste like bologna. It has almost no taste at all. These ingredient’s aren’t what this recipe needs to make good home made bologna. It won’t go to waste though, the neighbors dog loves it. I’m abandoning this recipe and moving on to another recipe I have found on the net.
Since I can’t edit my original review here are the results of my latest attempt with the recipe. To give the recipe another chance I followed the recipe ingredients exactly as written, but once again I emulsified the beef mixture. I now agree with Joe. This recipe, as is, is the worst bologna I have ever tasted. It does not taste like bologna. It has almost no taste at all. These ingredient’s aren’t what this recipe needs to make good home made bologna. It won’t go to waste though, the neighbors dog loves it. I’m abandoning this recipe and moving on to another recipe I have found on the net.
Worst recipe ever. Does’NT look like boloney, taste like boloney, meat loaf on steroids
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
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.
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.
Tried this a couple of weeks ago. Although the over all flavor was good, it was VERY salty. Will try again with some modifications.
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!!!