Sausage

Homemade Ring Bologna Recipe

A close-up shot of a homemade ring bologna appetizer platter featuring generously sliced pink bologna, cheddar cheese squares, and whole wheat crackers, all neatly arranged on a silver serving tray. This delicious spread is perfect for a party snack or gathering.

Learn how to make homemade smoked ring bologna from scratch with this step-by-step guide. A far cry from the processed slices you had as a kid, this coarse-cut country-style ring bologna has great fat content and particle definition, making it perfect for the frying pan. So, what kinds of bologna are there to make, and how to they differ?

Fried bologna medallions – These are perfect for breakfast.
Pickled bologna – Tangy, slightly sweet, and infused with just the right amount of spice, pickled bologna makes a bold and flavorful snack on its own or paired with crackers and cheese.
Candied bologna – This is delicious when grilled with BBQ sauce, butter, and brown sugar. It’s fantastic as an appetizer or served as a decadent addition to BBQ platters.
Smoked bologna – Deeply smoky with a hint of sweetness and a savory bite, smoked bologna is ideal served thick on a sandwich or cubed as a party appetizer with toothpicks.

Ready to start? Don’t wait, grab your ring bologna seasoning and casings now!

What is Ring Bologna?

Bologna gets its name from its Italian ancestor, mortadella. Originating from Bologna, Italy, mortadella is a thick Italian sausage, speckled with pieces of fat, peppercorns, and oftentimes pistachios or green olives. When Italian bologna was introduced to the United States by immigrants in the 1800s, it took on a variety of different shapes and textures, most notably the emulsified and sliced Oscar Meyer version of ring bologna.

Unlike the traditional deli-style bologna chubs, ring bologna has a smaller diameter (typically about 40-43mm). A descendant of German ringwurst, it's packed into sausage casings formed into loops that can easily be hung in a smokehouse. Ring bologna is most often served sliced on the bias and pan fried until crisp, tossed into casseroles, or pickled.

Are you ready to make homemade bologna? With all the ring bologna recipes around, you can be sure that this is the most thorough. We'll show you how to prepare your sausage mix, stuff it into casings, and how to cook ring bologna.

Let's get started on our smoked bologna recipe.

Tools of the Trade

Meat Grinder with 3/8” and 3/16” plates
Meat Mixer or Your Hands
Meat Lug or Large Food-Safe Container
Stuffer (13 or 16mm horn)
Smokehouse – We recommend the Pro Smoker.

Meat (and Fat) Instructions

For this ring bologna recipe, we will first make sure we have the right meat-to-fat ratio.

While most ring bologna is made from a blend of beef and pork, there are several variations, including venison and other wild game.

For the best results, we recommend a combination of 70% pork and 30% beef, or a range of 25-30% fat and 70-75% lean for your homemade bologna.

When working with venison, we recommend adding about 50% venison and 50% pork trim with 50% fat content . Pork trim, or the trimmings from the shoulder or butt, are typically available at your local butcher shop (make sure to call ahead!).

Grinding For Coarse-Cut Ring Bologna

Since we're going for a coarse cut, we're looking to retain some visual separation of fat and meat in our final sausage. To get the right texture, we ground twice; the first pass through a 3/8“ plate then once through a 3/16” plate.

Pro tip: Remember to always keep your sausage stick's meat cold! We recommend popping your meat block back into the cooler between grinds to prevent smearing.

Ring Bologna Seasoning

Forget measuring a dozen spices—grab one of our bologna seasoning mixes for perfect results:

No. 211 Blue Ribbon Bologna Seasoning – Classic flavor
No. 665 Bologna Seasoning – MSG-free version
No. 958 Red Barn Bologna Seasoning – Bold heat and garlic
No. 317 German Bologna Seasoning – Traditional with mustard seed

Don’t skip the cure! All our mixes include curing agents to preserve color and protect against food-borne bacteria.

All of our bologna seasonings come complete with cure for up to 25 lbs. of meat. Nitrites help preserve the red in the meat in the absence of oxygen and also kill bacteria that can result in food-borne illnesses.

Add the appropriate amount of cure for your meat batch to your water and stir to combine.

Pro tip: If your seasoning doesn't have any larger pieces, you can season after the first grind and have the grinder do some of the distribution for you.

Mixing & Protein Extraction

Once each of your proteins has been ground and your seasoning added, you can begin mixing either by hand or by using a meat mixer. Because we're making a coarse cut bologna, mixing by hand until protein extraction is reached is perfectly acceptable.

The end results should be sticky and pasty, with seasonings well incorporated throughout. For emulsified sausages, we recommend mixing in a food processor or professional meat mixer.

Casing for Ring Bologna

Ring bologna can be made using either natural or collagen casings. While the natural casings are edible and give a nice bite, the collagen casings are easy to prep and stuff, and provide better uniformity.

: Homemade ring bologna sausages being hung on smoke sticks before smoking, prepared using pork, beef, and PS Seasoning’s #211 Bologna Seasoning blend for a classic smoked bologna recipe.

Smoke Schedule

The key to smoking any kind of sausage is to gradually increase the temperature to ensure there's no fat or additive loss inside the finished product.

For homemade ring bologna, we recommend using a high quality electric smokehouse, like the Pro Smoker PK-100, which uses sawdust as smoke fuel. Always refer to your manufacturers instructions for smoking times and temperatures, but as a general rule, our recommend processing schedule is:

Set smokehouse to 120° F. Hung ring bologna and set in the smokehouse to dry for 1 hour (no smoke)
Increase temperature to 170° F, add sawdust and smoke for 3 hours
Increase temperature to 185° F and remove smoke
Cook until internal temperature reaches 156° F
Place ring bologna in an ice bath and cool until internal temperature reaches 110° F then refrigerate.

Once in the fridge, wait until the smoked bologna reaches an internal temperature of 39 degrees before vacuum packing or storing. If properly sealed and packaged, smoked bologna can last in the freezer for several months or in the refrigerator for 2-3 weeks.

Close-up of homemade ring bologna sausages, showcasing the final product from the detailed step-by-step guide on making traditional ring bologna at home.

Enjoy Your Homemade Ring Bologna!

Now that you have a fresh batch of smoked bologna, you can transform it into sweet and smoky Candied Bologna, Pickled Bologna, or a Fried Bologna Sandwich.

PS Seasoning

Ring Bologna

Rated 3.7 stars by 32 users

Cuisine

Italian

Author:

PS Seasoning

Servings

40

Prep Time

60 minutes

Cook Time

4-6 hours

Make traditional homemade ring bologna with this easy recipe using pork, beef, and our Blue-Ribbon seasoning. This savory sausage delivers rich, juicy, old-school flavor that’s perfect for slicing, frying, or snacking straight from the fridge.

Ingredients

15 LB – Pork Trim
10 LB – Beef Chuck
1 - #211 Bologna Seasoning (B-Unit)
Includes Cure
2 ½ Cup – Water
40mm X 18” Collagen Casings

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Directions

Soak the casings in room temperature salt water. Use 1 gallon of water to 1 cup of non-iodized salt. 1. This step is crucial for easy stuffing. If you’re low on casings, grab them now here before starting.
Set up your grinder with a 3/8” plate.
Cut the meat into grinder sized pieces chunks and chill for at least 1 hour. This keeps your meat firm and prevents fat smearing.
Grind the meat once through the 3/8” plate and then place the meat in the freezer while you reset the grinder with a 3/16” plate.
Grind the meat a second time. Then you can break down the grinder. This two-step grinding process creates the ideal coarse-cut texture for traditional ring bologna.
Mix the meat together with your bologna seasoning pack, cure and water. Mix together until protein extraction starts and the meat becomes tacky.
Set up your sausage stuffer with a 1 ¼” horn.
Stuff each casing, leaving about 3” and the end. Twist the end and then use the string to tie it closed.
Once all the casings are stuffed, place them on rack lined trays and set in the fridge overnight to set the cure.
In the morning, preheat the smoker to 120 degrees.
Hang the ring bologna on smoke sticks, no more than 6 per stick to allow space between the sausages.
Run at 120 degrees for 1 hour without smoke as a drying cycle.
Then increase the temperature of the smokehouse to 170 while adding ¾ pan of moistened sawdust. Run this cycle for 3 hours. 1. For best results, use our applewood or hickory sawdust.
Remove the sawdust pan and increase the temp of the smoker to 180 degrees and cook until the internal temp of the sausage reaches 158 degrees.
Remove the smoked bologna from the smoker and give it an ice bath to cool rapidly down below 110 degrees.
Place the sausage in the fridge to cool completely overnight.
Remove the collagen casings before eating/preparing for your favorite recipes.