URGENT 911

Thanks to everyone who helped answer Bubbas question

@Jonathon 75% venison 25% pork fat with honey bbq seasoning, the pink cure, sure gel, and smoked meat stabilizer, I ended up putting them in the oven at 125 for an hour 150 for an hour and then put them on my smoker at 180 the lowest it would go till they hit 160

@oldmeatcutter If you are not adding a binder I would add no more than 32 oz, if you are adding sure gel you can add up to 48 oz. You can actually go above that but the more water you add the more you will have to cook out, so it could increase your smoke time and could change the texture of your product.

@lesgary absolutely you can but carrot fiber is more aimed at a fresh product and since you are using sodium erythorbate I assume you’re making a cured product? You’ll be fine with the carrot fiber but in the future use sure gel for a cured binder

@genex Yeah, it won’t be quite as red as it would be if you had added the erythorbate but holding for 12-24 hours in a 50% strength solution and you are all good!

@oldmeatcutter Here is the topic on making snack sticks: https://meatgistics.waltonsinc.com/topic/182/how-to-make-homemade-snack-sticks You should use 1 quart (32 oz) of water for a 25 lb batch.

Thanks! They will be frozen.

@Jehar when I make my pizza pepperoni I use 12# venison, 13# pork butt and stuff them in 32mm collagen cases. I do smoke mine and they turn out great.

@carlcat Yeah, only pump the Cold Phosphate and make sure it is the very first thing that is dissolved into the mix. It takes a lot of mixing to properly dissolve that so if there is anything else already suspended in the water you are going to have a heck of a time. When you are calculating your cover 50% strength brine leave out the phosphate.

Thanks. I was just wondering if it would work for a quick fix.

@Joe-Hell Thanks for the information. David

I start at 160 for 2hr as my smoker only goes as low as 160. Then to 175 for an hour. I finish at 200 until i get an internal temp of 160 after that i put them in an ice bath to cool them of and set the casing. My snack sticks come out perfect ever time this way.

@bill60 What cure are you talking about? Sure cure is the cure you should be using and the https://meatgistics.waltonsinc.com/topic/700/cure-conversion-chart/2 lists it as .04 oz for 1 lb and .2 oz for 5 lb. If it is a seasoning we have listed incorrectly please let me know which one but the best way to figure it for yourself is to take the weight of the bag of seasoning and divide it by the batch size. So if the bag says use 1 lb of seasoning to 25 lb of meat 1/25= lb of seasoning per lb of meat. Then multiply that by 16 for oz and then if you need to be more accurate by 28.3 for grams of seasoning per lb of meat.

@kkyle597 Yeah, you should be fine, sorry you just missed me last night. 48 hours is as far as you want to go though.

@Glass-mountain-farms I checked through our scrap parts and obsolete parts as well and don’t have a washer for a Weston #32, sorry! Hopefully, you have luck with Weston. Let me know the diameter of the auger that the thrust washer goes around and we can see if it matches the Torrey. I still don’t think it will work as it is too thick but it might be worth looking at as that could be sanded or ground down

@Jonathon it was just on styrofoam trays they had wrapped. The store I was at is generally high on meat, and I only buy meat there if it is a great sale, say like .99 cent pork shoulders.

@Les-Strahm Yes, that is correct. So I am going to be doing a video on this eventually to clear some stuff up with injection of cures. The amount of water isn’t the important thing, it is the amount of cure. We pump hams higher than Bacon so it stays moist and don’t want a lot of water in bacon but it is the amount fo cure that is important. Hope this helped, hams are always an issue!

@GODUCKS First, I hope your brother and your family is okay and doing well! Second, what you are packing into the 1 lb bags should be 100% fine, that won;t be a problem as you can use a large stuffing tube. Where you might run into an issue is with the stuffing into the links. Since the meat has been sitting after it has had the seasoning (especially the salt) mixed in it will start to set up and become a little more difficult to deal with. Mixing it again will help a little but be careful not to overdo it, your meat right now is probably going to start extracting proteins very quickly. Now, that isn’t the end of the world or anything, it might just give you a different texture than you are used to from a breakfast sausage. All in all I think you will be fine!

Thank you all for the comments and really impressed Jonathon took the time to respond. I really do appreciate the help. I did use a pre-packaged seasoning just a flavor that Walton’s doesn’t offer. After the smoke it turned out with good flavor still but a bit soft. Overall a great learning lesson for me as the encapsulated citric acid was new to me and I didn’t even know it was in the kit. One more reason to buy kits from Waltons to get a quality product. Thanks Everyone!

@jbkitzy1 First, I would recommend using Sure Gel, it is a better binder for cured meat than Carrot Fiber which is really better used in fresh sausage. It can be used in cured sausage but sure gel is the better option. Second, 70% venison and 30% pork is going to leave you too lean, you need more fat than that. Go 50/50 with venison and nice fatty untrimmed pork butts, even that will be on the low end of what you want but it will work. You were most likely somewhere in the 10-15% fat range when you want to be in the 20-30% range. The fact that they dried up on you and the meat was crumbly are indicators that it was too lean. Also, remember to mix until you have really good protein extraction, the crumbly texture could have something to do with that, or if you added ECA and mixed too long that could have done it as well. The encapsulated Ctiric acid needs to be added during the last 60 seconds of mixing, this is because we don’t want to rputure the coating on the citric acid or the acid will interact with the meat too soon in the process. If you do want to try making a lower fat summer sausage you can take some of the principles from this video and apply them, notably using cold phosphate to increase the water holding capacity of the meat. Just know that adding that will cancel out any citric acid you are adding or any other pH dropping ingredients. https://meatgistics.waltonsinc.com/topic/235/how-to-make-juicer-meat-products?_=1603748529130