Thanks for all the Hints for Snack Sticks and the Extra Humidity Sponges

[akdave]

[lamurscrappy]

Wow! Great job those look beautiful!

[Jonathon]

They look awesome! What are they made out of? Have you ever done anything with moose up there?

[akdave]

Jonathon
I have done the summer sausage with well taken care of Moose, venison, elk and caribou and have found with the same spice recipe it all tastes about the same, Great and have always used 20 lb meat, 5 lb beef fat, 1 oz cure salt, 1 oz sodium phosphate,1 lb milk based binder, 2 quarts water and seasoning for 25lb batch. I really thing that for good protein extraction you need to grind the fat 1/8 first then grind the meat 3/8 then thoroughly mix the two then regrind the mix 1/8 and I am thinking that I get a lot of protein extraction when the meat and fat are in the grinder screw and being extruded thew the 1/8" plate. I have now started dividing the batch in two lugs, I then mixing all cure, spices, binder, etc thoroughly in the water and them thoroughly mix each one separately with the 1/2 the water brine mix and then mix the to batches together again as I do not have a mechanical mixer.

For my next batch of snack sticks I am planning on eliminating the Sodium Phosphate as I have read that it helps retain moisture in the finished product and see what happens as the sticks could have maybe been a little dryer but that remains to be seen. For snack sticks I am also going to get the finished mixed product very cold before stuffing and see how that works along with seeing about a better gasket for my stuffer. Have no problems with stuffer till I try and stuff snack sticks. Thanks to all who have make posts as I have gained a lot of knowledge from your input and I hate to learn threw the school of Hard Knocks.

[Jonathon]

akdave Yeah you are getting some protein extracting when you are stuffing from the screw for sure. It’s entirely possible that your sticks will be a little dryer but in my opinion that’s a good thing, sticks are a semi-dried product anyway. One thing that dropping phosphates will do for sure is to increase the shelf life of your product! They raise the pH which reduces shelf life at times pretty dramatically! Good luck with the stuffing, cold usually does help a lot!