how to make ground turkey meat snack sticks

[Richard Russell]

I would like to make some Turkey or chicken meat snack sticks. would the process be the same as making red meat snack sticks, do you have any suggestions? thanks

[Austin]

Richard Russell
General process would be the same. Same instructions, same steps, and same additives.
It is a different protein, so you will probably develop slight differences over time to perfect your process.
One of the big and key differences is the lower fat content seen in poultry products, and that can require a few small changes in your process. That lower fat is going to make it harder to make a moist and juicy final product. I would recommend to use as much fat as you can in a poultry meat snack. If you use thigh meat and end up with an approximately 10% fat ratio that could be moister than a 1-2% fat chicken breast. With low fat, I find that making sure you have really good protein extraction (very sticky meat) will help hold everything together and keep it from being crumbly after cooking. I also find that using a bit more water, and a bit more binder than normal is helpful. Lastly, anytime I’m making a poultry sausage or meat snack, I always keep meat extremely cold because otherwise the low density of the chicken meat and extra water makes the product almost “soupy” and really hard to work with and stuff into a casing without having it flatten out.

This is at least my basic/initial suggestions for making chicken meat snacks.

If you want specifics on a certain area, or have any other questions, let me know!

[harpo79]

Richard Russell What did you do? I am looking at making some snak stixs with turkey or chicken breast. Was wondering how yours turned out.
Thanks

[Jonathon]

harpo79 One of the most important things to remember when making a cured sausage like product out of chicken or turkey is fat content. If you are using a very lean meat block you need to either add pork fat to get your fat % up to around 20% or you need to add a binder like the Carrot Fiber and extra water.

I’d recommend you add a little bit of cold phosphate as well, I made poultry bratwurst recently and used both carrot fiber and cold phosphate and they came out great, check out the video here https://meatgistics.waltonsinc.com/topic/415/how-to-make-a-juicy-homemade-turkey-bratwurst. The only difference for you will be that you will need to mix until you have protein extraction and you will need to add cure.

Like Austin said in a previous post make sure you are keeping everything very cold while you are processing it. That will make your snack sticks better in the end and easier to work with!