How To Make Homemade Snack Sticks
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Blaker25 Sure gel is a binder and yes I use it when making any cured and smoked sausage or snack sticks. I start off with my dampers wide open for the first 30-60 minutes then I close it down to about half to a little more for the remainder of the cook. The last time I did sticks they were done in about 2.5 hours.
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JerkyIsMySalad 80/20 as long as the 20 is pork fat will be fine, 70/30-80/20 is preference more than anything. I’d recommend that you mix it into your meat and then add the water as you are mixing for a cured product. Not sure if that was you but someone asked this same question during the live stream we just did. You can go to waltonsinc.com/live or our youtube page to watch it.
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Joe Hell , PapaSop, Jonathon or Austin, I have a question that I hope could get answered before this evening as I am going to make a batch of snack sticks. I have a 30" smoke hollow smoker with 3 racks. If I were to lay the meat sticks on the the racks, should I be rotating the racks? the heat source is on the bottom and I’m afraid that they will be at different temp levels when I finish. My previous batches I have hung from the top rack but it was more work to hang them so I want to try this method. Also, at which stage do you add water for humidity? Thanks in advance
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JerkyIsMySalad I would say yes you should rotate them for 2 reasons. 1 as you say you will have possibly hotter racks at the bottom and cooler on top but also you might end up with sticks with indentation lines in them so rotate them from top to bottom in the smoker but also rotate them on the rack. Now, someone just commented the other day that they did not rotate theirs and they did not get lines or anything in their sticks, I still would. I would recommend adding smoke and humidity after the initial drying stage which with sticks shouldn’t take more than 20 minutes.
Good luck!
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JerkyIsMySalad I would say yes you should rotate them for 2 reasons. 1 as you say you will have possibly hotter racks at the bottom and cooler on top but also you might end up with sticks with indentation lines in them so rotate them from top to bottom in the smoker but also rotate them on the rack. Now, someone just commented the other day that they did not rotate theirs and they did not get lines or anything in their sticks, I still would. I would recommend adding smoke and humidity after the initial drying stage which with sticks shouldn’t take more than 20 minutes.
Good luck!
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Jonathon Thanks for the advice! I will plan accordingly!
JerkyIsMySalad
As Jonathon said. Started hanging them last couple batches with no problem though. Weird. -
So I’m doing my snack stick overflow in the oven and the bottom of the sticks are covered in grease. Does this mean that they’re getting out? Temp hasn’t gotten over 140 yet
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Do you have a suggested thermal process for snack sticks that are not getting put into a casing? Is it different than the process with casings? I hope it is because if I follow the process above they are way to dry and harder than I would like, I have been experimenting with different temps and cook times and am struggling to get the results I want. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Venison with 10 percent pork fat. Next batch with be 20 percent.
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Do you have a suggested thermal process for snack sticks that are not getting put into a casing? Is it different than the process with casings? I hope it is because if I follow the process above they are way to dry and harder than I would like, I have been experimenting with different temps and cook times and am struggling to get the results I want. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Venison with 10 percent pork fat. Next batch with be 20 percent.
Barry1967 Why aren’t you putting them in casings? Your fat content looks to low as well 20 will be an improvement, 30 would be better.
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Barry1967 How much water are you adding? I will see if I can find a different smoke schedule for skinless but I dont remember seeing one. If we did have one I wouod suspect it would be more based around a different drying phase instead of a cooking schedule. Use a binder, add enough water and at least 20% fat should all help avoid it being too hard. It could have also been case hardening. Without a casing, the drying phase might have removed too much moisture from the sticks and created a hard outer layer.
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Barry1967 A snack stick is classically in a casing for ease of cooking and handling but some people do make a skinless product. It’s not something we do often though, I have asked our commercial salesmen if they know of any changes that should be made to the smoke schedule and I will update this post.
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Barry1967 Okay, I heard back from our commercial salesmen and they said to add much less water than you would to a normal snack stick. Basically treat it like ground and formed jerky. https://meatgistics.waltonsinc.com/topic/625/how-to-make-homemade-restructured-jerky-recipe is where we made restructured jerky
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Can I use a dehydrator or oven to cure snack sticks? What are your top 3 tips for making snack sticks?
Jehar said in How To Make Homemade Snack Sticks:
Can I use a dehydrator or oven to cure snack sticks? What are your top 3 tips for making snack sticks?
After you mix everything and believe you have the meat sufficiently tacky, mix some more.
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Jehar said in How To Make Homemade Snack Sticks:
Can I use a dehydrator or oven to cure snack sticks? What are your top 3 tips for making snack sticks?
After you mix everything and believe you have the meat sufficiently tacky, mix some more.
Lost River Jones My dehydrator doesn’t get hot enough. Yes an oven will work. My tips: 1. Buy a meat ginder 2. Buy a meat mixer 3.Buy a meat stuffer and follow Walton’s recipe to a “T”… Oh and don’t add too much water while mixing
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Jehar Oven is fine, dehydrators generally are going to work against you as they might pull too much moisture out and that is going to increase cook times and possibly creat case hardening
- Use a binder and mix really well
- Stuff until the casing is properly full. Look for a swirl pattern that funs down the casing, when you can just barely see it that is the correct amount
- Use humidity in your smoker. But you are using an oven so 3A) would be Get the meat super cold before the second grind. Slightly frozen meat will grind far better than meat that is in the upper 30s
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Jehar said in How To Make Homemade Snack Sticks:
What is the best ratio vension to pork butt?
I think the answer is going to be up to 50-50 before you really don’t have a venison snack stick, but a pork snack stick.
Not sure there is a best.
But, I’ve made really good snack sticks with a ratio of 80% deer and 20% pork. I make 5 pound batches and my ground deer is packaged in 1 pound packages. So, I routinely use 4 pounds of deer and 1 pound of pork.
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