How To Make Homemade Snack Sticks
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jrypka That depends on the level of erythorbate in it. Most of the time it does not matter and if it is a Excalibur Snack Stick Seasoning (that doesnt say fast pack) you are good to still use ENcapsulated Citric Acid
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OK, so I think I was on-track until the thermal processing. It took me 8 hours to reach internal 165 degrees, and the product is somewhat dry and crumbly. Edible, but not great. I used a binder and used a water pan in the smoker. I have a Masterbuilt Electric 30 and I followed the recommended processing schedule. I also had an ambient thermometer on the top and bottom racks so I know I was getting the temps given in the instructions. I’m going to try summer sausage this weekend, but need to figure out what’s going on with my cooking process. 8 hrs for a 19mm stick seems excessive, which is why they are so dry I think. On a side note, I mixed up more than I could fit in the smoker, so I put the rest on the Traeger pellet grill. Kept them between about 125-140 for an hour, and then had an oopsies and my grill went to 350. By the time I got it back down the sticks were over 165. They smoked for less than 2 hours. I had no issues with fat-out, and the product is definitely moister than the ones from my smoker.
What changes should I make in my cook schedule? Remove the water pan? Smoke low for 2-3 hours then go up quickly to get them cooked before I lose all the moisture? I did “everything wrong” with the Traeger, yet they turned out better than following the smoke schedule in the smoker. Any suggestions?
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jrypka Dry and crumbly can be a sign of issues with the encapsulated citric acid releasing too soon into the meat. BUT since it doesn’t sound like that was a problem with the ones in your traeger then lets assume it was the smoker. Removing the water pan is going to work against you, the lack of moisture is only going to increase cook times at the temperatures we are trying to cook at and give a dryer product. What were your dampers set at initially, did they get adjusted? It could be that with dampers open too much that even with a water pan you got case hardening, which is where the outside of the product cooks too quickly or dries too much and it cannot effectively pass heat into the center of the sausage any longer.
8 Hours for 19mm seems pretty high but it is also not unheard of under certain conditions. How much water did you add to the meat?
Since we had a split in quality between smokers lets stay mostly focussed on that though. (sorry, I tend to type out what I am thinking and then think that there might be some value in what I typed so I leave it!) Your water pan is probably increasing the relative humidity less than 10%. Can you grab some automotive sponges before next cook? Another option would be pulling it at 130 and finishing it in 170 degree water. It will cut hours and hours off your smoke schedule and it will not change the smoke flavor as after 130 IT smoke is pretty much done adhering to a sausage (both are covered in https://meatgistics.waltonsinc.com/topic/1099/cured-sausage-205-advanced-thermal-processing and https://meatgistics.waltonsinc.com/topic/1108/cured-sausage-206-advanced-cured-sausage-processing)
Let us know anything else you did to the ones in the smoker, how long were the strands, where was the probe inserted, did the sticks at the top (near the loop) look more or less dry than the rest? Anything you can think of else?
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Jonathon, great questions, you bring up some things I didn’t think about. Regarding moisture, yeah, I have a tiling sponge I could add. I could also close the vent down some, but really didn’t seem like case hardening at all. I brought temps up slow and they don’t seem tough. The MES is pretty tight and it seems humidity stays fairly high, but I can do stuff to increase it. But won’t more humidity make it cook slower? I did a batch of about 9.5 pounds, so I added 12 oz of water rather than 32 as called for in the 25lb batch recipe. And my binder was carrot fiber so assume that should have actually kept the product from drying out even more than sure gel.
My ropes were too long to hang over smoking sticks once, but too short to loop twice. I ended up spiraling them on the racks trying to leave a 1/4" air gap between the spirals. I swapped top and bottom racks once since my two ambient probes showed about a 10 degree difference top and bottom. I had one meat probe in the end of the outer spiral of a snack stick about 2" figuring the walls of the smoker would be hotter and a second one inserted at an angle closer to the center of the spiral. These were on the middle two racks. I also used a Thermoworks Pro Needle to check other spots. I didn’t notice huge variations of doneness or dryness based on where in the smoker they were, but of course after 8 hours there was some variation with the edge ones being a bit drying and the interior ones where the gap in the spirals was small of being smoother skinned and less ‘overcooked’. It just really seems like I overcooked them. I realized later I went to 165 instead of 160 so that is part of it I suppose. That was about an extra hour I’d guess.
At this point my best guess is to try to increase humidity and figure out how to hang them vs lay them on racks. Also, I might try to skip the 155 and go 125/140/175 since I didn’t have fat-out on the traeger on my accelerated cook.
Any ideas appreciated!
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Soooo. I have the jalapeno kit. Adding hi temp cheese. I do not have binder or citric acid… I’ll get that.
My question is does there need to be a 12 hour rest after mixing the meat?
After stuffing into casing?
Or doe the meat go into the casing then into the smoker immediately? -
cdex0614 If you are not adding citric acid or some other cure accelerator (Encapuslated Citric Acid, Sodium Erythorbate or smoked meat stabilizer, there are others but they are only available in bulk) then yes, you need to rest the meat but not after mixing, you need to mix it after stuffing. Only go from stuffing to smoking if you used a cure accelerator.
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jrypka A tiling sponge will work just as well I would imagine. Adding humidity will make it cook much quicker. The main reason for “the stall” is that the evaporation energy that is coming off of the skin of the meat matches or at least counters the thermal processing energy from the cook cycle. My biggest thing would be don’t use carrot fiber in cured sausage. I know plenty of people do but try adding sure gel or even super bind which is a mix of carrot fiber and potato starch as those work better for cured sausage/
coiling isn’t the best but totally doable so no reason that was your problem. 165° instead of 160…maybe but I’ve cooked sticks to 170 by mistake (forgot I had them in the PK and left to do something else like a moron) and they were as dry or crumbly as you are describing.
Yup, totally fine to make adjustments to the smoke schedule if the one we post doesn’t work perfectly for you, different areas of the country have different humidity, temp and even elevation can come into it! Let us know how your next batch goes but I would say your best bet would be to add sure gel.
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What is the least amount of encapsulated citric acid I can use for 5-lbs and still go right to the smoker after stuffing. I am trying to reduce the thang a little bit, but I’m not sure how much I can reduce that by and not have to refrigerate overnight. Thanks
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I recently made some snack sticks and the first batch were more dry than the second. I should also note that I just used off the shelf ground beef and ground pork with no additional grinding. The first batch was strictly ground beef (5 pounds). For the second batch I did add ground pork (1 pound) to the ground beef (4 pounds) which I think helped and I also mixed it more for more protein extraction. Both batches I used the .8 oz carrot fiber with 1 cup of water. Would the carrot fiber cause the snack sticks to be more dry or change the texture or is that more related to the fat content, mixing or grinding?
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jrypka A tiling sponge will work just as well I would imagine. Adding humidity will make it cook much quicker. The main reason for “the stall” is that the evaporation energy that is coming off of the skin of the meat matches or at least counters the thermal processing energy from the cook cycle. My biggest thing would be don’t use carrot fiber in cured sausage. I know plenty of people do but try adding sure gel or even super bind which is a mix of carrot fiber and potato starch as those work better for cured sausage/
coiling isn’t the best but totally doable so no reason that was your problem. 165° instead of 160…maybe but I’ve cooked sticks to 170 by mistake (forgot I had them in the PK and left to do something else like a moron) and they were as dry or crumbly as you are describing.
Yup, totally fine to make adjustments to the smoke schedule if the one we post doesn’t work perfectly for you, different areas of the country have different humidity, temp and even elevation can come into it! Let us know how your next batch goes but I would say your best bet would be to add sure gel.
Jonathon I’m going to give it another try this weekend. I’ll leave out the carrot fiber. I don’t have Sure Gel but was thinking of trying the cold phosphate I have. If I use that, do I need to leave out the ECA? Not sure how the acid would work with the alkaline phosphate. Either that, or leave out the binder all together…
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Darrel Great question on the use of Citric Acid and Smoked Meat Stabilizer in the same batch! You do not need to use them together as they are performing basically the same function. The Encapsulated Citric Acid is what provides the tang to the meat where the Smoked Meat Stabilizer does not. Sof if you are wanting the tang then use the Citric Acid and if you do not want the tang then add the smoked meat stabilizer.
You can use beef fat in place of pork fat, it will give you a slightly different flavor but will not change your process.
I hope this helped, let us know if you have any other questions!
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mark naber No, carrot fiber wouldnt make it dry but it can give some consistency issues. For cured sausage i am more of a fan of sure gel than carrot fiber. Cured sausages are semi-dried, carrot fiber is really just trying to hold onto moisture, so it can work against you. However, I see more and more people doing this and they seem happy witht he results so…if it ain’t broke I guess BUT if you are looking for a different consistency then try sure gel, soy portien blend or even super bind.
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dwaddick 3 oz to 25 lb is the absolute minumim to get the cure accelerating properties I believe. If you are looking for an accelerator but less/no tang check out either sodium erythorbate or smoked meat stabilizer.
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dwaddick 3 oz to 25 lb is the absolute minumim to get the cure accelerating properties I believe. If you are looking for an accelerator but less/no tang check out either sodium erythorbate or smoked meat stabilizer.
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I’m going to try and make snack sticks for the first time. I plan on doing a 50/50 pork and beef. The pork butt is roughly a 80/20 meat to fat ratio. For the beef should I remove as much fat as possible or grind it all up and mix with pork. I’ve read that pork fat is better than beef fat but is ok to mix these in the sticks?
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Personally I think piggy fat tastes better, so removing the thicker beef fat should give a better product - preference only…
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I’m going to try and make snack sticks for the first time. I plan on doing a 50/50 pork and beef. The pork butt is roughly a 80/20 meat to fat ratio. For the beef should I remove as much fat as possible or grind it all up and mix with pork. I’ve read that pork fat is better than beef fat but is ok to mix these in the sticks?
@M-Saboe Pork fat is definitely better. I have made snack sticks from straight 80/20 ground beef from the grocery store and used 25lbs of ground butt along with several mixtures of both and have had very good results. The only thing I haven’t had a whole lot of luck with is mixing beef with venison. I never seem to get enough fat content. Nowadays, if I use venison, I always go with 50% ground butt with it for best results.
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I’m going to try and make snack sticks for the first time. I plan on doing a 50/50 pork and beef. The pork butt is roughly a 80/20 meat to fat ratio. For the beef should I remove as much fat as possible or grind it all up and mix with pork. I’ve read that pork fat is better than beef fat but is ok to mix these in the sticks?
@M-Saboe Also, document everything you do. If you don’t get the results that you want, try something different next time.
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@M-Saboe If you do a 50/50 with an 80/20 cut and removed all the beef fat you’d end up with a dry product. THat would get you somewhere around 10% (a little more as youll never trim all the beef fat off) so I would either add more pork fat or leave the beef fat. Pork fat is better, no doubt but beef fat is better than no fat in my opinion.
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After vacuum sealing, what kind of lifespan are we looking at when using citric acid in the mix? If the steps are followed precisely, how many days in the fridge can I expect before possible spoilage? I know it will vary, but are we talking roughly a week, or roughly a month?
Once taken out of the fridge, would it be safe to eat say 12-24 hrs later?
Will I have a hard time getting good results doing this in the oven since I don’t have a smoker?
Thanks in advance!!
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