Help..snack stick disaster
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The ECA is where you went wrong. ECA is a cure accelerator which means right after you get done mixing your ingredients you hurry and stuff into casings and immediently go into your cooker. If you hold your meat overnight and try cooking it, its going to be terrible and theirs no real way out of it. The stuff you have in your fridge now should be thrown out so you dont waste your time. The oven temp of 150 degrees is pretty high to start out with, but it should end up ok. Maybe just prop the door open a little bit during the first few hours. All in all it sounded like you did most everything good. Just the ECA ended up screwing it up for you.
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wendy Other than holding it overnight when using ECA, which it sounds like you know you shouldn’t do, and like lamurscrappy said starting at 150 is higher than ideal, nothing pops out at me as an obvious enormous issue. If I had to guess I would say that the encapsulation of the citric acid ruptured, either through holding it overnight or mixing it too much when you added it and it denatured the proteins. When that happens you usually get a dry and crumbly product though so that might not have been the only thing going on here. When you sadid you were dipping the meat in cold water when stuffing, what exactly were you doing? The 1 tsp per 5 lb is for our Sure Cure, thats might not the same as the one you used. This is why we recommend Exalibur, premixed seasonings!
The casings issue could absolutely have been too much water and starting at 150 degrees. That could pop your casings, you said 22mm so i am assuming it is sheep?
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I used the collagen casing. I figured it had something to do with the ECA. Its a real bummer. Lots of work, the and money wasted. Should of done more homework first. And to answer the dipping in cold water, I was using a kitchen Aid mixer. Lol… The meat was so sticky with the cheese it wouldn’t go through the tube so I found with it dipped in ice water a bit (just like the tip) it made a world of difference. But I thank you all for the helpful advice and info. IF I try this again I will just buy you pack of season. That is too much work to screw it up.
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wendy Other than holding it overnight when using ECA, which it sounds like you know you shouldn’t do, and like lamurscrappy said starting at 150 is higher than ideal, nothing pops out at me as an obvious enormous issue. If I had to guess I would say that the encapsulation of the citric acid ruptured, either through holding it overnight or mixing it too much when you added it and it denatured the proteins. When that happens you usually get a dry and crumbly product though so that might not have been the only thing going on here. When you sadid you were dipping the meat in cold water when stuffing, what exactly were you doing? The 1 tsp per 5 lb is for our Sure Cure, thats might not the same as the one you used. This is why we recommend Exalibur, premixed seasonings!
The casings issue could absolutely have been too much water and starting at 150 degrees. That could pop your casings, you said 22mm so i am assuming it is sheep?
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wendy Sorry I am late to the conversation. I make at least two, twenty five batches of snack sticks every week and sometimes quite a bit more. I use ECA and carrot fiber in 80% of those batches and have never had an heavy acidic or vinegar flavor from ECA. I have held batches for up to 24 hours and even though it does change the texture slightly they typically good enough for friends and family :). Any time I have had casings blow open has been from too much heat and as soon as the meat is exposed to the direct heat it gets a sausage consistency because the moisture cooks away very quickly. It also turns brown even if I am using the smoker instead of the oven. Any time I have had serious flavor issues it can be traced back to my meat block. I always save out some of the uncooked product that is left in the stuffer and vacuum seal it so I can refer back it if the batch doesn’t turn out as expected. I am curious about your ratio of vension and beef as I didn’t see anything relating to fat content. Did you add additional pork or beef fat? I have purchased beef and pork fat from grocery stores that were not handled properly and produced odd flavors. Would really like to help but need more detail to really get to the root of the problem.
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wendy Sorry I am late to the conversation. I make at least two, twenty five batches of snack sticks every week and sometimes quite a bit more. I use ECA and carrot fiber in 80% of those batches and have never had an heavy acidic or vinegar flavor from ECA. I have held batches for up to 24 hours and even though it does change the texture slightly they typically good enough for friends and family :). Any time I have had casings blow open has been from too much heat and as soon as the meat is exposed to the direct heat it gets a sausage consistency because the moisture cooks away very quickly. It also turns brown even if I am using the smoker instead of the oven. Any time I have had serious flavor issues it can be traced back to my meat block. I always save out some of the uncooked product that is left in the stuffer and vacuum seal it so I can refer back it if the batch doesn’t turn out as expected. I am curious about your ratio of vension and beef as I didn’t see anything relating to fat content. Did you add additional pork or beef fat? I have purchased beef and pork fat from grocery stores that were not handled properly and produced odd flavors. Would really like to help but need more detail to really get to the root of the problem.
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wendy Sorry I am late to the conversation. I make at least two, twenty five batches of snack sticks every week and sometimes quite a bit more. I use ECA and carrot fiber in 80% of those batches and have never had an heavy acidic or vinegar flavor from ECA. I have held batches for up to 24 hours and even though it does change the texture slightly they typically good enough for friends and family :). Any time I have had casings blow open has been from too much heat and as soon as the meat is exposed to the direct heat it gets a sausage consistency because the moisture cooks away very quickly. It also turns brown even if I am using the smoker instead of the oven. Any time I have had serious flavor issues it can be traced back to my meat block. I always save out some of the uncooked product that is left in the stuffer and vacuum seal it so I can refer back it if the batch doesn’t turn out as expected. I am curious about your ratio of vension and beef as I didn’t see anything relating to fat content. Did you add additional pork or beef fat? I have purchased beef and pork fat from grocery stores that were not handled properly and produced odd flavors. Would really like to help but need more detail to really get to the root of the problem.
vjbutler Soooo, your telling me I shouldn’t have thrown the rest of it away . I have never had that happen. And that is what happened. The casing broke and it seemed to me it cooked. The texture and taste of the meat was right. But it had no flexibility to it. If you bent it just a bit it would break just like cooked sausage… I mixed 10 lbs of venison and 15 lbs of beef. Which beef was mostly fatty roasts, and some ground. I thought it got too hot to but I couldn’t get the oven any cooler. I had it set to the warm setting which reading 145 150. And I can’t prop my door cause it has a open door alarm that will shut the oven off after a while.
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Chicovt My recommendation would be don’t hold it at all or you run the risk of what happened to wendy however if you are in a bind and need to hold it then I would say after 3-4 days you should toss it for food safety. The problem is that there is no good way to test whether the encapsulation broke or not. If you really wanted to check to see if it was worth going through the long process of smoking the snack sticks you could cook one up in a pan to get a basic idea of what it would taste like.
wendy I probably would not have thrown it out just because you put a lot of work into it. Worst case scenario you can always keep it as just a ground product and add it to things like tacos or stirred vegetable dishes.
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Chicovt My recommendation would be don’t hold it at all or you run the risk of what happened to wendy however if you are in a bind and need to hold it then I would say after 3-4 days you should toss it for food safety. The problem is that there is no good way to test whether the encapsulation broke or not. If you really wanted to check to see if it was worth going through the long process of smoking the snack sticks you could cook one up in a pan to get a basic idea of what it would taste like.
wendy I probably would not have thrown it out just because you put a lot of work into it. Worst case scenario you can always keep it as just a ground product and add it to things like tacos or stirred vegetable dishes.
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Jonathon thanks
Do you have a recommendation for a vertical smoker that I would be able to control temperature for snack sticks well
I have a trager but I can’t hang in it I can only put on grates and heat is to directChicovt I do mine on a Traeger with the door propped open with a 2x4 for an hour or so and then on smoke setting until 155. I do 10 lbs of snack sticks, 5 lbs on each shelf side by side actually touching and as much summer as I can fit under the additional rack. Just keep it away from the edges where the heat comes up. Last batch was great and pretty even,y cooked
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Chicovt I do mine on a Traeger with the door propped open with a 2x4 for an hour or so and then on smoke setting until 155. I do 10 lbs of snack sticks, 5 lbs on each shelf side by side actually touching and as much summer as I can fit under the additional rack. Just keep it away from the edges where the heat comes up. Last batch was great and pretty even,y cooked
Scott Steinocher do you keep dial strictly on smoke for the first hr
I did smoke then increase to lowest setting
Roll on the right got a bit scorched
Also I had a bit of fat out as well
I will try next time with door proped open
Still looking for a vertical so I can hang
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Chicovt It depends on what you want to spend! If you okay with the price tag I can recommend the PK-100 from Pro Smoker with total confidence! It is what I smoke/cook 90% of the stuff I make here. It will start at 60° and go all the way to 250°, obviously, it won’t generate smoke at 60° but I’ve seen it start to smolder as low as 120°. It is VERY well insulated…I could go on and on about how much I like it but you could read all of that in my expert review on the web page!
If you have a pizza stone or some other ceramic piece you could place it underneath your grates and that will give you a heat deflector and be able to somewhat get indirect heat.
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Scott Steinocher do you keep dial strictly on smoke for the first hr
I did smoke then increase to lowest setting
Roll on the right got a bit scorched
Also I had a bit of fat out as well
I will try next time with door proped open
Still looking for a vertical so I can hang
Chicovt pit boss makes a nice vertical pellet smoker about $500 at walmart.
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I make them all the time with ECA…I just put them on my RecTec at the lowest smoke setting of 180 and smoke them until they hit 160… they come out delicious. Sometimes I have to cook half and let the other half sit in the fridge as I do 25 lbs at a time. I don’t mess with all the different temp times and no one complains. I would cook them at 180 and try them before throwing them out
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Chicovt pit boss makes a nice vertical pellet smoker about $500 at walmart.
Chicken Arty thanks for the tip
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Jonathon thanks
Do you have a recommendation for a vertical smoker that I would be able to control temperature for snack sticks well
I have a trager but I can’t hang in it I can only put on grates and heat is to directChicovt If you are trying to keep the price down, I’d recommend the Masterbuilt 40-inch electric smoker that you can pick up for less than $400. Then you can add some smoker sausage hangers (about $11 each) - they lay across a rack and have hooks to hang from below). I have 2 of those plus a bacon hanger, that I used last weekend when making venison summer sausage.
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