How To Make Homemade Snack 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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I just finished smoking 10 lbs of snack sticks I stuffed yesterday Just now realized I forgot to add the pink cure salt are they trash ?
George T they could be. What was your cooking schedule?
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brogers I’ll let someone else give their opinion and I will just deliver the company line, without a way to measure water activity and pH they should be vacuum sealed and left defrosted for no more than 5 days. Now, that is the company line for safety, in reality it will be different.
George T Sadly, yes, they probably sat for numerous hours between 40-140 degrees making them the perfect breeding ground for somenasty stuff.
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Can you use this recipe and make it in either the oven or in a dehydrator? How would you alter the recipe? Can this recipe also be made in a smaller batch and how would you do that?
jbh222 Can’t help you with the oven or dehydrator question. However to scale the recipe down divide the ingredient quantities by 25 to get the amount needed for one pound of meat, then multiple by the amount of meat you are using.
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jbh222 That is going to depend on your oven a little. How low will it start? How hot will your dehydrator get? You might be best served starting off in the dehydrator and then moving to the oven, if you’re dehydrator starts as low as 120 (which shouldn’t be a problem) putting them in there 1st and then moving them to the oven for cooking might be your best bet.
What you will have to deal with here is case hardening in the dehydrator. You want the outside of the casing to be dry(ish) to let the smoke adhere, you don’t want to remove all of the moisture from the edge of the sausage though, if that happens you might not be able to pass heat efficiently into the middle of the snack stick.
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Hi. I’m relativvv… ok. I’m new! LOL
So this will be the first time making snack sticks with the Sure Cure and carrot binder. Also, I’m only doing 2 or 5 pounds of meat at a time.
So say I wanted to just 2 lbs…
-Carrot binder - 2 tbsp + 1 tsp
-Sure Cure - 1/2 tsp
-water - 2.5ozMix meat, carrot binder, sure cure, and water together. Then do you stuff it into the casings and let it rest in the refrigerator over night; smoke the next day… does that sound correct?
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Hi. I’m relativvv… ok. I’m new! LOL
So this will be the first time making snack sticks with the Sure Cure and carrot binder. Also, I’m only doing 2 or 5 pounds of meat at a time.
So say I wanted to just 2 lbs…
-Carrot binder - 2 tbsp + 1 tsp
-Sure Cure - 1/2 tsp
-water - 2.5ozMix meat, carrot binder, sure cure, and water together. Then do you stuff it into the casings and let it rest in the refrigerator over night; smoke the next day… does that sound correct?
keoni02 there is a conversion selection in the drop down menu that will help you break down your additives, cure and seasonings on the left side of the page. I would recommend using sure gel instead of carrot fiber if you have it. Snack sticks are a semi dried style sausage and carrot fiber will hold up to 26X it’s weight in water and sure gel will help with adding a bit extra protein during protein extraction. Both will work, but typically carrot fiber is used in fresh sausage to help with juiciness and sure gel in cured sausages. Your numbers appear to be okay, I just haven’t done a batch that small of cured sausage and I go by weight.
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keoni02 there is a conversion selection in the drop down menu that will help you break down your additives, cure and seasonings on the left side of the page. I would recommend using sure gel instead of carrot fiber if you have it. Snack sticks are a semi dried style sausage and carrot fiber will hold up to 26X it’s weight in water and sure gel will help with adding a bit extra protein during protein extraction. Both will work, but typically carrot fiber is used in fresh sausage to help with juiciness and sure gel in cured sausages. Your numbers appear to be okay, I just haven’t done a batch that small of cured sausage and I go by weight.
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OK. So heres what happened. I got all excited because everything finally arrived to start making 2lb test batches. Well somebody didnt read thigs right on the website and ordered the wrong 3/8" tube, not the one that was actually for their stuffer (LEM 5lb). OOPS! Well before I returned it, I checked to see if it would fit my jerky gun and it did. So I kept it for that and ordered the correct one for my stuffer. Those Jerky guns dont hold a whole lot, and I was having issues with air pockets that I obviously did a poor job with getting out, but the rest I had no issues with air. My thought was, for experimentation sake, do 1lb of each flavor in the smoker and one in the oven. So all the batched looked good, they felt good in the casings, the cooked well too and everything temped out correctly… except for the first batch, there must have been too much air cause when you bit into it, it was just mush (and that came out of the smoker). Aside from that one 1lb batch, the rest were pretty much the consistency I was looking for. The flavor on the other hand, not so much. But that can be easily remedied by adding more seasoning and continuing to practice with small batches until I get exactly how I want it.
Also, YooperDog, thanks for the tip. I’ll try that once I use up the carrot fiber.I do have a question though. Once you add in the Sure Cure and mix everything, how long can it sit in the fridge for? I ask cause my schedule at work is ever changing. So like today, Sunday, if I made up the mix and stuffed the casing, would they still be okay to smoke on Tuesday?
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keoni02 If you are not adding a cure accelerator like Encapsulated Citric Acid or Sodium Erythorbate you will need to hold it about 12 hours to allow enough of nitrite to start breaking down into Nitric oxide. Sorry, just reread your question and realized you are asking how long. So again with no accelerator Sunday-Tuesday you are ok. If you added a cure accelerator it would depend on other factors like how was the Encapsulated Citric Acid mixed and you wouldn’t want to hold it any longer than 24 hours if you added sodium erythorbate. That speeds the conversion up and you might lose a decent amount of curing power. Having said that though, you would most likely be fine with 72 hours though I wouldn’t recommend it.
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I have another question. If I’m making snack sticks, is there any reason I can’t use the bratwurst seasonings in my snack sticks?
keoni02
I am not sure if I can answer your question, but here are some things to think about.Most bratwurst recipes are fresh sausage recipes and have less salt and no added cure.
Most snack stick recipes are a cured and cooked product that have somewhat higher salt levels to aid with shelf stability and curing.
Assuming you wanted to make a bratwurst flavored snack stick, I think you would need to adjust the salt levels and add cure before cooking/smoking.
The result would be something with quite a different flavor profile than a freshly grilled fresh bratwurst. You would taste the seasoning, but being cured and cooked/smoked it would be different.
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