ECA with jalapeño sticks?

[Basscat]

Making Jalapeño snack sticks in Am, dhould I use encapsulated citric acid, or is this not a good add to this season?
Thankyou

[twilliams]

Basscat really depends if you want to smoke them right away or hold them in the fridge over night and smoke sunday. I never use ECA so I can’t give you an honest suggestion other than what I have.

[YooperDog]

Basscat as twilliams said that is an advantage also ECA will add a tang to the flavor. You can reduce the amount a bit but the tang will still be there. Some folks like it, some folks don’t the rest just deal with it. I expect it in certain sausages not in others. If you have the time and patience split the batch and see what works for you.

[glen]

If you like the “twang” in summer sausage you will probably like it, if you don’t you probably won’t
If you are unsure try Yooper’s suggestion

[tarp]

No one in my family liked those with ECA. So they are no more ,like the haberno lime sticks around here.

[Basscat]

Thank you, I going with out on a 10 lb batch. Sounds like enough said they did not like it. Its all bout experimenting, go safe first. Will try it later if I think It it would be good after theis try.

[Grimpuppy]

I don’t like the tang from ECA. I use smoked meat stabilizer instead. It lets you go strait to the smoker but without the tang of ECA.

[cdavis]

Basscat I do the same as Grimpuppy . My family doesn’t like the eca but the smoked meat stabilizer is spot on. But as always different strokes for different folks. Good luck and I hope this helps.

[Bruce 0]

I recently made jalapeño
Snack sticks and they had a smell .eIt was bad ,The meat was,in my freezer for a year .Is it possible that the fat was bad and the meat. I’m frustrated and don’t know what to think, please help if you can
Bruce in Idaho
Bruce

[johnsbrewhouse]

Bruce 0 I am willing to bet the meat was the smell, probably freezer burned. It will give you a bad taste too if you can pick it out over the flavor. If your meat was just wrapped in freezer paper, than I would suspect it got freezer burned.

[Bruce 0]

I recently made jalapeño
Snack sticks and they had a smell .eIt was bad ,The meat was,in my freezer for a year .Is it possible that the fat was bad and the meat. I’m frustrated and don’t know what to think, please help if you can
Bruce in Idaho
Bruce

[craigrice]

Basscat if you don’t like the tang of it you can use smoked meat stabilizer and smoke right away or use none and hold overnight and smoke the next day so the cure has time to work

[Bruce 0]

I did hold it overnight in the fridge but the fat I used smelled rancid after starting to smoke

[Bruce 0]

johnsbrewhouse
Bruce here again, The meat smelled OK when I took it out of the freezer in fact it was elk meat double wrapped in plastic and when I started to do it with the fat that was in the freezer that was not double wrapped that was just single wrapped in a bag plastic it smelled like rancid fat and tasted like it as well

[johnsbrewhouse]

Bruce 0 Sounds like the fat was your problem. The elk is usually so lean and also a bit gamey you won’t notice much on freezer burn. You can tell that on the meat as well, it will look pale like th blood is gone away and starting to dry. Racid meat and fats are hard to recover from and cover up. I bought a chamber sealer to cure some of my freezer burn and rancid problem when freezing.

[Bruce 0]

johnsbrewhouse said in ECA with jalapeño sticks?:

Bruce 0 Sounds like the fat was your problem. The elk is usually so lean and also a bit gamey you won’t notice much on freezer burn. You can tell that on the meat as well, it will look pale like th blood is gone away and starting to dry. Racid meat and fats are hard to recover from and cover up. I bought a chamber sealer to cure some of my freezer burn and rancid problem when freezing.

Thanks so much for your great input and I could not agree more I do have a great vacuum packer that in the future I will have to put two more use in order to have a better quality product