Encapsulated Citric Acid
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Can’t see why not.
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Can I double grind my meat for snack sticks the night before and have the seasoning mixed in and then in the morning add the liquid, cure #1 and finish with the encapsulated citric acid and then onto the smoker with in an hour or so afterwords?
Fatslob it’s easier to mix in your spices with the water. Same with the cure, it also helps to disperse them more evenly. If you are set on grinding the night before and you are using ECA, I would mix everything the morning you smoke
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Someone else chime in on this. I would think since your adding all the salt and spices and then letting it sit, wouldn’t it get thicker sitting over night.? There is no reason you couldnt let it sit but I think your water needed to make it thin enough to stuff would need to be increased maybe 1.5 time times.
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I agree with samspade it will take more liquid. And also kyle and NDKoze on just mixing it all at once and stuffing. Tons of ways to do it, depending on your goals, but it’s always tricky for me to decide if my timing or these points below take priority. Here’s what I look at:
- Meat grind with any mixing at all will thicken up overnight in fridge, making it harder to stuff for small sticks and lrobably needing more water.
- If you’re gonna let it sit overnight, many would want to make use of that time and have it curing, which means salt and cure#1 in there. That will thicken it though due to the protein extraction you expressed during mixing, bonding up.
- If you’re gonna mix grind with anything and let it sit, might as well add spices also to let them blend and flavour.
- If you don’t use a cure accelerator like sodium escorbate, vitamin C, or the small portion of exposed acid you get with even a gentle ECA mix, then you need your cure to sit overnight… which thickens the meat grind. You can let it sit as chunks and grind in morning though.
- If you DO use an accelerator, you definitely want to mix everything and stuff right then, not next day.
- If you DO use an accelerator, then like NDKoze said you can just mix and stuff the next day and not deal with the grind setting up. I don’t trust Encapsulated citric acid that you’re doing all you can to keep from reacting with meat, to be a good cure accelerator-- I would also use some SE or a ground 1000mg vitamin C tablet per kg of meat. The ECA isn’t really an accelerator except in so much as the encapsulation actually fails, then it does a bit.
I usually add all that up and decide to mix it all, use vitamin C accelerator, and stuff right then.
However, if I still wanted to mix one day but stuff the next, like you said, then your plan of adding liquid and ECA next day is good, but I would add cure#1 the night before to get full use of it. I would add some of the liquid with spices and cure mixed into it, to help them spread evenly, like was mentioned above also. And then I would expect to use more liquid the next morning to get it loose enough to stuff, like samspade said. I would add the ECA at very end very gently, stuff, then smoke.When I get started late, I go thru your question every time, “if I don’t want to stay up late finishing this, what should I mix in tonight?” That supposed degradation of the bind from sitting at length on ECA, vs. remix the next morning and break up a lot of the bind that happened, is a hard call. Let us know what you did, and how you felt about the texture when done, will you? I could use the feedback too! Good luck!
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I agree with samspade it will take more liquid. And also kyle and NDKoze on just mixing it all at once and stuffing. Tons of ways to do it, depending on your goals, but it’s always tricky for me to decide if my timing or these points below take priority. Here’s what I look at:
- Meat grind with any mixing at all will thicken up overnight in fridge, making it harder to stuff for small sticks and lrobably needing more water.
- If you’re gonna let it sit overnight, many would want to make use of that time and have it curing, which means salt and cure#1 in there. That will thicken it though due to the protein extraction you expressed during mixing, bonding up.
- If you’re gonna mix grind with anything and let it sit, might as well add spices also to let them blend and flavour.
- If you don’t use a cure accelerator like sodium escorbate, vitamin C, or the small portion of exposed acid you get with even a gentle ECA mix, then you need your cure to sit overnight… which thickens the meat grind. You can let it sit as chunks and grind in morning though.
- If you DO use an accelerator, you definitely want to mix everything and stuff right then, not next day.
- If you DO use an accelerator, then like NDKoze said you can just mix and stuff the next day and not deal with the grind setting up. I don’t trust Encapsulated citric acid that you’re doing all you can to keep from reacting with meat, to be a good cure accelerator-- I would also use some SE or a ground 1000mg vitamin C tablet per kg of meat. The ECA isn’t really an accelerator except in so much as the encapsulation actually fails, then it does a bit.
I usually add all that up and decide to mix it all, use vitamin C accelerator, and stuff right then.
However, if I still wanted to mix one day but stuff the next, like you said, then your plan of adding liquid and ECA next day is good, but I would add cure#1 the night before to get full use of it. I would add some of the liquid with spices and cure mixed into it, to help them spread evenly, like was mentioned above also. And then I would expect to use more liquid the next morning to get it loose enough to stuff, like samspade said. I would add the ECA at very end very gently, stuff, then smoke.When I get started late, I go thru your question every time, “if I don’t want to stay up late finishing this, what should I mix in tonight?” That supposed degradation of the bind from sitting at length on ECA, vs. remix the next morning and break up a lot of the bind that happened, is a hard call. Let us know what you did, and how you felt about the texture when done, will you? I could use the feedback too! Good luck!
Dave in AZ I personally grind, mix and stuff one day and smoke the next. Not a fan of ECA. Hard to answer a question well without knowing exactly what the poster is looking for. Does he want the tang, is it a lack of time, many different scenarios
hey vegetarians, my food poops on your food!
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Dave in AZ I personally grind, mix and stuff one day and smoke the next. Not a fan of ECA. Hard to answer a question well without knowing exactly what the poster is looking for. Does he want the tang, is it a lack of time, many different scenarios
kyle yeah, I like your method myself. And also don’t like it sitting on the ECA. I skip the ECA if I don’t cook immediately. I always think, if someone went to all thos effort to coat citric acid with palm oil, because of how crumbly the meat gets otherwise, I don’t want to let this stuff sit and “crumblify”!
Last time I mixed and let it sit overnight, I ended up using 24% total water to get it thru my 10mm tube for 16mm sticks! I kept having to add mooore lol. They turned out good, but that’s a lot of water. I should have gone with 19mm sticks thru 13mm tube, but I was out of those. -
Thanks everyone - How much of a difference does the ECA actually make in the flavor?
I will double grind in the evening, cover and mix in seasoning etc. the following morning
Fatslob said in Encapsulated Citric Acid:
ECA adds a sharp taste (twang) sensation like a hard or genoa salami without curing overnight or a couple of days
It is optional and some don’t like the taste in their meat products -
Stuffing is near impossible without a lot of add water. Make your links and let set overnight forget ECA
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To me the ECA is that twang you get with original Slim Jims. I tried it because I liked those, but now I’ve had a ton of meat sticks without it and like them as well or better. It just depends on your target flavor, I’d guess most I see folks make don’t have any. I made some pepperoni flavored ones recently and added ECA to get the bite. But I also made some basic “kabanosy” that were awesome, just salt/pepper/nutmeg/caraway. And I like a black pepper/coriander one I did targeting pastrami, wouldn’t want ECA in there.
Oh, here is a good reference you might have: chicken wings. The salt and vinegar rub ones are just citric acid. The lemon pepper ones are citric acid with lemon flavor. But BBQ, Teriyaki, cajun, and buffalo don’t have any citric acid. So, just think about how you like those flavors?
What is your spice mix or recipe?
(P.s thx for your question, I’m sitting here today trying to decide on what meat sticks to make, so enjoying the subject!) -
ECA adds a sharp taste (twang) sensation like a hard or genoa salami without curing overnight or a couple of days
It is optional and some don’t like the taste in their meat products -
As NDKoze said I only use ECA for my SS and do as Kyle said I grind, mix, and stuff one day and smoke/cook the next typically. I have never had a problem with letting the ECA sit overnight. If you are going to add the cure and smoke immediately then you will need to use sodium erythrobate or ascorbic acid so the cure has time to actually cure. Without a real cure accelerator the cure needs a very minimum of 12 hours really it needs more like 18-24 hours for color development. I have on occasions used the SE and let the meat sit in he fridge for 6-8 hours and it was just fine.
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Thanks All - Never used the ECA before and thought I would try it for my snack sticks this time. But now I’m not going to, as I love my recipe which makes nice meaty flavored sticks with enough smoke flavor to know it’s there. If I wanted more of a summer sausage or salami type taste, then I would make summer sausage or salami - lol.
My specialty though is my Italian sausage, both mild spice and spicy. After trial and error, I have created a spice blend that I can’t envision changing. My brother and son love it so much, they tell me to just make it and patty it up. I also think I have come up with what I believe is the proper 3 spices and amounts for making mildly spicy and spicy sausages.
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Well dont tempt us. Give out the goods.
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Thanks All - Never used the ECA before and thought I would try it for my snack sticks this time. But now I’m not going to, as I love my recipe which makes nice meaty flavored sticks with enough smoke flavor to know it’s there. If I wanted more of a summer sausage or salami type taste, then I would make summer sausage or salami - lol.
My specialty though is my Italian sausage, both mild spice and spicy. After trial and error, I have created a spice blend that I can’t envision changing. My brother and son love it so much, they tell me to just make it and patty it up. I also think I have come up with what I believe is the proper 3 spices and amounts for making mildly spicy and spicy sausages.
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