Snack Sticks too firm
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rjh2 Re-reading I can’t say I have much better thoughts on what happened but I would like to share what I do in order to stick to a better thermal cycling schedule.
I noticed that you mentioned that your smoker does not go below 150F. Are you smoking on a pellet smoker? If you do maybe you could try my method. I smoke my stick on my Louisiana Grill and I turn the pellet grill on to get to about the right temp and then shut it down (I have a smoke tube just to keep smoke going). I have a thermometer taking the ambient temp and when it cools too low then I turn the grill back on. It is a pain but a process that has yet to fail me (in the absence of funds for a dedicated smoker). I go through the cycling and normally finish my cooking with sous vide
This was a small batch using that technique. I have since made a bunch more
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processhead Are you thinking that by smoking at 150 for the first three hours, some batches will come out good and some will come out firm and chewy?
rjh2 said in Snack Sticks too firm:
processhead Are you thinking that by smoking at 150 for the first three hours, some batches will come out good and some will come out firm and chewy?
I can’t say that is what is happening.
If it were me, I would be monitoring my smoker temps with a known good thermometer and verifying that the internal temp probe on your smoker is giving you an accurate and consistent reading without extreme temperature swings.
At this point, I think I would want to rule out my equipment as a potential source of the problem since it sounds like the rest of your process is on-point, -
Maybe get a good thermometer/probe and put it in the grill. Then are you able to run it by not starting the charcoal and just burn small blocks of wood in the Ash bin to get to lower Temps? Just wondering because it just picked up a 1050 on clearancebut haven’t put it together yet to try just wood in the Ash bin to see how Temps run. Because I was wanting to experiment using it to make sticks and jerky too
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I’ve seen this with both snack sticks and summer sausage. It appeared in my case that I slow cooked the sausage in the smoker too long without adding humidity. I believe I cooked too much of the moisture out of the meat giving it a hard almost rubbery texture.
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I’ve seen this with both snack sticks and summer sausage. It appeared in my case that I slow cooked the sausage in the smoker too long without adding humidity. I believe I cooked too much of the moisture out of the meat giving it a hard almost rubbery texture.
bpschuebel Thanks. I have a batch of goose sticks in the smoker right now. I’ll make sure I don’t run out of water. I made sure I had plenty of fat in this batch and cut back on the mixing time to 6 minutes total. I just fried up the waste mix and it was very good, not rubbery at all. So, that is a good sign. The problem batches were noticeably firm when I fried up the waste from them. Still not sure which variable or variables caused the problem batches but I’m going to be more diligent about controlling all of them in the future.
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