I did a search for “philly cheese steak” here and read all 65 hits, absolutely tons of folks just love the Walton’s spice mix for this. But I didn’t find any posts where someone made their own flavoring, so I decided to do it.

I used ground beef, 80/20. I’d say 95% of the posts Here, folks used pork with the Walton’s seasoning, but Jonathon did a nice post where he made some with beef and liked them. I didn’t have the spice mix to give pork the beef flavor, this was a spur of moment thing. To my mind, the #1 defining flavor is steak, so I went with ground beef. The #2 flavor is onion, so I went with dried onion and onion powder. The #3 flavor is the cheese, I went with white queso velveeta frozen and diced fine. The optional #4 flavor is the green pepper note. I went with diced fresh jalapeno pod because it has a strong green pepper note, and just a bit of heat. The last flavor note is black pepper, some places sprinkled black pepper on the steak and onions while frying.

All items listed as a % of meat block weight.
Other ingredients were 1.5% salt, lower than most sausages because the queso had salt. I used Non Fat Dried Milk as a binder, normal amounts are up to 3% but as I didnt add extra fat nor much water, I went with 0.5%. Then 10% water. The spice amounts were chosen with reference to Marianski’s tables for normal spice usage ranges.

Meat 80/20 ground beef
Water 10%
Salt 1.5%
NFDM binder 0.5%
Black pepper 0.18%
Dehydrated onions 0.5%
Onion powder 0.5%
1 Diced jalapeño hull, 2.5%
White queso velveeta cheese, frozen, diced 22%.
(so example, 1370g meat x 22% = 301g cheese)

My meat block was 1370 g, about 3lbs. Made 16 links of 5", in 32-35mm hog casings.

1. Mixed meat, water, all other spices & milk except cheese in Kitchenaid mixer about 4 min to strong protein extraction.
2. Added diced cheese, blended 30 sec.
3. Stuffed in 32-35mm hog casings. Linked them when done stuffing at 5". I used a lazy susan with serving tray on it to coil the meat easy.
   

Cooking:

1. Lightly brown brats in pan w bacon fat, low heat so they don’t burst. Do all sides.
2. When brown, add half cup water and 1T or so of the queso, cover and simmer low until 165 f internal temp.
   
3. Serve on rolls with ketchup, fried onions if desired… I didn’t as I wanted to see the flavor. Add a spoonful of the cheese brat juice or so on the bun.
   Tasting Notes:
   Great taste, this was pretty much spot on for the Philly cheese steak flavor. First, a strong steak/beef flavor with that light sear maillard reaction on the casings making it match griddle seared steak. Good salt level. Wee touch of heat, and a nice identifiable green pepper note. Cheese made it perfect, nice runny but still sticky, plenty of it at 22%, creamy. I thought these were perfect and will not change anything when making them again.
   
   If you’ve got the Walton’s seasoning, everyone rates it a touchdown, and mostly with pork even. But if you don’t, I think this would make you pretty satisfied. Hope the writeup helps someone!