I used the recipe in Marianski’s book “Home Production of Quality Meats and Sausages”. It is pretty simple: pork, 1.8% salt, 0.25% cure1, 0.2% black pepper, 0.1% each of sugar, nutmeg and caraway. 10% water. So for 1000g meat, that is 18g salt, 2g pepper etc.

Recipe uses sheep casings, but I used 21-23mm fresh collagen casings, which are the closest thing to actual sheep casings. I was happy with the Walton’s casings, very delicate. Here they are at top, next to some pepperoni 19mm sticks I also made tonight, to compare casings. Both thru a 12.7mm or half inch tube.

Short cook, 60 min light smoke then 30 min at higher temp to 155-160 IT. I used my pretty new Smokin It 3.5 smoker with about 2oz of cherry wood. Unfortunately I trusted the smokers meat probe and pulled it at 161f. Got inside and crosschecked with 3 Thermoworks digital thermometers, all at 132 f So lesson learned, don’t trust the smoker probe and always crosscheck. Had to put it all back on and cook another 1.5 hrs.

Taste is good and interesting. Apparently you dry these out a bit, about a week is supposed to be where most like them. Not sure I’d say they were better than beef venison sticks with Willie’s seasoning. But they are pretty unique and I never made a 100% pork stick before. I will report after a week or so in fridge drying a bit.