I have kids with very extreme food intolerances that requires us to exclude many ingredients. We were planning on using the following snack stick recipe, but we need to remove the sugar.

If we are using celery juice powder cure, is there a need to include the sugar for a reason other than taste? We wanted to make sure it wasn’t needed for the cure process.

Thank you for your help!

Ingredients:
• 5lb ground beef
• 1cup ice water
• Celery Juice Powder Cure – Package instructions for 5lbs of meat
• 4tsp salt
• 1TBS brown sugar (Need to remove or replace)
• 1tsp ground mustard
• 2tsp whole mustard seed
• 1tsp coarse ground black pepper
• 2tsp white ground pepper
• 1TBS Paprika

mix all spices and cure into 1 cup of ice cold water mix into ground beef until mixed through

stuff into casing, hang at room temp until casings are dry, approx. 1 to 2 hrs,

place into smoker preheated to around 130 degrees for one hour to dry casings, then add smoke for 1hr or until desired color, then raise heat to 150 for one hr then raise heat to 180 until an internal temp of 152 to 160 degrees,

Place into ice cold water until they drop below 90.

Thank you!

Thank you everyone. Unfortunately, we are very limited on ingredients. Sugar, garlic, onion, corn products, etc. are all out. Sugar is a recent add unfortunately. At least she has meat!

Any thoughts on a high quality hickory salt. Would that help cut the bitterness? We are currently finishing in the oven.
Stevia might be a sweating option, but that is a touchy product for processing.

The last recipe we tried before we found out sugar was a no go was this:
http://www.rothsugarbush.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/9-23-maple-deer-snack-sticks.pdf

Pretty good recipe, but it is more of a breakfast product then an every day eating product.