Hello,
After reading a few recipes and tutorials for making smoked snack sticks, I’ve got a quick question about humidity. Would I ideally hold my stuffed snack sticks at 125F for an hour or so with no water (or smoke) in my smoker? Then, add water as I increase the temp and add smoke? Or, water/humidity from the get-go?

I think I read somewhere that initially holding at a low, dry temp was important (or is that for pork belly/bacon??)

Thanks!

lkrfletcher so I wound up preparing a 10lb batch (30% chuck, 70% pork butt) and used the Waltons temp profile for the most part. 125 for one hour with no water in the smoker, then stepped up thru 140, 155, 175 with water and apple wood smoke. It was late and cold and raining, so I stepped up to 185 and then 190 near the end to hit my internal temperature of 160.

Used the Willies snack stick seasoning blend and made 19mm snack sticks plus a couple summer sausages. The summer sausages looked great right out of the smoker, but the fibrous casings wrinkled once they hit the cold water bath. All in all the batch looks and tastes great, and my wife and kids concur.

It took quite a bit longer than I was expecting, and stuffing 19mm casings with my grinder was a pain in the…neck.

Thanks for your help!

Chef larger grind plate with my grinder is just over 1/4”—closer to 5/16. Small plate is 3/16. The grind on the meat looked really good. The auger on the grinder just couldn’t feed the sticky meat down into the stuffing horn. A sausage stuffer is the next item on my “want/need” list.

lkrfletcher yep that’s exactly what I had to do, slide maybe 24-25 inches of collagen casing on the smallest stuffing tube I had.