ND Mike I agree with you 100%. They are a must have for the 11lb stuffer. Even if you aren’t running the stuffer by yourself.

Pivodog What did you use to polish your chopper up? It looks really good.

Surg theres another clue right under those words.

Last weekend I made a 25lb batch of snacks sticks with the Nacho cheese seasoning. My recipe was 100% pork trimmings (approx 25-30% fat), 2.5 lbs of high temp cheddar cheese & no ECA. I did not use a cure accelerator, so I held them overnight before smoking. I used only pork because I assumed the Nacho flavor would be mild & I did not want gamey meat flavors covering it up. The ingredient list includes bell pepper besides cheese/butter flavors. My overall impression is that it has a mild cheese flavor with a somewhat peppery aftertaste. I taste more black pepper than bell pepper. If you are looking for an overpowering cheese flavor you may be disappointed. My wife’s comment was- It has a good flavor, but I would not know it was nacho cheese if it wasnt labeled as such. This may be a good flavor to try for those who are looking for something a little different and on the mild side.

Does anyone know if it is ok to let the sticks rest a couple of days before thermal processing? I may have a 3 day window next week for meat processing & want to maximize my productivity. I am hoping to process at least 5 batches of sticks in that time. I was thinking about stuffing all of my sticks at one time & then putting them in my cooler. (without any cure accelerators of course). I would then smoke my batches one after the other, but could take up to 3 days. This would eliminate multiple grinder/mixer cleanups and I would be able to focus on smoking. I have found info on minimum resting times when only using cure #1, but not much info on max times before smoking.

craigrice

twilliams When you said “it has an original flavor”, did you mean unique? Or is it more like a slim jim/pepperoni flavor profile that most people think of when they eat snack sticks? Btw, thanks for posting this, i love to hear different opinions on seasonings.

smokinbubba Mess? Never ran into that problem.

Deepwoodsbutcher That guy is a rockstar. Lol. Some of his sausages look incredible.

rangel42 Bowl cutters can be used to make emulsified sausages like hot dogs, polish etc. There is a learning curve to using them correctly, but the possibilities are endless as they can extract protein from meat like nothing else.

Ridley Acres we’ve processed “one nutter” boars at 6 months & didn’t notice anything. 15 months is probably just way too far along. Pepperoni maybe?

Did this get nominated for post of the week yet? If not, its got my vote.

bobfrapples Try adding more fat. The commercial sausage we are accustomed to from the store has a much higher fat content than most home processors use.

processhead Love the snouts cooking in the pot!

metlman501 BBQ Smoked Stick is a crowd pleaser that is a change of pace from Willies & Pepper Stick. It is sweet with a smokey tang. It has a lot of sugar like the Honey BBQ but not nearly as expensive.

This is tough. Everything looks amazing! Recipe-Grimpuppy. Process-processhead.(love the hats)

Ridley Acres The pork was fresh. We were in a rushed situation. The butcher was short on time & I had to work around his schedule. I had to run to his shop with every meat lug I had. He brought the hogs out of the cooler, threw them on a table & quartered them while i stuffed the pieces in my lugs. It wasn’t an ideal situation, but we didn’t have a choice. There is a back story to this, but too long to explain here.

Ridley Acres Both…We had the butcher quarter them & cut the bellies out. We processed the rest ourselves. We normally do the whole process ourselves, but it was summer & they averaged about 330 live.

twilliams yeah, they uploaded as a screenshot gallery. For whatever reason then, they are distorted until you click on them.

cdavis almost all to 145.