Jonathon I’m going to give it another try this weekend. I’ll leave out the carrot fiber. I don’t have Sure Gel but was thinking of trying the cold phosphate I have. If I use that, do I need to leave out the ECA? Not sure how the acid would work with the alkaline phosphate. Either that, or leave out the binder all together…

Jonathon, great questions, you bring up some things I didn’t think about. Regarding moisture, yeah, I have a tiling sponge I could add. I could also close the vent down some, but really didn’t seem like case hardening at all. I brought temps up slow and they don’t seem tough. The MES is pretty tight and it seems humidity stays fairly high, but I can do stuff to increase it. But won’t more humidity make it cook slower? I did a batch of about 9.5 pounds, so I added 12 oz of water rather than 32 as called for in the 25lb batch recipe. And my binder was carrot fiber so assume that should have actually kept the product from drying out even more than sure gel.

My ropes were too long to hang over smoking sticks once, but too short to loop twice. I ended up spiraling them on the racks trying to leave a 1/4" air gap between the spirals. I swapped top and bottom racks once since my two ambient probes showed about a 10 degree difference top and bottom. I had one meat probe in the end of the outer spiral of a snack stick about 2" figuring the walls of the smoker would be hotter and a second one inserted at an angle closer to the center of the spiral. These were on the middle two racks. I also used a Thermoworks Pro Needle to check other spots. I didn’t notice huge variations of doneness or dryness based on where in the smoker they were, but of course after 8 hours there was some variation with the edge ones being a bit drying and the interior ones where the gap in the spirals was small of being smoother skinned and less ‘overcooked’. It just really seems like I overcooked them. I realized later I went to 165 instead of 160 so that is part of it I suppose. That was about an extra hour I’d guess.

At this point my best guess is to try to increase humidity and figure out how to hang them vs lay them on racks. Also, I might try to skip the 155 and go 125/140/175 since I didn’t have fat-out on the traeger on my accelerated cook.

Any ideas appreciated!

OK, so I think I was on-track until the thermal processing. It took me 8 hours to reach internal 165 degrees, and the product is somewhat dry and crumbly. Edible, but not great. I used a binder and used a water pan in the smoker. I have a Masterbuilt Electric 30 and I followed the recommended processing schedule. I also had an ambient thermometer on the top and bottom racks so I know I was getting the temps given in the instructions. I’m going to try summer sausage this weekend, but need to figure out what’s going on with my cooking process. 8 hrs for a 19mm stick seems excessive, which is why they are so dry I think. On a side note, I mixed up more than I could fit in the smoker, so I put the rest on the Traeger pellet grill. Kept them between about 125-140 for an hour, and then had an oopsies and my grill went to 350. By the time I got it back down the sticks were over 165. They smoked for less than 2 hours. I had no issues with fat-out, and the product is definitely moister than the ones from my smoker.

What changes should I make in my cook schedule? Remove the water pan? Smoke low for 2-3 hours then go up quickly to get them cooked before I lose all the moisture? I did “everything wrong” with the Traeger, yet they turned out better than following the smoke schedule in the smoker. Any suggestions?

My seasoning mix has sodium erythorbate in it. Should I use the encapsulated citric acid too or leave that out?

Jonathon is vacuum sealing a good way to store leftover cure and seasonings? How long will they keep?

Jonathon It was a hog we butchered ourselves so it hasn’t been pumped but I was wondering if the freezing effected the cell structure and its ability to take up salt. I know that brining frozen fish takes much less salt than fresh fish and wasn’t sure if this applies to pork as well. Using a standard brine on frozen salmon gives way too salty a product and I hope to avoid that on the bacon. Perhaps a rinse after injecting and holding over night is sufficient.

Jonathon And one more question (perhaps!)…I will be curing and smoking a previously frozen belly that I’m thawing in the fridge. Does the fact it is previously frozen affect the curing time or procedure?

Jonathon Also, i didn’t get the Bacon Taste Booster, just the cure. I assume it is fine to leave that out. Doesn’t affect the cure, just the flavor, right?

Jonathon If injecting with Blue Ribbon cure, after holding the belly overnight in a 50% solution, should I rinse before smoking?