The cold water hack is real. The first time I tried it was after mixing a batch of sausage made with ghost pepper, I was complaining to a friend about the pain involved (lungs, eyes, nose, etc) during clean up and she suggested rinsing everything in cold water during clean up so the pepper fumes didn’t get released in to the air to breath. I tried it on the next batch and it worked perfectly, both with the pepper fumes, and as a pleasant surprise, with general clean up of all the equipment. The left over sausage and fat just slides right off the equipment with cold water. I’ve been doing that ever since, whether or not I use hot peppers.

bpschuebel Thanks. I have a batch of goose sticks in the smoker right now. I’ll make sure I don’t run out of water. I made sure I had plenty of fat in this batch and cut back on the mixing time to 6 minutes total. I just fried up the waste mix and it was very good, not rubbery at all. So, that is a good sign. The problem batches were noticeably firm when I fried up the waste from them. Still not sure which variable or variables caused the problem batches but I’m going to be more diligent about controlling all of them in the future.

Thanks everyone for the input and suggestions.

Dr_Pain I’m using a Masterbuilt gravity feed charcoal grill. Temp control is similar to a pellet grill.

processhead Are you thinking that by smoking at 150 for the first three hours, some batches will come out good and some will come out firm and chewy?

twilliams yeah, my cook cycle is what it is because my smoker’s temp controller only goes down to 150 deg. I make up for starting a little high by holding it there for a longer time. I’m pretty confident my smoker is holding temp well and like you noted, this is always the way I smoke sticks and they usually turn out good. The two problem batches were with two different seasonings and I have used each seasoning several other times without issue.

Dr_Pain That is one of the things I was wondering too. While I haven’t seen this mentioned before as a side effect of too much mixing, it does seem to have some logic to it.

Dr_Pain This batch was not dry and crumbly. It was solid and chewy. I used seasoning, sure cure, sure gel, water, ECA and cheese according to the Walton’s recipe, as I do with all the batches that come out good. I smoked the same schedule as all the other batches that come out good as well.

twilliams I’m not sure what case hardening is but it doesn’t sound like what happened with these. I do 5 lb batches. I grind the meat course once and fine once. Mix in a kitchenaid mixer for around 8 minutes with ingredients following the Walton’s recipes, adding in ECA and cheese for the last minute. Stuff in 19mm smoked collagen casings. Smoke in a Masterbuilt gravity feed charcoal grill on 150 deg for 3 hours, then 180 until 165 IT. Ice bath for about 10 minutes. rest at room temp for a while and then cut them up. The process is always the same. Just these two random batches that came out chewy. The only real variables that I haven’t controlled very tightly are fat content, which would naturally vary based on the meat I am using and mixing time. In this last batch, it did feel like there might not have been as much fat as usual and I probably ended up mixing a little longer than usual.

cdavis This is one of the things I was thinking also. There are really only two variables in the process that I haven’t very tightly controlled: fat content and mixing time. Would low fat content result in chewy sticks?

processhead Yeah, they look and taste the same as any other batch, just the texture difference.

A couple months ago I made a batch of venison snack sticks that came out very firm, almost like biting and chewing solid meat. It was the first time I had used pork belly for the fat so I was thinking it had some thing to do with that and haven’t used pork belly since. Well, this week I made a batch of sticks using beef (eye of round) and pork shoulder that came out firm also. I usually use a mixture of 50% pork shoulder with 50% lean meat (goose, duck, venison), and follow the standard Walton’s snack stick recipes and process. For these two “problem” batches I used the same overall recipes, mixing procedure and time and smoking temps and time as I do with batches that come out “normal”. What variables could I have messed up on that would cause the overly firm texture in the sticks?