I seem to be having excessively long smoking/cooking times when it comes to processing my snack sticks & starting to wonder what could be the issue.

my recipe is rather simple…mix an 80/20 batch of beef/pork, add 2.5 tsp #1, 2 bottles of soy vay very teriyaki &8-10 ounces finely cubed cheese, coated in corn starch (poor man’s high temperature cheese). stuff in (now)17mm casings & refrigerate overnight.

when smoking, I start at 120 for a couple hours, and then, every hour to hour and a half, bump it 10 degrees…only starting the smoke after the initial couple hours.

my issue is that everything I rewad says that it should be about a 5-6 hour process…currently, I’m looking at 14 hours & still only up to 140 with the smoker set at 170.

I don’t want to raise the temp much higher & render the fats, but I really can’t be spending 18 hours to get my sticks up to temp on a sunday evening before having to get up early on a monday for work…

any suggestions would be greatly appreciated

J