First attempt at Snack Stix

[NDKoze]

My first attempt at smoking Snack Stix in the SI #3 was a bit of a flop. But I have some thoughts on how to make my next attempt better and thought I would share.

Recap:
[list type=decimal]
[*]1. We mixed and stuffed 25lbs of Snack Stix from a seasoning purchased at my local butcher made by Excalibur (one of my favorite seasoning brands).
[*]2. Rested the Stix for about 4 hours to let the mixture meld a bit.
[*]3. Placed them on a cold smoker with the following smoke schedule:

150°F	2 hours
175°F	2 hours
200°F	4 hours

[/list]
Results: The meat was cooked to an internal temperature of 165°F, but the skin was soft and pale colored. Whereas a second set of stix in my Dad's propane smoker turned a nice dark red and had a dryer outer skin. My drip tray filled to the top and actually may have overflowed a bit. So there was a tone of moisture in the smoker. The result is that the stix pretty much boiled/poached instead of smoked/dried. I didn't include a water pan or any access moisture. But these stix just have a ton of moisture in them that needs to be removed during the smoking process. I knew moisture would be somewhat of an issue which is why my third tier of temperature increase went to 200°F. But, the sheer amount of moisture was more than I anticipated.

Learnings/Plan for the next batch: I will be ordering and using a James Jerky Dryer for sure before I try this again.

For the Temperature Schedule, I think I will try the following:

150°F	2 hours
175°F	4-6 hours

I am thinking that with the Jerky Dryer, I won't need to bump the temps to 200°F. But we'll see.

We have now processed 50lbs of Venison Bacon, and 100lbs of Snack Stix from last year's Deer hunt. But we still have 50lbs of Snack Stix meat in the freezer yet to be processed. With the camping season coming up and our freezers pretty full, we probably won't be processing the remaining 50lbs until this Fall.

Anyway, my main reason for posting was to help those who may be planning on smoking some Snack Stix in the future.

My main take away is "GET A JAMES JERKY DRYER"!

 

[DivotMaker]

Gregg, the James dryer is great at removing that excess moisture.  One tip - make sure the smoking phase is done before you plug it in, or you'll have burning wood real fast.  Learned this on jerky. :-[  The remnants of wood didn't last long, but I learned to wait until the smoke was almost gone.

 

[NDKoze]

Thanks Tony.

I re-read all of the Jerky Dryer posts last night and think I have a handle on how to use it.

I would strongly recommend the Jerky Dryer for anyone planning on smoking snack stix.

I haven't ordered mine yet, but I definitely will before I smoke any jerky or snack stix. That ability of these smokers to hold in the moisture is a great thing 90% of the time. But it can be a problem for certain types of smoking where you actually want to remove the moisture from the meat.

Lesson learned.

 

[DivotMaker]

I tried jerky one time before getting the dryer, and it was a mess.  You'll love the dryer - really pulls the moisture out well.

 

[Pork Belly]

My experience making around 300 pounds of snack sticks the past four years pounds has caused me to develop a few opinions:
Butcher & Packer in Detroit sells the best tasting Stick seasoning, I buy the kit it has everything you need.
You need a snack stick stuffing tube, it saves your sanity, use the Collagen casings they are best for sticks.
You need at least a five pound sausage stuffer, stuffing off a grinder makes a mush consistency of your meat.
Vary the texture and size of your grind for a better mouth feel.
Adding High Temp cheese is never a bad idea, its tasty and increase your yield.
Stuff as much as you can at a time making long ropes, hang these ropes or cut to length and place on racks. You can twist licks if you want to look fancy but really nobody cares.
Run the smoker at 250, sticks are thin they take smoke quickly, a hot smoker keeps them from sweating and getting greasy. You want them to cook not sweat.
Don't believe the nitrate hype, use the pink salt that comes in you kit so you don't die or kill your friends.
Use a probe thermometer to tell when your sticks hit 150, yes I know the bag of mix says 165, however they don't want to get sued. 150 makes a moister more consistent stick. If a slab of bacon is fully cooked at 150, why would you torture those skinny little sticks all the way to 165?
At 150 IMMEDIATELY remove the sticks from the smoker and PLUNGE them into a large cooler of ice water, don't be stingy with the ice. This ice bath stops the cooking process, it cools the stick so meat and fat do not separate. It also prevents the sticks from being withered and the casing slipping off.
Cut the sticks to length, wrap in Cling wrap twice and freezer paper once, they will keep excellent in the freezer for several months or until your teenage children find them.
Enjoy

 

[NDKoze]

I think I have answered most of this before in other posts, but I'll add a few new comments.

• I'll have to check out Butcher and Packer as I am always open to new things. But we have been very happy using Excalibur seasoning mixes.
• We have all the equipment (Grinder, 50lb Mixer, 15lb stuffer, slicer, etc)
• We use the collagen casings for our stix (21ml size) and summer sausage (not sure the size, but each stick is about 2.75lbs before smoking). But we use hog casings for the ring sausage as we prefer them for this type of sausage
• I love the high temp cheese in the ring sausage and we have tried it many times with the summer sausage and stix, but recently I have started to prefer the stix/summer sausage without the cheese. I still must have it in the ring sausage though. There is a ton of personal preference when it comes to cheese in your sausage. Some like it an some do not.
• For the stix, we make long ropes and then cut them to size instead of hang them. In order to fit 25lbs in my #3, I have to use all 5 of my trays. I do not think I could fit them all in if I hung them and I would have to have such long stix that the bottoms would get burnt before the tops would get done. We do rotate trays during the smoking to maintain even cooking.
• We tend to ramp up our temps instead of running at 250 off of the bat. We start off around 150 for the first couple of hours and then slowly ramp up to 250 until the the stix hit 155-160 or so. I would prefer 150, but others in my family don't like the texture at 150 and want it done more.
• I forgot to mention that when we process our meat, we have four families working on this. My parents, brother, brother-in-law, and myself. This year alone we will be making 200lbs of pepper stix, 150lbs of ring sausage, and 100lbs of summer sausage. Depending on how many deer licenses we get, we typically butcher 3-6 deer per year and have a standing order with a local pig farmer to raise 2 hogs that we butcher as well.
• We do use probe thermometers. This is a must.
• We usually do most of our smoking in the late fall/earlywinter and sometimes early spring when it is pretty cold here in ND, so we skip the ice bath and spread them thin on cookie sheets & meat tubs and then place in the back of my truck with the hard roll-top cover closed. They cool off pretty fast.
• We vacuum seal our Stix and Summer Sausage and use Press and Seal wrap and then Freezer paper for our ring sausage.

We pretty much have our processes down. The main thing that we need a little more experimenting with is with the cooking temps and timing in the Smokin-It verses our propane smoker. I do think that the addition of the Jerky Dryer is going to make a huge difference though.

 

[Pork Belly]

Very Nice ND,
Sounds like you have all the right toys (tools) to get the job done. I still haven't bought a mixer. I likely will when my last kid moves out, until then they can glove up and dig in. I went with the LEM #8 Big Bite it is more than enough, I also have a 5lb LEM stuffer. I went with the 5 pound so it would fit in the dishwasher. i had not heard of Excalibur.
When you say ring sausage, what flavor are you making? My ring sausage is B&P Trail Balogna. I like a course grind in a 42-44 Hog casing, string tied and apple smoked. I have tried the LEM Trail B. and didn't care for it too much red pepper. I have gotten away from summer sausage the past few years the family just does not request it any more. Although I may run some this year in the #3, its was a pain before.

Can you explain to me what you gain by ramping the heat rather than going hot and smokey from the start? Before when I was using junk smokers I would hang the rings to dry for a few hours then cold smoke them for 2 hours then switch them out. They were finished in the oven to 150. It was a pain but when you have a little smoker you do what you have to. I have run batches in a borrowed Bradley where the first fill was on a cold smoker then the remaining batches were in the hot smoker.Those were the best I have made so far, but now I have the model #3.

 

[NDKoze]

For the ring sausage, we use a family (German) recipe that has been passed down for generations in my family. We call it fry sausage, but I think the name varies by what part of the country you are from. I have also heard it called Country Style or ring sausage.

Our recipe is very simple, 60/40 (course ground pork/venison), TenderQuick, Black Pepper, water, and fresh diced garlic that we soak in the water for an hour or two before mixing. This lets the flavors of the pork and venison shine through without a lot of fancy spices. We like it anyhow. I regularly take a whole crockpot full to church potlucks and I have never brought any home.

The 50lb mixer is awesome! I will say that it holds 50lbs of meat, but you do not get a very good mix with that much meat in the tub. We have found that we get a much more thorough mix if we mix in 25lb batches. If we put 50lbs of meat in it, it would be packed to the top and just wouldn't mix very well. It does have an attachment so that you can hook it up to a grinder, but we have always just done it by hand. It is not that hard and is thoroughly mixed in 10 minutes or so. We got tired of freezing our hands doing it manually.

We typically do 100-200 lbs at a time, so our home-use smokers just aren't big enough. We have a small town country store that makes some of the best fry sausage around. For pennies (usually $30-$40) we have the guy that makes this sausage smoke our fry sausage and summer sausage for us in his commercial out-house style smoker. Until he quits doing this, we're just going to let him smoke our fry/summer sausage. If he ever quits, we'll probably have to build a shed style home smoker.

We do smoke the Pepper Stix and Muscle Jerky in our propane smoker and my Smokin-It #3 smoker. We do these in smaller batches (25lbs). We can basically fit (jam packed) 25lbs of stix in each smoker. So, we can do 50lbs at a time.

We like to ramp up the temps to extend the amount of time that the meat can absorb the smoke. Typically smoke absorption stops once the meat hits 140 degrees or so. So, the slow ramp up give us a very nice smoke flavor and starts the drying of the casings a bit before you hit it with the higher heat.

 

[DivotMaker]

Lovin' it, guys!! ;D ;D  I can see I'm going to have to get into sausage!  I'm really happy you two are here, and getting the interest up on this!!  Thanks!

 

[Pork Belly]

Thanks ND that clears it up, you fill and empty the smoker on one load of #25lb. I was wondering how you were running production. Since your running your own butcher shop you my be interested in this table

http://www.givemebackmygarage.com/

They call it a HYDABench, its pretty cool I know the guy making them. I will be ordering one for butchering and sausage production. Should make the wife happy to get her kitchen table back.

 

[DivotMaker]

Thanks ND that clears it up, you fill and empty the smoker on one load of #25lb. I was wondering how you were running production. Since your running your own butcher shop you my be interested in this table

http://www.givemebackmygarage.com/

They call it a HYDABench, its pretty cool I know the guy making them. I will be ordering one for butchering and sausage production. Should make the wife happy to get her kitchen table back.

Here's the redneck version of the hydabench - easy to clean, and cheap!

http://www.samsclub.com/sams/6-banquet-table-commerical-quality/prod6910044.ip?navAction=push

 

[NDKoze]

Thanks ND that clears it up, you fill and empty the smoker on one load of #25lb. I was wondering how you were running production. Since your running your own butcher shop you my be interested in this table

http://www.givemebackmygarage.com/

They call it a HYDABench, its pretty cool I know the guy making them. I will be ordering one for butchering and sausage production. Should make the wife happy to get her kitchen table back.

Here's the redneck version of the hydabench - easy to clean, and cheap!

http://www.samsclub.com/sams/6-banquet-table-commerical-quality/prod6910044.ip?navAction=push

This is what we use Tony. We have a six footer and an eight footer that we set up in the garage for butchering. I like the plastic for the ease of cleaning and sanitizing.

My parents have a large 4x8 foot island in their kitchen where we do all the grinding, mixing, and stuffing. My Dad has an old grain shed in the yard that is just being used for storage that we have been trying to get him to convert to a mini butcher shop. But he hasn't bit on that yet.  :

 

[DivotMaker]

Keep working on Dad, Gregg!  He'll come around eventually!  I use a 4' folder every time I smoke anything.  I set it up next to the smoker.  It's great for foiling when you take things out, and very easy to clean.  I wouldn't want a wood table, as I always splatter some grease somehow. 

 

[Pork Belly]

Yea I also have two of the plastic folders. I find them to be to short to work at while standing and a little awkward wile seated. You can put the legs into PVC pipes to make it taller however I wouldn't trust it with two 150 lb hog halves on it. The HYDABench not cheap, it falls into the category of what I call "Gun Money. As in do I really want to buy this or would I rather have another gun? I thought
I know the guy so he is willing to make mine a little taller 40 inches to the table top rather than 36. I am tall enough that prolonged work at a standard kitchen counter can cramp me up. Originally I was going to get an 8 ft  butcher block counter top from Ikea and use sawhorses. but for a few dollars more this increase the width of the work area. I can get by with most anything, I broke down two buffalo on the back rack of my Polaris ATP and one of those plastic tables, however I wouldn't want to do it again.

 

[DivotMaker]

Now we have "The rest of the story," as Paul Harvey used to say, Brian!  Yes, I would definitely go "heavy duty" if I were doing what you do!  I'm not sure, but I think most of the folks here don't do 150 pounds at a time!  Wow!  Don't think I'd trust my plastic folder for that, either!  It's all about need; the right tool for the job.  Like you, recommending a 5 lb stuffer for those starting out; that won't fit your needs, so you have gone big (I'm sure).  The inexpensive plastic table will fit the needs of many of us, but those who need commercial-grade should consider the HYDABench.

 

[NDKoze]

I'll keep working on Dad

We typically only work on one half at a time be it deer or hog. We just section it up and everyone grabs a chunk and starts deboning. When we're done we bring in another half and so on. The plastic tables that we have are plenty strong.

I do agree that my back gets sore after a while. But I wouldn't want to stand at a higher table either.

 

[Pork Belly]

I learned to cut meat as a teenager during deer season. Kids trimming meat for the grind, older guys breaking down the quarters and cutting steaks. We always had one person cooking deer steaks and onions on the old Coleman Stove. It was that persons job to walk the skillet around to the cutters with a loaf of bread as each pan was cooked. We did six or eight deer in a night back then. Those lessons I learned int that cold garage have served me well the past thirty years. I have never spent a dime to get a deer processed.

I have always passed it on to those that want to learn. I keep it simple, start with a dead critter and cut off everything that doesn't look like something you want to eat.

 

[Smokster]

The knowledge you guys have still amazes me.

 

[Thesneakyzebra]

Good stuff Gregg, please let us know how the drier works out for ya!

 

[Pork Belly]

Greg,
Have you considered posting or personal messaging me your Fry Sausage recipe? I would be grateful.