TrickyDick
New member
Not many photos taken.
Made my first meat snack sticks. I had several cuts of meat in the freezer that needed to be used: Pork Loin Buy one Get one special, Sirlion Roast x2, Pork Butt, Beef Chuck. All total a tad over 15#. I had a snack stick assortment kit on hand for doing 5# batches.
I ground up all the meat and ran it through my manual meat mixer so the various cuts were uniformly distributed. I split into 5# groups, and then ran again through the mixer with a seasoning packet + 1 tsp instacure as the directions recommended. I forgot to add any water, but it mixed up well. Instructions said to stuff immediately, but seemed to me I should let it rest overnight, which I did. Mixer is intended to mix 20# meat and the minimum recommended amount is 10#, but it mixed well enough with 5#, certainly better than I could do by hand.
The next day I plopped the meat into my vertical stuffer. I put it all in in layers - its only meat sticks after all. Well, I foolishly had the seal in backwards and had a lot of meat extruded around the piston so I fixed that. I ended up using the last bit stuck at the bottom placing into a "jerky cannon" so I had essentially no more than 1 oz at most of meat mix that wasn't stuffed into casings. I used 21mm I think collagen casings. These are by far the easiest of the collagen casings I've worked with. It was a bit annoying however, that the scrunched up casing wouldn't fit over the small diameter stuffer attachment I have. I think the next time I'll get slightly larger diameter casings to see if those work, but unfortunately I have quite a bit to use up first.
After stuffing, I put them on racks in the MAK with a tube smoker and Maze type pellet tray at the bottom and the drip plate system removed. I let them smoke while I went to work, about 9 hours later I put on smoke mode after reinstalling the drip plate system. The 8 hours + smoking they received was a bit too much, but hey, I had to work! Would do maybe 3-4 hours next time before hot smoking to an IT of 152. Then I pulled them. I let them rest until the next morning.
I cut them to length, and then packed them up 5 sticks to a pouch. They are super tasty!
One thing I notice, is that while eating, sometimes the collagen comes off in a partial sheet, which is a bit off putting. Not sure why that happened. Maybe was over cooked sticks on the lowermost racks? Maybe was stuffed not tightly enough? Maybe was forgetting to water shock them at the end?
Been giving some to friends and they all really like them.
With that jerky cannon and a 5 # batch, would be easy for anyone to do without fancy equipment. The "cannon"s hold about 2# of meat so you'd need to reload it, but isn't that hard. Heck you could probably even do these with "Jimmy Dean" sausage or other fresh ground meat/sausage!
(I'll post my picture later because I need to get that photobucket thing working..)
TD
Made my first meat snack sticks. I had several cuts of meat in the freezer that needed to be used: Pork Loin Buy one Get one special, Sirlion Roast x2, Pork Butt, Beef Chuck. All total a tad over 15#. I had a snack stick assortment kit on hand for doing 5# batches.
I ground up all the meat and ran it through my manual meat mixer so the various cuts were uniformly distributed. I split into 5# groups, and then ran again through the mixer with a seasoning packet + 1 tsp instacure as the directions recommended. I forgot to add any water, but it mixed up well. Instructions said to stuff immediately, but seemed to me I should let it rest overnight, which I did. Mixer is intended to mix 20# meat and the minimum recommended amount is 10#, but it mixed well enough with 5#, certainly better than I could do by hand.
The next day I plopped the meat into my vertical stuffer. I put it all in in layers - its only meat sticks after all. Well, I foolishly had the seal in backwards and had a lot of meat extruded around the piston so I fixed that. I ended up using the last bit stuck at the bottom placing into a "jerky cannon" so I had essentially no more than 1 oz at most of meat mix that wasn't stuffed into casings. I used 21mm I think collagen casings. These are by far the easiest of the collagen casings I've worked with. It was a bit annoying however, that the scrunched up casing wouldn't fit over the small diameter stuffer attachment I have. I think the next time I'll get slightly larger diameter casings to see if those work, but unfortunately I have quite a bit to use up first.
After stuffing, I put them on racks in the MAK with a tube smoker and Maze type pellet tray at the bottom and the drip plate system removed. I let them smoke while I went to work, about 9 hours later I put on smoke mode after reinstalling the drip plate system. The 8 hours + smoking they received was a bit too much, but hey, I had to work! Would do maybe 3-4 hours next time before hot smoking to an IT of 152. Then I pulled them. I let them rest until the next morning.
I cut them to length, and then packed them up 5 sticks to a pouch. They are super tasty!
One thing I notice, is that while eating, sometimes the collagen comes off in a partial sheet, which is a bit off putting. Not sure why that happened. Maybe was over cooked sticks on the lowermost racks? Maybe was stuffed not tightly enough? Maybe was forgetting to water shock them at the end?
Been giving some to friends and they all really like them.
With that jerky cannon and a 5 # batch, would be easy for anyone to do without fancy equipment. The "cannon"s hold about 2# of meat so you'd need to reload it, but isn't that hard. Heck you could probably even do these with "Jimmy Dean" sausage or other fresh ground meat/sausage!
(I'll post my picture later because I need to get that photobucket thing working..)
TD
