After all of the smokes Spencer and I did over the last 2 weeks, we realized yesterday afternoon that we had 3 pounds of ground beef and 1 pound of pork left. So, we made some summer sausage snack sticks for one last smoke. He won't be home for an extended period for a while, so we made a few more pounds for him to take back.
The meats were already ground so we just tossed them together, added some spice, peppercorns, cure, and cheese, then mixed and stuffed. No action shots of the making, but here's the final results.
For those that are new, I used the following process for the smoking on these sticks:
4:30 PM - Removed the sticks from the frig and allowed them to come close to room temp. Set the temp controller to 120 on the smoker.
5:00 PM - placed the sticks in the smoker without smoke and inserted the temp probe into the largest stick. This allows the sticks to dry a bit and begin slowly warming.
6:45 PM - bumped the temperature up to 130 and added alder smoke with my AMAZEN smoke tube.
7:15 PM - bumped the temp to 140
7:45 PM - bumped the temp to 150
8:15 PM - bumped the temp to 160 (seeing a pattern yet?)
8:45 PM - bumped the temp up to the final temperature of 170
9:30 PM - sticks IT is 147
9:55 PM - sticks IT is 152 so I pulled them from the smoker, brought them inside, and dunked then into an ice water bath for a few minutes
10:05 PM - took pictures and sampled. Mmm, good stuff! :drool
So, it took just under 5 hours for 22mm snack sticks to get to an IT of 152, but they are moist and the casing has a nice snap to it. Summer sausage, in 1.5" - 2.5" casings, would have taken at least 10-18 hours. Yes, this is a long process, but you get quality results.
Can you tell that the boy loves some cheese in his sticks? :biggrin:
The meats were already ground so we just tossed them together, added some spice, peppercorns, cure, and cheese, then mixed and stuffed. No action shots of the making, but here's the final results.
For those that are new, I used the following process for the smoking on these sticks:
4:30 PM - Removed the sticks from the frig and allowed them to come close to room temp. Set the temp controller to 120 on the smoker.
5:00 PM - placed the sticks in the smoker without smoke and inserted the temp probe into the largest stick. This allows the sticks to dry a bit and begin slowly warming.
6:45 PM - bumped the temperature up to 130 and added alder smoke with my AMAZEN smoke tube.
7:15 PM - bumped the temp to 140
7:45 PM - bumped the temp to 150
8:15 PM - bumped the temp to 160 (seeing a pattern yet?)
8:45 PM - bumped the temp up to the final temperature of 170
9:30 PM - sticks IT is 147
9:55 PM - sticks IT is 152 so I pulled them from the smoker, brought them inside, and dunked then into an ice water bath for a few minutes
10:05 PM - took pictures and sampled. Mmm, good stuff! :drool
So, it took just under 5 hours for 22mm snack sticks to get to an IT of 152, but they are moist and the casing has a nice snap to it. Summer sausage, in 1.5" - 2.5" casings, would have taken at least 10-18 hours. Yes, this is a long process, but you get quality results.
Can you tell that the boy loves some cheese in his sticks? :biggrin: