Non-Fermented and Firm/Dry Beef Snack Stick: Any Advice to add "snap" to my sticks?

[Dave in AZ]

G geostriata
First, those recent pictures of sticks look amazing, what a fine looking product!

There is a ton of data here, thanks! I was surprised by your final "answer" though, it seems a complete departure in time and method from your steady gradual data gathering? Everything was 6 hrs to 12 hrs or so, all good, then suddenly 30 hrs in final post??

I will have to reread to help me extract your lessons learned, as I admit I started getting confused by the process jumping around a bit, and stuff I thought you said was a great method seems to be gone in final post.

I completely admire your dedication to this search, and it is so absolutely hard to find folks who actually record their process and take good data! Your posts are thus super valuable and a rarity!

I will throw in a quick datapoint, as I THINK I am targeting the same goal... I have settled on kabanosy, 6mm grind, NFDM 1% binder, strong extraction, 21mm sheep casings, 2 hr 145f smoke, 8 hr 145 to 165 (haven't decided on final temp yet for dryness). Sticks are bagged in fridge for a week to equalize moisture and rehydrate casing a bit.

Observation:
1. You should use grams for amount of batch instead of lbs!! All your other measurements are grams, spices and cook weights, your use of grams per lb of meat for recipe makes it difficult to quickly grasp recipe percentages! Just commit to grams and metric for that final thing and you'll be easier to understand and uniform, thx!

Couple questions:
1. What casing now? 15mm fineT? Or is that the same as "fresh collagen" casing?
2. What % water is added to meat for mix now?
3. Can you tell me a commercial stick you're trying to replicate for look, texture, and this hard to follow 'snap'? I'd like to buy and try, so I have a better understanding of your goals, and decide if mine are the same desires? Thx!

Thx again, will reread thread after reply to see if I can clear it up in my head ;)

 

[GatorAGR]

If you have a decent humidity hanging is fine, otherwise I wrap them in pink paper or just put them in a paper bag and rest a week or so in the fridge. Firms them right up.

This is great advice. Just finished my 2nd ever batch of snack sticks last week, put them in a paper bag for about a week. HUGE difference. I like mine on the dry side and these turned out amazing. Used the Legg's seasoning. I'll work on my own seasoning in the future, but wanted to master the smoking/drying process first.

 

[geostriata]

What kind of bag are you using to equalize after the sous vide process? And, you're getting your sticks to 150 internal with only one hour of cook? Fat doesn't render out doing that? Thanks for all the information on this thread.

Sorry for the delay, I was away for a bit!

Sous vide is just for restoring the casings and helping restore texture after an extensive drying process. I've used both vacmaster bags and ziplocks with the same equalization result. However, my wife reports that she sort of misses the tougher/snappier casing. The sticks still pass the snap test after a week in the bag, but I think she likes them crunchier. So for her, I think I'll try a little air drying after a week in the bag. For me, I think the sticks are fine right out of the bag.

The humidity is what is needed to get to 150IT quickly. Sometimes it doesn't quite get there after an hour, which is why I check and then add another 30mins at 170 if it's not quite there. My smoker did get a little high (180F) for a bit during this test, so maybe that's another factor. In any case, the goal is the same: use humidity and higher-than-usual temps to get to IT early on. It's harder and harder to get to IT as the sticks dry out. Fat out did not occur at this stage for me, but I suspect if you go for more than 2 hours, you will have some fat out.

 

[geostriata]

G geostriata
First, those recent pictures of sticks look amazing, what a fine looking product!

There is a ton of data here, thanks! I was surprised by your final "answer" though, it seems a complete departure in time and method from your steady gradual data gathering? Everything was 6 hrs to 12 hrs or so, all good, then suddenly 30 hrs in final post??

Thanks, Dave! Also, that's a great question! Here's an explanation for the key breakthroughs that led to my vastly increased cook times:

• Batch 34/Divine Animosity Batch: This is where I first had a breakthrough going with a 14 hour cook (1hr pre-cook, 12hr, 1hr finish). So from this point forward, most of my batches (other than a few experiments) were aiming for ~12-14hrs or so. So here's where we move from 6 to 12hr.
• Mysliwska experiment: You can search for this in another thread, but what I learned here is a two-cycle smoking method. More evidence in an extended cook time. I did a few experiments here and there with one cycle vs two. My feeling at present is that if you're just cooking, there's no need to go with two cycles. However, if you're employing smoke most/all of the time, there does seem to be some benefit in avoiding the smoke/drying stall (more below).
• Batch 43: This is a key batch where I did the 12hr @ 140 and then did another cycle (+8hr) similar to Mysliwska. So here's where we move from 12 to 20 hrs (in two cycles).
• Batch 46: This one was a learning failure. I tried one long 20hr smoke and I measured weight loss along the way. On hour 15 or so, the weight stopped decreasing. Granted, my baffles weren't as open as they usually were on this one, but this is the first time where I realized that the smoke might actually be interfering with drying after an extended amount of time. After this, I start trying to go 20+hr in a single cycle.
• Batch 49: Now that I have IT covered early, I can just cook as long as I like until desired dryness. So that's what I do, measuring weight loss every hour until I get to my desired 57-60% weight loss. This is how I got to 30 hrs.

I'm sure there's a ton of ways to accelerate this process, but now that I finally start to feel I have a handle on the process, I'm going to just do more and more batches on this schedule before I even consider saving time/effort. (And you're right to suspect my "final" claim -- I think I'll keep working on this for a while. It's final in the sense that I finally have a repeatable good outcome, solution, but it can be improved a lot, I'm sure)

I will have to reread to help me extract your lessons learned, as I admit I started getting confused by the process jumping around a bit, and stuff I thought you said was a great method seems to be gone in final post.

I completely admire your dedication to this search, and it is so absolutely hard to find folks who actually record their process and take good data! Your posts are thus super valuable and a rarity!

I will throw in a quick datapoint, as I THINK I am targeting the same goal... I have settled on kabanosy, 6mm grind, NFDM 1% binder, strong extraction, 21mm sheep casings, 2 hr 145f smoke, 8 hr 145 to 165 (haven't decided on final temp yet for dryness). Sticks are bagged in fridge for a week to equalize moisture and rehydrate casing a bit.

Good luck with your Kabanosy! To be honest, I find I prefer how beef turns out in "super-dry" form over pork. Maybe that's my peculiar taste, or maybe some of the procedures work less well with pork, I don't know. Super curious how it turns out for you!

If you're after a snack stick that's more like jerky and has a rougher texture, and find that it still seems more like "sausage," then you may want to consider omitting the binder. That being said, I've had some great batches with binder (potato starch, NFDM, store bought milk powder, etc...). I think when starting with a new snack-stick recipe, binder makes it easier, but when refining texture/drying after you have an established recipe, it gets in the way.

More importantly, I'd recommend to use percent weight loss to decide when to stop smoking/cooking/drying. If you don't get this far enough, then putting it in a bag makes it worse and not better. If you do get this far enough, then you don't need to equalize in a fridge and equalization goes faster at room temps anyways.

Observation:
1. You should use grams for amount of batch instead of lbs!! All your other measurements are grams, spices and cook weights, your use of grams per lb of meat for recipe makes it difficult to quickly grasp recipe percentages! Just commit to grams and metric for that final thing and you'll be easier to understand and uniform, thx!

Couple questions:
1. What casing now? 15mm fineT? Or is that the same as "fresh collagen" casing?
2. What % water is added to meat for mix now?
3. Can you tell me a commercial stick you're trying to replicate for look, texture, and this hard to follow 'snap'? I'd like to buy and try, so I have a better understanding of your goals, and decide if mine are the same desires? Thx!

Thx again, will reread thread after reply to see if I can clear it up in my head ;)

As for the metric consideration, I 100% respect and agree with the sentiment. If we were outside the USA, I would totally agree. Since we're in the USA, then I think it's easier to buy meat by the pound instead of kilogram. Since going fully SAE is not a good idea either, then I think the happy balance is pounds for starting meat and metric 100% then on for everything else.

As for your questions:

• Casing is 15mm "Processed Stix" casing for my snack sticks. Fine-T unfortunately doesn't come in 15mm size (despite claims from some unscrupulous stores. I used calipers to verify...). I use Fine-T for everything else. It's just SO much easier than natural, only like 5% tougher than natural, and it enables me to cook sausage on my hot-dog roller :)
• I use 75gms of water for every 453grams (1lb) of meat. So that's ~16.5% water-to-meat. Way above normal, but I like my wrinkly skin and easy stuffing. If you don't like wrinkles, you can use 28g H2O (6.1% water-to-meat)
• Here's the commercial stick: https://ajaysmontanabananas.com/shop. A while ago, I literally bough every snack stick on amazon and tried the three-finger snap test on them all. They all failed (not to mention tasting like floppy sausage). This is the only one I've found to pass it that you can order online.

 

[geostriata]

This is great advice. Just finished my 2nd ever batch of snack sticks last week, put them in a paper bag for about a week. HUGE difference. I like mine on the dry side and these turned out amazing. Used the Legg's seasoning. I'll work on my own seasoning in the future, but wanted to master the smoking/drying process first.

My two cents:

It really depends what you're after and where you're starting from. I find the pink-bag-in-fridge approach results in a crispier exterior (i.e., less equalization) than you would from hanging at decent humidity. So if you're starting from a sausage-like stick already, it can add a bit of pleasant contrast to it as a finishing step.

However, it's not going to turn a sausage stick into a dry snack stick. Over about a week, it stalls in drying and doesn't show further improvement.

In addition, if you're already starting from a really dry stick (~50+ weight loss from initial), then pink bag seems to hurt the stick more than it helps. The contrast I mentioned above stops being as pleasant as it goes from "firm" to "tough."

 

[geostriata]

Just ran a quick experiment to go into sous vide longer duration. It was also intending to test three different drying methods, but upon review, that part of the experiment is invalid due to differences between batch 48 and 49.

	Initial Weight	Sous Vide Method	Post SV Texture/Weight	Drying Method	Post Dry Taste/Weight
48A (56.5% wt loss at this point)	51.64g	80sec @ 160F	Tender / 52.62g	Pink Bag in Fridge	Inedible. Too dry to eat. (18.4% inside, 14.4% outside)
48B (56.5% wt loss at this point)	54.03g	40sec @ 160F	Tender / 55.05g	Hang at 70% RH / 65F	Crispy skin (wife says too crispy). Dry but still edible. (10% surface, 18.3 inside)
49B (53% wt loss at this point)	72.87g	Until IT 148F (7.5 minutes)	Tender / 75.56g	Ziplock Bag	Tender inside, slight crisp on skin. (48.6% on inside, 35% surface)

Previously I had eschewed using sous vide to get to IT because I had done so previously and it caused almost all moisture to return. However, since these are really small diameter sticks I revised it to only be under sous vide for a minimum amount of time (instead of prolonged, like is typical w/ sous vide). It seemed to work ok! There was only 3.7% weight gain due to moisture addition from sous vide. So rather than messing about with moisture in the smoker I could just finish with SV and be okay (or use it in addition for added safety).

On an unrelated note, I also compared two samples from batch 49. After equalizing both with a vacuum seal for a week, I opened one and let rest a day in a ziplock. I then compared with another straight out of the vacuum bag and found the ziplock to taste better. The skin got a bit crispier. I think this leads me to thinking it's better to bag with a little air in the bag (or to equalize in bag, then rest in the open air for a big, then re-bag with air).