Cured Sausage The Basics of Making Snack Sticks
Grinding Meat Protein Extraction Snack Sticks Stuffing Snack Sticks What Are Snack Sticks?

Snack Sticks are meat snacks and semi-dried sausages that are stuffed into smoked collagen casings and then hung in a smokehouse for cooking. Many Snack Sticks will have a pH between 4.5 and 5.2 to give them some shelf stability and the classic tangy flavor.

Meat Block

10 lb of Untrimmed Pork Butts 1
1 Bag of Willies Snack Stick Seasoning
1 Bag of Encapsulated Citric Acid
1 oz of Sure Cure (Included with purchase)

Equipment

Walton’s #12 Meat Grinder
Waltons 20 lb Meat Mixer
Walton’s 11 lb Sausage Stuffer

Process

The first thing you need to do is grind your meat. You will want to grind the meat twice; the first grind should be with a 3/8 plate and the second with a 1/8 plate. The second grind is going to take much longer than the first grind will as it has already been broken down once, so it has more surface area. Remember to keep your meat cold through this process.

Meat Mixing

Next, you need to mix the seasoning and cure into your meat. To do this, you can either use a meat mixer or do it by hand; because this is a product that you are going to cure and smoke, you need to achieve a high level of protein extraction, so doing this with your hands is difficult. When using a mixer, add the meat to the mixer, then the seasoning and cure, and finally, the water. You will want to mix in both directions until all seasoning and cure have been mixed in and you have good protein extraction. You will know that protein extraction has been achieved when the meat is sticky and tacky; if you can pull a handful of it apart and it stretches, that is a good sign. Add your Encapsulated Citric Acid during the last 60 seconds of mixing. 2

Sausage Stuffing

Next, you will want to stuff it into casings. For snack sticks, 19-21mm smoked collagen casings are a good choice. They are large enough to make the stuffing easier while still being small enough to be considered a true snack stick. Use the largest stuffing tube that your casings will fit on, and then begin stuffing. Stuff until the casing is full and smooth but not overly full, or they will split when you try to hang them in your smoker.

Note

When you are done stuffing, the product has to be held in the refrigerator overnight to allow the cure time to work. If you added Encapsulated Citric Acid or other cure accelerators, you skip this step.

Thermal Processing & Smoking

Either hang your snack sticks on smoking sticks or coil them on racks and smoke at:

125F for 1 hour With No smoke and Dampers Open (drying stage)

140F for 1 hour With Smoke and Damper Closed

155F for 2 hours With Smoke and Damper Closed

175F until internal meat temp of 160F With Smoke and Damper Closed

When they have reached 160° internal temperature, remove them from the smoker and put them in an ice bath to bring the heat down and help set the casings.

Cooling

Lastly, leave them out at room temperature for about an hour before vacuum packing them. This will ensure you don’t get additional moisture in the vacuum bag, which would affect the shelf life of your meats.

Additional Tips Adding High-Temp Cheese adds a nice taste to your sticks, and with very hot seasonings, it can help cut the heat a little Use white oil to lubricate your Grinder Plates and Knives and the Piston Gasket on your Sausage Stuffer Shelf Stable?

Depending on your pH and your Water Activity, your sticks might be shelf-stable, but without a way to test this, you should vacuum pack and refrigerate them.

Foot Notes

1. We did a 10 lb batch here. The bag seasons 25 lb of meat, so we divided out the correct amount of seasoning with our scale. You can use our Seasoning Conversion Chart to find out the correct amount to use for your batch.
2. The Walton’s 50 lb mixer will hookup to a Walton’s #12 Grinder, Walton’s #22 Grinder, or Walton’s #32 Grinder and do the mixing for you. (Return to text)

Watch WaltonsTV: Basics of Making Snack Sticks Shop waltonsinc.com for Bratwurst Seasoning Shop waltonsinc.com for Meat Grinders Shop waltonsinc.com for High-Temp Cheese Shop waltonsinc.com for Boning Knives

Cured Sausage What is Summer Sausage?
Summer Prep Mixing Protein Extraction Summer Sausage Stuffing

Summer Sausage is a semi-dried sausage that is typically stuffed into a larger diameter fibrous casing. It can be made from beef, pork, wild game, or some combination of meat. Some people are intimidated by making it, but the most basic steps can be done by almost any home processor.

Meat Block

10 lb of Untrimmed Pork Butts
1 Bag of H-Summer Sausage
1 oz of Sure Cure (Included with purchase)

Equipment

Walton’s #12 Meat Grinder
Walton’s 20 lb Meat Mixer
Walton’s 11 lb Sausage Stuffer

Casing Preparation

Before you begin processing, take your casings out of the package and soak them in warm water for an hour to make them pliable for stuffing, so do this early enough in the process to prevent any delays later.

Process

The first thing you need to do is grind your meat. Make sure you have oiled your plates and knives before starting your grinder. You will want to grind the meat twice; the first grind should be through a 3/8 plate and the second with a 1/8 plate. Remember to keep your meat cold through this process. You can also simply purchase ground pork, as it is readily available. Just make sure you aren’t buying lean pork because you want and need the fat.

Meat Mixing

Next, you need to mix the seasoning and cure into your meat. To do this, you can either use a meat mixer or do it by hand; because this is a product that we are going to cure and smoke, we need to achieve a high level of protein extraction, so doing this with your hands is difficult but can be done. When using a mixer, add the meat to the mixer, then the seasoning and cure, and finally, the water. You will want to mix in both directions until all seasoning and cure have been mixed in and you have good protein extraction. You will know that a good level of protein extraction has been achieved when the meat is sticky and tacky; if you can pull a handful of it apart and it stretches, that is a good sign.

Sausage Stuffing

Next, choose the largest stuffing tube that your casings will fit over and begin stuffing. Stuff until the casings are full and smooth but leave yourself enough room on the end to close with a hog ring. To close with a hog ring twist the end, and then put a hog ring over the twist and crimp it down.

Note

When you are done stuffing, the product has to be held in the refrigerator overnight to allow the cure time to work. If you added Encapsulated Citric Acid or other cure accelerators, you skip this step.

Thermal Processing & Smoking

Set up your smoker and hang your sausage on smoke sticks or lay on racks and smoke at:
125F for 1 hour
140F for 1 hour
155F for 2 hours
175F until internal meat temp of 160F

When they have reached 160° internal temperature, remove them from the smoker and put them in an ice bath to bring the heat down and help set the casings.

Cooling

Lastly, leave them out at room temperature for about an hour before vacuum packing them. This will ensure you don’t get additional moisture in the vacuum bag, which would affect the shelf life of your meats.

Wrap up

In later classes, we will go over these and more advanced steps in greater detail for making Snack Sticks.

Other Notes

Depending on your pH and your Water Activity, your summer sausage might be shelf stable, but without a way to test this, you should vacuum pack and refrigerate these.

Watch WaltonsTV: Basics For Making Summer Sausage Shop waltonsinc.com for Bratwurst Seasoning Shop waltonsinc.com for Meat Grinders Shop waltonsinc.com for High-Temp Cheese Shop waltonsinc.com for Boning Knives

Cured Sausage Advanced Thermal Processing
Thermal Probes Thermal Probes Wet Towel in Smoker Getting Started at Low Temperatures

The first thing that we want to make sure we are doing is starting the smoker at low temperatures. To avoid putting too much stress on the proteins, we want to stay around 20 degrees from the animals’ living temperature. A hog’s temperature is a little warmer than humans, right around 101° Fahrenheit, so we want to start our smoking process around 120°. The other thing we want to do at the start is to dry the outside of the product. For most home smokers, this will simply mean opening the top and bottom dampers to allow air to travel through the chamber and dry the surface of the product. This drying stage should usually last around an hour, if you skip this step, you will have problems with smoke adhesion, and you might end up with a streaky appearance on the surface of your sausage. If you are planning on using a water pan in your smoker, I recommend that you NOT add it during this first hour to get the full benefit from the drying phase.

Once we are past the drying stage, we want to close the dampers down and begin the cooking process by stepping up the temperature gradually. If you try to go directly from 120° to 170°, you run the risk of cooking the outside of the sausage too quickly, this is called case hardening, and it’s how you end up with a product that is overcooked on the outside and under-cooked on the inside. Slowly increasing the temperature will allow the outside of the meat to transfer heat to the interior of the meat easier.

Relative Humidity

A very important factor when you are smoking any piece of meat is relative humidity. Relative Humidity is the water holding capacity of the air, and being able to increase that can speed up your cooking process and give you a juicier finished product. Most people at home do not have a way to control the relative humidity in their smokers and just put a pan of water in there, which is better than nothing, but it is a shot in the dark. A psychrometer is something that a commercial smokehouse would have that will have both a Dry Bulb and a Wet Bulb, and by getting those two readings, it can give you the relative humidity.

So, placing a pan of water took our relative humidity from about 10% up to 15%, which, as I said, is better than nothing, but it isn’t going to make a ton of difference. So I started thinking of ways to increase that. There are a bunch of chemicals you can add to water to make it evaporate quicker, but they are not ones that you want around food; you could disturb the surface of the water with a constantly moving paddle, circulate air through it, or you can increase the surface area of the water.

The surface area of the water seemed the most doable to me, so I have been experimenting with ways to do this. In my pk 100, I took 3 large auto cleaning sponges, soaked them, and placed them so they were mostly out of the water; the sponges will continue to suck up water and will offer a better surface for evaporation. When I did this, I was able to top out at 50% relative humidity with an average of 47%. I’d call that a pretty significant improvement from the 15% I was getting from a water pan alone.

Next, I bought a dry wick towel, laid it out on a rack above the water pan, and draped part of it over and into the water to try to keep it moist. My thought was that this type of towel, much like the sponge, would stay moist as it could draw water up from the pan. With this setup, I topped out at 54.1% and had an average of 50.1%. I also tried a mop head and a regular towel, but these were not as effective.

Finishing In Water

The last one I want to bring up is pulling your meat out of the smoker and finishing it up in water. I have been doing some testing here on this method, and I think it has a lot of promise. So far, I have found that the best results are when you smoke it to 130°-140° and then move it to water that is a steady 170°. Usually, the 130-160° range takes 3 or more hours, depending on your relative humidity; from 140°, your sausage should be up to temp in one hour. Surprisingly putting it in a vacuum bag does not seem to make a noticeable difference in the quality of the meat or the amount of smoke flavor. I am still going to recommend you vacuum bag it for an extra level of safety, but plenty of people are doing it without them. One note, if you DO use a vacuum bag and you want to see what the temperature is, make a small cut in the up near the seal, insert your thermometer, and then you don’t need a new vac bag if it needs to be cooked longer.

Special Thanks

Parksider and gadahl deserve a ton of the credit for the above section (Finishing In Water) as it was gadahl’s great post titled “Summer Sausage Nightmare” that brought up the idea to us and Parksider that recommended it. Since then I have used this technique 4 times and it has never failed!

Shop waltonsinc.com for PK 100 Pro Smoker Smokehouse

Cured Sausage How to Make Smoked Sausage
Protein Extraction Smoking Sausage Meat Block

10 lb of Untrimmed Pork Butts
1 Bag of Roasted Garlic Smoked Sausage
1 Bag Smoked Meat Stabilizer
1 oz of Sure Cure (Included with purchase)

Equipment

Walton’s #8 Meat Grinder
Walton’s 20 lb Meat Mixer
Walton’s 11 lb Sausage Stuffer

Process

The first thing you need to do is grind your meat. Before you begin, make sure your plates and knives are well-oiled to prevent friction. You will want to grind the meat twice; the first grind should be with a 3/8 plate and the second with a 1/8 plate. Remember to keep your meat cold through this process.

Meat Mixing

Next, you need to mix the seasoning and cure into your meat. To do this, you can either use a meat mixer or do it by hand; because this is a product that we are going to cure and smoke, we need to achieve a high level of protein extraction, so doing this with your hands is difficult but can be done. When using a mixer, add the meat to the mixer, then the seasoning and cure, and finally, the water. You will want to mix in both directions until all seasoning and cure have been mixed in and you have good protein extraction. You will know that protein extraction has been achieved when the meat is sticky and tacky; if you can pull a handful of it apart and it stretches, that is a good sign.

Sausage Stuffing

Choose the largest stuffing tube your casing will fit on. Collagen casings require no preparation, so just put them on the stuffing tube and begin stuffing. Stuff until the casing is mostly full, but remember you will want to twist these into links, so leave it slightly understuffed.

Note

When you are done stuffing, the product has to be held in the refrigerator overnight to allow the cure time to work. If you added Encapsulated Citric Acid or other cure accelerators, you skip this step.

Thermal Processing & Smoking

Set up your smoker and hang your sausage on smoke sticks or lay on racks and smoke at:
125F for 1 hour
140F for 1 hour
155F for 2 hours
175F until internal meat temp of 160F

Cooling

Let them sit out for an hour before vacuum packing them to make sure we don’t get any unwanted moisture in our bags.

Wrap up

Now, whenever we want to eat them, we simply defrost them and either eat them at room temperature or heat them up, as they are already fully cooked!

Additional Tips After your twist your sausage, you can freeze it for half an hour, and then when you cut where you twisted them into links, it will stay closed a little more. What Is Smoked Sausage?

Smoked sausage is a sausage that has been ground, seasoned, and cured, then smoked at lower temperatures instead of grilled or fried. It varies from fresh sausage in taste and consistency and is often stuffed into different casings than fresh sausage. Smoked, or cured, sausage covers a wide variety of types of sausage, including hot dogs, polish, ring bologna, and Kielbasa.

Watch WaltonsTV: Basics For Making Smoked Sausage Shop waltonsinc.com for Bratwurst Seasoning Shop waltonsinc.com for Meat Grinders Shop waltonsinc.com for High-Temp Cheese Shop waltonsinc.com for Boning Knives v

Cured Sausage How to Make Cured Sausage
Thermal Probes Wet Towel in Smoker Thermal Probes Thermal Probes Wet Towel in Smoker Meat Block

7 lb of Pork Butt
For Snack Sticks .35 lb Gigawatt Seasoning
For Summer Sausage .8 lb Habenero Mango
For Cured Sausage .28 lb Cheeseburger Cheddarwurst
.28 oz of Sure Cure
9 oz of water (per 7 lb of product)

Optional Additives

Super Bind
Encapsulated Citric Acid
or
Smoked Meat Stabilizer
or
Sodium Erythorbate

Prep Work

The casings I am using for the Summer Sausage are fibrous, so they need to be soaked for at least 30 minutes in warm water before stuffing. I generally start soaking them right before I start grinding. Neither the 32mm Collagen I am using for the Smoked Sausage nor the 19mm I am using for the snack sticks need any preparation; they are ready to use right out of the package.

We’ve got our plates and knives oiled. A quick note here on plates and knives, Walton’s sells two types of plates and knives, one is disposable, you use them until they are dull and then throw them out and the others can be sharpened for future use. The disposable ones will work but the knives and the plates that can be sharpened are going to give you a better-finished product. You can tell the sharpenable knives from the disposable ones as they have an insert into the blade where the disposable ones don’t, and they look more like a boat propeller.

Grinding Your Meat

Our meat is extremely cold and even though we are doing 3 different products we can grind them all together as they should all go through a 3/8 plate first and then a 1/8 inch plate. With our meat being so cold, you can see how quickly both the 1st and 2nd grind are going. The 2nd grind is always going to take longer, but when the meat is near frozen, it will go much faster. If you notice that either of your grinds is taking an incredibly long time, you might need to have your plates or knives sharpened. You can also check your plates for any cracks or imperfections by knocking them lightly together if they ring nice and clear, you can proceed; if they clunk or don’t ring, they might need replacing.

Since these are smaller batches, I am going to have to do protein extraction by hand, as the scoops on the paddles of a meat mixer will not be able to mix this small of an amount. While mixing, I am going to add my seasoning, cure, and binder along with 10 oz of water. For the water, 10 oz to 7 lb of meat would equal 1 qt per 25 lb batch of meat. We are going to mix until we have nice protein extraction in all of our meat. For the Snack Sticks, I am using Encapsulated Citric Acid, so I am going to add that during the last 60 seconds, along with the cheese, to prevent breaking the encapsulation or smearing the cheese.

Stuffing Summer Sausage

So for the Summer Sausage, I have the largest stuffing tube that these casings will fit over. With Fibrous casings, we really aren’t worried about blowouts, so we are going to stuff it until the casing is full and smooth. Then when we are done with that, we have to clip the end closed. Remember, all the weight of the casing is going to be pushing on this clip, so it has got to be tight. You can use Hog Ring Pliers, Auto Load Hog Ring Pliers, or a Bag & Casing Clipper. If you are doing a lot, I would recommend the Bag & Casing Clipper, as it will give you the tightest seal and is the easiest to use. However, if you only do medium-sized batches and only occasionally, then it might not be worth it, and I would recommend the autoload hog ring pliers. The normal pliers are okay for the beginner, but if you are putting all this effort into a product, then the small investment of the Auto Load Pliers is worth it.

Stuffing Smoked Sausage

So for the Smoked Sausage, again, I want to use the biggest tube that the casings will fit over, and we do want to be careful not to overstuff these as they can blow out. So, a slightly understuffed casing is much better than an overstuffed casing, as we can always twist it a time or two more to firm them up. For these, we are going to do an advanced linking and hang them. Make sure that you have some empty casing at the end of the sausage, and then make a link and fold it over the rope so your 2nd link will be the same size. Then, pinch off that link and twist some of the empty casing around where the two sausage meat. Then spin the two links a few extra times; at this point, it should look sort of like ring bologna. Now hold it from the link you just made and bring the rope up to the top and pinch it down and bring the rope up through the middle of what now should be three brats all hanging. Now just keep repeating this process until you are done. You now have perfectly even brats that should cook at the same rate.

Stuffing Snack Sticks

For the Snack Sticks, we are using 19mm casings, and we have chosen the 12 mm stuffing tube. They should flow fairly smoothly off of this tube as you stuff. As this is going to be the hardest one to stuff as it is the smallest stuffing tube, you probably want to make sure you have your stuffer clamped down to the table to prevent the stuffer from rocking as you turn the handle. Casings should be full and smooth but not overstuffed as we want to avoid blowouts. I like to lay these out and then cut them to the longest lengths possible for how big my smoker is; this way, we will have the least amount of curved sections possible.

Smoke Schedules

Snack Sticks and Summer Sausage in PK-100:

For the snack sticks, we are going to leave them in our PK-100 the entire time and rely on the water pan with the extra large sponges to provide us with the relative humidity. For the Summer Sausage, we are going to pull them at 130° - 140° and finish them up in water so that we are not spending 10 hours smoking them. Basically, we will start them all at 125° with no smoke and dampers wide open for an hour to act as our drying stage, this will allow the smoke to adhere later on. Then we will close the dampers down mostly and add smoke and our water pan with the sponges to the Pk-100 and increase the temperature to 140° for 1 hour. Then we will move it up to 155° for 2 hours and then 175° until the internal temperature is 160°.

For the Summer Sausage, we are pulling it at 130°-140°, and we will vacuum seal them and then finish them up in water that is heated to 175°. You don’t absolutely need to put it in a vacuum bag, but I still recommend it unless you are using Deionized water and are 100% sure your processing area is sterile. It should take us about an hour to an hour and a half to reach the desired temperature.

We will go over this in more detail in future episodes, but 160° is the point of instant lethality, meaning as soon as you hit it, everything we are worried about is killed off. The USDA, however, realizes that lower temperatures can still achieve the same result; they just need to be held there for longer times.

Smoked Sausage in Pro Smoker 500T:

Ice Bath

Once we have reached the desired temp we want to put these into an ice bath to stop the cooking process and to help “set” the casing. If you have excessive wrinkling on your snack sticks or your Fibrous casings are pulling away from the meat when peeling, then your ice bath is most likely the reason why. Once we have left them in the ice bath for 20 minutes, we will take them out and leave them uncovered at room temperature for an hour before moving them to a cooler overnight before packaging.

Shower

If you have a smokehouse that has a shower cycle, you can use this instead of an ice bath. If you are going to use this, then make sure the fan is blowing between shower cycles; this will drop the temperature much better than a shower alone.

Blooming

Leave the meat out at room temperature for at least 1 hour to allow for blooming.

Vacuum Packaging

After you have held your product overnight in a cooler, you can vacuum package them. You want to allow it to sit uncovered in the cooler to stabilize the heat and to make sure all surface moisture has evaporated. If you skip this step, you will end up with moisture in your package.

Shop waltonsinc.com for PK 100 Pro Smoker Smokehouse

Cured Sausage Best Casings For Snack Sticks Smoked Collagen Direction of CollagenRecipe WHAT ARE THE BEST CASINGS FOR SNACK STICKS?

For Snack Sticks, the most common types of casings, and probably the best ones used, are Smoked Collagen Casings, known as the Processed Stix Variant. These casings are tough enough to stand up to being hung in a smokehouse without spilling the meat or breaking under their own weight, they have a mahogany color that will impart a reddish color after being cooked, and they still have a tender bite.

Clear Collagen casings, also known as Processed Fine-T variant, are also sometimes used for snack sticks. These casings have an opaque appearance when they are fresh, but as they are cooked, they will become clear. This gives you a casing that will look similar to fresh collagen or natural casings when finished.

A few people still use Natural Casings to make snack sticks; because of the small diameter desired with snack sticks, sheep or lamb casings would be the only ones used.

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF COLLAGEN AND NATURAL CASINGS

Smoked Collagen Casings are the most popular casings for a snack stick, and for good reason. They are easy to use; simply take them out of the package and put them onto the tube. The Processed Stix (Smoked Collagen) is a strong casing, so when you are stuffing them, blowouts are not a major concern. Stuff until the casing looks full and smooth as it comes off of the stuffing tube. Walton’s also makes many sizes of collagen casings, so you do not need to purchase an entire “caddy,” which would process multiple hundreds of pounds of meat. The major disadvantage to collagen is that it will not hold a twist, and this does not apply to snack sticks as you don’t twist snack sticks; you just cut them into the desired lengths.

The major advantage to Natural Casings is that some people prefer the “snap” of these casings. The major disadvantages are that they need to be rinsed, soaked, and sometimes flushed before using them, costing you valuable time. They are also more prone to blowouts than Collagen Casings are.

WHAT SIZES ARE SNACK STICK CASINGS?

Snack Sticks can range from 15mm in diameter up to 21mm when using collagen and as large as 22mm if using sheep casings. In recent years home processors have been trying to make smaller and smaller snack sticks, with 16 and 17mm being desirable sizes. However, it is more difficult to stuff these size casings as you need to use a considerably smaller stuffing tube, and therefore it will require more force to push the piston down through the canister. The best and most common sized casing for the home user is the 19mm smoked collagen.

For sheep casings, the only ones that should be used are the smallest size of sheep casings (22-24mm) or lamb casings, which can be difficult to find.

Other Notes

Collagen casings do have a correct way to be loaded onto the stuffing tube. If you look closely at the casings when they are compressed into a single solid piece, you will see that they look almost like bowls stacked inside of each other. You want the casing to come off of the stuffing tube as if you were taking one bowl out from another.

Shop waltonsinc.com for Casings Shop waltonsinc.com for Poly Bag Sealers Shop waltonsinc.com for Holly Regular Pork Sausage Seasoning

Cured Sausage Using Encapsulated Citric Acid
Acid Dissolving Dry Product What Creates the Tangy Taste in a Snack Stick or Summer Sausage

If you have ever had a snack stick or summer sausage and it has a pleasing little tang to it, then most likely it is coming from Encapsulated Citric Acid. Some areas of the country, like Wisconsin, won’t even consider it Summer Sausage unless you have altered the pH somehow to create that “tang.” Not only does it add the tang, but it also affects how the cure works. Encapsulated Citric Acid is acid that has been coated in cottonseed oil to prevent it from releasing into the meat too early. It is designed so that the encapsulation will break down when the meat that surrounds it has reached 135°, and it needs to be at that temperature for over an hour to fully dissolve. With most cooking schedules, this isn’t much of a problem as this is where we will generally run into the stall and spend a few hours getting it from 135° - 160°.

pH And Bacteria Growth

Citric Acid acts as a cure accelerator as it decreases the pH and creates an acidic environment. The increased acidic environment allows the cure to work more efficiently; a drop of 0.2-0.3 in the pH can double the rate at which the cure works. So, how exactly do Encapsulated Citric Acid and Nitrite work together to inhibit the growth of bacteria? We will go over that in greater detail in other videos, but the quick answer is that the bacteria will spend most of its energy trying to prevent the acid from getting through its cell wall that it no longer has any energy to replicate.

If you remember high school biology, bacteria are single-cell organisms that replicate exact copies of themselves by growing and splitting. The acidic environment speeding up the conversion of nitrite to nitric oxide also means that we will get a very nice reddish pink color in our meat without having to hold it overnight.

Other Notes

You really should go directly from stuffing your sausage to smoking when using Encapsulated Citric Acid. Holding meat that has had Citric Acid added to it can cause the Cotton Seed Oil to rupture, so the acid will begin to denature the proteins, and you will end up with a dry, crumbly product. When adding this to your meat, you want to add it during the last 60 seconds to prevent the encapsulation from rupturing. For the same reason adding it to your meat and then regrinding isn’t a good idea.

When trying to make shelf-stable products lowering the pH is a vital step along with reducing the water activity. Just because you used Citric Acid does not mean you have a shelf-stable product, but it can help, and even if you don’t get to shelf stability due to your water activity, the lowered pH will help extend the shelf life of the product.

If you want the cure accelerating function but do not want the tang in your snack stick or other cured sausage, you can use Sodium Erythorbate, which is a good cure accelerator that does not impart any noticeable taste.

Shop waltonsinc.com for Encapsulated Citric Acid Shop waltonsinc.com for Additives

Cured Sausage Cured Sausage Equipment
Walton's Meat Mixer Mixing in seasoning What is the Most Important Piece of Cured Sausage Equipment?

This depends on how you get your meat. If you are a hunter, then a Meat Grinder will be the most important as you will be starting with large whole muscle cuts. If you buy meat at the store, then it is easy to buy already ground meat, and that meat will almost always be ground twice at the meatpacking plant. I personally think that both a Stuffer and Grinder are needed to make a quality cured sausage product as, unlike with Fresh Sausage, you will have to get some protein extraction during the mixing process. This means your meat will be stickier and more bound together, which will make using the stuffing function of your meat grinder much more difficult. Still, though, because you need to grind twice and because, in theory, you could still use your grinder to stuff with, I will say a Meat Grinder is still the most important piece of equipment.

Do You Still Need A Sausage Stuffer?

Absolutely you should be using a sausage stuffer when making cured sausage. The time it will take you to stuff off of a meat grinder will be many times longer than it would take with a sausage stuffer. The stuffer will also give you a more uniform and evenly filled product than a grinder will, not to mention the unnecessary wear and tear you are putting on your meat grinder.

As a final point, many Meat Grinders do not come with an attached stuffer/horn small enough to allow you to make smaller diameter products like snack sticks.

Do You Need A Meat Mixer

Yes, a Meat Mixer is a very important tool when making cured sausage. This brings me back to one of my favorite topics, Protein Extraction. Protein extraction is what allows the fat, meat, and water to all bind together and stay bound during the cooking process. Because we are going to smoke these for long periods of time at lower temperatures, the fat will render out of the meat during the cooking process; this will cause a host of problems with your finished product, such as overly dry casings, shrinkage, and lack of taste to name just a few.

Best Grinder For Beginners

The Walton’s #8 Meat Grinder and the Walton’s #12 Meat Grinder are both good entry-level grinders that will allow you to stuff larger diameter casings as well. These grinders work best for smaller batches (5-10 lb).

$500 Budget for Equipment

If I had $500 to purchase equipment to make Cured Sausage, I would buy a 7 lb Sausage Stuffer for $160 and a 20 lb Meat Mixer for $110. This leaves you with $230, but Walton’s #8 Meat Grinder for $379.99 is worth breaking the budget.

Other Equipment Or Supplies You will also need a Smoker at some point, these products can still be cooked in an oven or on a grill, but a smoker will give you a better tasting and more appealing product. For Summer Sausage and a few other products, you will need a way to close the casings. Walton’s Hog Ring Pliers is a cost-effective way to do this. For a commercial application, the Max Pac or the Bag and Casing Clipper. Shop waltonsinc.com for Meat Grinders Shop waltonsinc.com for Meat Mixers Shop waltonsinc.com for Sausage Stuffers Shop waltonsinc.com for Smokers Shop waltonsinc.com for American BBQ Systems Smokers

Cured Sausage Cured Sausage Casing Diameter
Cold Stuffing Cold Meat Taste Difference

For Fibrous Casings, you are ranging from 1.5" all the way up to 2.9", and you can even use some specialty sausage casings up to 4.6". These can change the taste of your finished product in a few ways. First, if you get 2.5 lb of cheese per 25 lb batch and you have a smaller casing, then your slice is going to be smaller, and any cheese in there will be more dominant as it has less meat to contend with. So, if you really like the taste of cheese in your summer sausage or whatever you are making, a smaller casing might be better for you. Conversely, if you want the cheese to be an accent, you can use a larger casing or less cheese, or people can always slice a piece of cheese and add it to a cracker with the summer sausage.

The size of your casing is also going to affect the amount of smoke flavor there is in each slice or bite. It doesn’t really matter how long you smoke a cured sausage; the smoke is only going to penetrate so far. So on a 2.9" casing, the smoke ring around it will take up much less of the overall product than it will with the 1.5", so the smaller one will have a stronger smoke flavor, as again, it has less unsmoked meat to contend with.

Problems With Snack Sticks?

For Snack Sticks, you are almost certainly going to go with Smoke Collagen, and if you are planning on something else, I would recommend that you rethink that decision. Smoked collagen is tough enough to stand up to being hung in a smokehouse and gives you the best-finished appearance with a snack stick. For some reason, it seems like more and more people are trying to go to the smallest diameter snack stick that they can.

The smallest collagen casing that we sell is a 15mm Smoke; these are really for commercial processors only. You need a very powerful stuffer to use a casing this small, and even a hydraulic stuffer might struggle with this size. A 16mm casing is also, in my mind, too small for a retail customer. The pressure it is going to put on your stuffer and how hard it is going to be to stuff just isn’t worth it.

19mm and 21mm are the sizes you should be using when making it at home. The difference between 16 and 19 mm is 1/10th of an inch. That is not enough to make any type of difference in the taste; if you add cheese, then you MIGHT be able to notice a slight difference between a 16 and a 21mm as you might get more cheese in an individual bite, but it would be a very small difference. The real difference here is in appearance and ease of processing. You might want the pencil-thin snack sticks because that is what you saw at the gas station, but at home, you will be happier with the results if you use a slightly larger casing.

Shop waltonsinc.com for Fibrous Sausage Casings Shop waltonsinc.com for Collagen Sausage Casings

Cured Sausage Freeze Meat Before Processing?
Cold Meat Cold Stuffing Avoiding The Danger Zone

When you are making cured sausage, one of the best things you can do to make it easy on you and keep everything safe is to keep your meat very cold through the whole process. Whether it is grinding, mixing, or stuffing, getting your meat around 30° is going to make a difference in how quickly you are done and how good of a finished product you have. Starting with very cold meat also means that you have longer before you are in the danger zone with the meat; between 41° and 140° are optimal growing temps for lots of bacteria, and some can duplicate every 20 minutes, so within an hour you might very well have 8 times the bacteria in your meat you started with, so staying out of that danger zone as long as possible is very important to producing a quality product.

Benefits of Freezing

Meat does not freeze at 32° like we tend to think it does; depending on the pH of the meat, it can start freezing around 27°-29°. Freezing your meat is going to allow it all to move down the throat of the grinder towards the plates and knives more quickly; as meat warms up, the fat starts to become sticky, making it more difficult for it to move down the throat, and once it gets to the throat it will be more difficult to cut. When the meat is very cold, that fat is hard and can’t stick to anything, so it moves faster, and it is easier for the plate and knife to cut it and push it through the plate. Another advantage during this portion is that the fat will not smear as it is ground; smeared fat can cause a host of problems when processing, it can make protein extraction more difficult, and affect the texture of the finished product.

Grinding/Stuffing Speed

At 39°, it took us 43 seconds to grind 4.2 lb of meat (roughly 1 lb per 10 seconds); when we reduced that temperature down to 31°, we were able to grind 4.5 lb of meat in 21 seconds (roughly 1 lb per 5 seconds). When doing small batches saving that amount of time doesn’t really matter, but when processing large batches, it absolutely does. And the real advantage is on the second grind. Second grinds will always take longer because you aren’t pushing chunks of meat down the throat, you are pushing the ground product, so it has much more opportunity to stick the sides and move around and over the auger. When it is still very cold, it will be pushed down that throat faster.

Getting your meat icy cold when stuffing might be even more important from a speed standpoint, especially when stuffing your meat into a snack stick-sized casing or using meat blocks with high-fat content, as the warmer fat gets, the stickier it will be.

Shop waltonsinc.com for Folding Meat Thermometer Shop waltonsinc.com for Sausage Stuffers

Fresh Sausage Cured Sausage (What is it?)
Summer Sausage What Is Cured Sausage?

Cured Sausage is made like traditional sausage; it is ground, seasoned, and then stuffed into a casing for cooking. The difference is that cured sausage has a few extra steps; it has either nitrate or nitrites added to it to allow it to be smoked or slow cured. Cured Sausage covers a wide variety of meat snacks, everything from Snack Sticks and Summer Sausage to Bologna, Salami, and even a Hot Dog is also technically a Cured Sausage.

Meat Block

Sausage can be made from almost any meat. Pork is the most common as it is readily available and relatively inexpensive, but beef is also fairly common, and chicken sausage is also becoming much more common and commercially available. Regardless of what meat block is being used, at least an 80/20 fat ratio is standard, but we like 70/30, and some even go closer to 50/50.

This means if a leaner wild game such as venison is being used, the correct amount of pork fat will need to be added, or the finished product will be less flavorful and overly dry. The best time to add this pork fat is during the second grind so it can mix in well with the lean meat.

Summer Sausage What Does Sure Cure Do?

The cure that is used when wanting to keep a product safe through the smoking process contains sodium nitrite, also known as Sure Cure, Cure #1, or Prague Powder. The salt and cure block the growth of botulism spores, impart a cured flavor, and are responsible for converting the meat from a greyish color (before thermal processing) to a nice pinkish red color. Meat cured with salt alone will not have the same color, as the nitrites help burn that nice red color into the meat and then set it there during the thermal processing stage.

Texture

Cured Sausage will have a smooth interior texture with a small particle size. This happens because we need to achieve protein extraction, and we have to grind it twice, first through a larger plate like a 3/16" and then a smaller plate like a 1/8". Then we will need to mix this until the protein begins to extract from the meat and bind together. All of this extra working of the meat will create a very fine texture.

Casings

Cured Sausage covers such a wide variety of Sausages, from Snack Sticks to Summer Sausage, that many different casings will be used, including Fibrous (Summer sausage), Collagen (Snack Sticks and Larger), Natural (Snack Sticks and Larger), and even Cellulose Casings (Skinless Hotdogs).

Cooking

The cooking or smoking schedules for Cured Sausage will generally be more complicated than for fresh sausage. Since we have added a cure to the meat, we are able to cook it at lower initial temperatures as the cure will keep the meat safe through this process. Cured Sausage can be cooked on a grill, in a smoker, in an oven, or even on a stovetop if desired.

Storage

Depending on the pH and the Water Activity of your meat, you very well might have a shelf-stable product. However, since you probably do not have a way to test either of these at home, you should keep these items in a refrigerator or vacuum pack them and put them in a freezer.

Shop waltonsinc.com for Smokers Shop waltonsinc.com for American BBQ Systems Smokers

Cured Sausage Using Fat (For Sausage)
Fat Melting Fat Taste & Texture

Fat has a few different functions in sausage making, but two of the most important are its taste and its effect on the texture. Pork Fat is what we generally recommend as it has a creaminess to it that most other types of fat just can’t match. You can use other fats, beef is a popular one if you want, but you might not end up with a product that is as good as it could be. Pork fat also tends to be very white, beef, buffalo, and sheep can tend to be a little yellow, so pork fat will also give you a better appearance.

Adding Flavor

Fat adds flavor in two ways, it obviously has its own taste, but it also coats the mouth, allowing seasoning and other flavors to linger longer. Pork Fat starts to melt at 82°, so when you are eating a hot cured sausage, that fat is going to be already melted, and it’s self-explanatory on how it coats your mouth. But how about when you are eating a summer sausage or snack stick that is at room temperature or below? The “mechanical” action of chewing plays a large part in it, as does your saliva. If you don’t believe me take a bite of cold summer sausage, start chewing, and pay attention to how the roof of your mouth and the inside of your cheeks feel.

Too High of Fat Content?

When we say 30% fat content, some people tend to balk and think that is too high. Well, if you have bought sausage from the store, I can almost guarantee you that it is at least 30% and probably closer to 40 or 50. Fat is inexpensive and gives a good taste, meaning it allows the company making it to use less seasoning. Do you really think that they are going to use more lean meat, which is more expensive and requires more seasoning to flavor? Now, some people do have legitimate reasons that they want to cut down on the amount of fat they eat. In my opinion, however, the vast majority of the US would be better off worrying less about the amount of fat they eat and more about the amount of processed food and carbs, but I digress.

If you are looking for a lower fat content sausage, it can be done. I have made a lot of sausages made from chicken breast. If you want to do this, I would absolutely recommend you use Cold Phosphate to increase the water holding capacity and Super Bind or Carrot Fiber to help with moisture and binding. You will also want to grind it an extra time to really break the product down, this will end up giving you a texture that is closer to a hotdog, but it is preferable to a dry and crumbly product.

Shop waltonsinc.com for Heavy Duty Meat Lugs Shop waltonsinc.com for Meat Mixers

Cured Sausage Summer Sausage Casings Stuffed and Hanging Stuffed and Hanging Stuffed and Hanging What Are Common Styles Of Summer Sausage Casings?

There are two styles of casings that are commonly used for making Summer Sausage, Fibrous Casings and certain types of Inedible Collagen Casings. Fibrous casings are made from a paper-like product that will be dry when you take them out of the package, closed on one end, and can be clear, mahogany, or have some pattern or picture printed on them. Collagen casings are a specific type of collagen that is inedible; they will be dry, tied on one end, and clear when you get them.

What Does Pre-Stuck (PS) Mean?

Pre-stuck means that the casings have been manufactured with small holes in them. The purpose of these holes is to allow some pressure to bleed out of the casings during the smoking process but more so to help the casing conform to the meat after the cooking process has finished. If you purchase non-stuck casings, you will need to purchase something like a Casing Perforator to create these holes.

What Are The Sizes Of Summer Sausage Casings?

Casing size varies in summer sausage, maybe more than any other casing. You can get standard casings as small as 1.5" x 12" all the way up to 2.9" x 24". Because of this variation, these casings can hold anywhere from a 1/2 lb of meat up to 4 - 5 lb of meat.

How Are Casings Prepared For Use?

Fibrous Casings - These need to be soaked in warm water for 30 minutes before being used. This will make them pliable enough to be stuffed full. You should only soak how many casings you are going to need, but if you soak too many casings, you can let the unused ones dry back out and use them again in the future.

Inedible Collagen - The easiest way to remember how to prepare these casings is to remember the rule of 15s. They need to be soaked for 15 minutes in a 15% salt solution that is 15°C (59°F). Doing this will rehydrate the casings and make them pliable enough to be able to be stuffed. Even though this is inedible, it is still made from the same basic process as regular collagen, so it is made from the hide of beef and/or pork.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Fibrous and Collagen Casings

The main difference between these two casings is the preparation that is required for the inedible collagen casings. The rule of 15s is very simple to follow, but with fibrous casings, you do not even need to do that. Because of that, Fibrous Casings are the more common casing for summer sausage.

Both of these casings are very strong; blowouts should not be a concern when stuffing them. The tie that already comes on one end will have a loop in it so that you can slide this over a smoke stick and hang them in your smoker.

Other Notes

*Because you will be hanging these from the side that is already tied, you need to secure the other end very well, as all the weight from the meat will be pushing down against whatever you used to seal it. The best way for the home user to do this is with Hog Rings and Walton’s Hog Ring Pliers.

Shop waltonsinc.com for Casings Shop waltonsinc.com for Poly Bag Sealers Shop waltonsinc.com for Holly Regular Pork Sausage Seasoning

Cured Sausage Smoked Sausage Casings Clear Collagen Tubed Hog Casings What Are Common Styles Of Smoked Sausage Casings?

Smoked Sausage covers a wide variety of products; technically, snack sticks and summer sausage would fall under this category. For our purposes, though, we are talking about a bratwurst-like product that has cure added to it and will be smoked in a smoker. The type of casing that is used for this will be important as not all collagen casings are suitable for this.

The two most common styles of casings for smoked sausage are Collagen and Natural Casings, like Hog or Sheep intestines. Collagen Casings come in 3 different styles, Fresh, Clear, and Smoked. For a smoked product, Fresh Collagen Casings should not be used; they won’t stand up to being hung in the smokehouse like Clear and Smoked will.

What Are The Sizes Of These Casings?

Collagen - Smoked Sausage will generally be 30mm or larger. Both Clear and Smoked Collagen have many options above this size.

Natural Casings - Smoked Sausage like Boudain or Kielbasa will almost always be 32-35mm or larger. However, you could make a strong argument that Hot Links belong in this category, and those can be as small as hotdogs, around 26mm. So natural casings can range from 26mm sheep casings all the way to 42mm hog casings.

How Are Casings Prepared For Use?

If you are using Collagen Casings, there is no preparation necessary; simply remove them from the package, load them onto your stuffing tube and begin stuffing.

For Natural Casings, you will need to rinse the salt off of the outside of the casing with clean running water and then soak them for 60 minutes in warm water before they are ready for use. If you purchased your natural casing in a “home pack,” you will also need to flush the inside of the casing by running water through the middle of them. Then you load them onto your stuffing tube, and you are ready to stuff.

Advantages and Disadvantages

The main advantage of collagen is the convenience; no preparation is needed for these casings to be ready to use. Another benefit of collagen is uniformity; they will be the same diameter throughout the entire run, this is especially important for commercial processors. Collagen casings are also less prone to blowouts than natural casings are. The biggest drawback of collagen is that it does not accept a twist as natural casings will. You can twist them, and they will stay that way until you go and cut them, at which point they will unravel and open slightly.

The main advantage of Natural Casings, both hog and sheep, is that they will accept a twist, and once cut, they will remain closed. Some people also prefer the snap of natural casings. The biggest drawbacks are the difficulty in getting them ready and the fact that they are prone to blowouts.

Other Styles Of Casings

Cellulose Casings can be used for skinless smoked sausage products like some types of hot dogs. Cellulose is made from plant material, is very strong, smoke permeable, and even has a black stripe down the side to let you know if the casing has been removed or not.

Other Notes

*For beginners, I always recommend collagen casings over cellulose or natural hog or sheep casings. They require less work and make the entire process less complicated, and the fewer complications, the better!

Shop waltonsinc.com for Sausage Casings Shop waltonsinc.com for Poly Bag Sealers Shop waltonsinc.com for Holly Regular Pork Sausage Seasoning