@George-T I assume you mean keeping it in a 50% strength solution? If you mean out of the solution not long, it will start to expel water and might even gas out. If you mean in a 50% don't do it more than 8ish days. We are only adding nitrite which is "quick" curing power. For longer cures you need nitrate which breaks down into nitrite over time.

After injecting and soaking over night in cover brine whats the maximum time I can hold before smoking? I just built a large smoker and would like to smoke multiple hams at one time but don't have the fridge space to soak them all at once

Is there any drawback to extending the brining time? If I were to inject and brine for 2 hours prior to smoking would there be any negative consequence?

@Jonathon that was the plan. This will be my first time doing ham.

Why do I need casings? I’ve already shot my deer for the season and the local Processing guy is adding in 20% pork fat to this round I can always add more as needed. Any advice is greatly appreciated

@AaronSilves We dont have a chart, are you injecting and holding in a 50% strength solution?

@Barry1967 How much water are you adding? I will see if I can find a different smoke schedule for skinless but I dont remember seeing one. If we did have one I wouod suspect it would be more based around a different drying phase instead of a cooking schedule. Use a binder, add enough water and at least 20% fat should all help avoid it being too hard. It could have also been case hardening. Without a casing, the drying phase might have removed too much moisture from the sticks and created a hard outer layer.

@Jonathon how much hold time, I've got about a 30 lb green ham? Is there a chart?

@Barry1967 Why aren't you putting them in casings? Your fat content looks to low as well 20 will be an improvement, 30 would be better.

Do you have a suggested thermal process for snack sticks that are not getting put into a casing? Is it different than the process with casings? I hope it is because if I follow the process above they are way to dry and harder than I would like, I have been experimenting with different temps and cook times and am struggling to get the results I want. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Venison with 10 percent pork fat. Next batch with be 20 percent.

So I'm doing my snack stick overflow in the oven and the bottom of the sticks are covered in grease. Does this mean that they're getting out? Temp hasn't gotten over 140 yet

@JerkyIsMySalad As @Jonathon said. Started hanging them last couple batches with no problem though. Weird.

@Jonathon Thanks for the advice! I will plan accordingly!

@JerkyIsMySalad I would say yes you should rotate them for 2 reasons. 1 as you say you will have possibly hotter racks at the bottom and cooler on top but also you might end up with sticks with indentation lines in them so rotate them from top to bottom in the smoker but also rotate them on the rack. Now, someone just commented the other day that they did not rotate theirs and they did not get lines or anything in their sticks, I still would. I would recommend adding smoke and humidity after the initial drying stage which with sticks shouldn't take more than 20 minutes. Good luck!

@Joe-Hell , @PapaSop, @Jonathon or @Austin, I have a question that I hope could get answered before this evening as I am going to make a batch of snack sticks. I have a 30" smoke hollow smoker with 3 racks. If I were to lay the meat sticks on the the racks, should I be rotating the racks? the heat source is on the bottom and I'm afraid that they will be at different temp levels when I finish. My previous batches I have hung from the top rack but it was more work to hang them so I want to try this method. Also, at which stage do you add water for humidity? Thanks in advance

@AaronSilves Yup, it is just a cure accelerator so if you don't add it you just have to hold it and let the cure have time to work It shouldn't have any effect on taste/texture.

jonathan,thanks for your help.,fire hawg

Do you have/need to use the sodium eryothrobate? I thought it was just a cure accelerator like encapsulated citric acid, so I didn't get any. Figured to let it sit for a 24-48 hrs before smoking. Which way is best? Thanks

@Fire-hawg No you do not need it. It is an additive that is designed to increase the pH of your turkey to allow water to bond more effectively with the meat. So, basically, it is going to make your Turkey a little juicier, so it is nice to have but not essential.

curing my first turkey,i ordered waltons complete turkey cure. i did not order cold phosphate,do i have to or need the cold phosphate?

@gChart Good answer!

@Doug-Benton If you're using a cure accelerator like Encapsulated Citric Acid (ECA) then you don't need to let them cure overnight. Make sure you wait until the last 60 seconds or so of mixing to add the ECA so as not to break down the encapsulation. If you aren't using a cure accelerator, then you *need* to hold them overnight to give the cure time to work. Note, things like Sure Cure and pink salt are cures, not cure accelerators.

Thanks for clearing that up this is my first time making summer sausage. One more question can you stuff the casings let them set in refrigerator overnight then smoke them the next day? Or do they need to smoked immediately after stuffing.

@Doug-Benton What @gChart Says is true, 2 qts mixed in the meat but that's maximum, I generally say 1.5 qt if you are using a binder. It will stuff like a dream with 2 qts but your cook schedule will be longer than it needs to be as the meat cooks off some of that water

@Doug-Benton Mixed in with the meat and spices. You may not want / need a full two quarts, especially depending on the type of binder you're using (assuming you're using one). Check out the recent Meatgistics livestream for Jonathon's explanation: https://youtu.be/y9Ffmd873HY?t=1246 This link starts at the water discussion, but it's worth watching the entire thing.

In the how to make summer sausage the ingredients call for 2 quarts of water is that mixed in with the meat and spices or is it used to cool the sausage down after smoking?

@JerkyIsMySalad 80/20 as long as the 20 is pork fat will be fine, 70/30-80/20 is preference more than anything. I'd recommend that you mix it into your meat and then add the water as you are mixing for a cured product. Not sure if that was you but someone asked this same question during the live stream we just did. You can go to waltonsinc.com/live or our youtube page to watch it.

@AdamCA what’s your smoking procedure for smoking snack sticks

@Blaker25 Sure gel is a binder and yes I use it when making any cured and smoked sausage or snack sticks. I start off with my dampers wide open for the first 30-60 minutes then I close it down to about half to a little more for the remainder of the cook. The last time I did sticks they were done in about 2.5 hours.

@Jonathon @Austin, Should I mix sure gel with water before adding to meat mixture? That's what I have been doing but it doesn't specify in this recipe.

@Jonathon @Austin , Is it recommended at 70/30 ratio for venison? Will 80/20 work just fine?

@AdamCA yes I held them overnight because of the cure. So you would use the sure gel or a binder. Do either of them effect the taste. Also. What’s your dampener set at on the smoker?

@Blaker25 I would definitely recommend using Sure Gel as it is going to help make a better product, it's not mandatory but highly recommended. Did you have any humidity in there, a bowl of water or something to introduce humidity? If not I would definitely try that next time and make sure you don't overload the smoker with too much as it can impede air flow. The first time I made Summer Sausage it took forever because I didn't have any humidity and I kept opening the smoker to check the temp not thinking that every time I did that I was letting all the heat out so if you don't have a wireless thermometer I suggest getting one. You didn't mention if you held the sticks overnight after stuffing or if you went straight to the smoker but if you are not using a cure accelerator you need to hold them overnight. That won't effect the cook time but just wanted to point that out.

So I did my first batch of snack sticks today. I have a Bradley smoker and I used waltons willies snack sticks. I followed the directions on how to smoke and everything. So I put 10 pounds of snack sticks inside the smoker. This ended up taking 16 hours to reach an internal temp of 152. I didn’t use any gel binder or anything (because I’m new and not sure if I need them yet. Hoping someone could tell me.) not only did it take 16 hours. They shriveled up and don’t look appealing. I also used the smoked collagen casings 19mm. Love the size. But now the casing taste awful which I think might be from being on the smoker for so long. Please help. Want to successfully make snack sticks but really struggling. Also I feel that 16 hours was way to long. When I need to get the rest of the 25 pound batch done. Please tell me what I’m doing wrong.

@BRagland1 So here is some good information that might not be well known, the mm and fraction plates are 2 ways of saying the same thing. 3mm = 1/8 10mm = 3/8 4.5mm = 3/16 5mm = 1/4 (this is a very odd size and you wont see many) Now, depending on your grinder not all plates will fit. You need to take into account how it locks in, do your plates have 1 or 3 holes around the outside? Is one or two sides shaved off? Also, some commercial style plates are too thick to fit on retail grinders (found that out the hard way with @papasop) but some DO fit. The Weston Pro 22 will take a commercial plate and knife but the #12 and #32 will not. Crazy and I wish it was all more standardized.

I believe you recommend a 3mm plate for your final grind. The smallest one I have is 4.5mm. is that too big for summer/venison sausage.

@PapaSop I got my grinder from Cabela's several years ago. They only carry three plate sizes 4.5-7-10 mm. So I'll just keep my eyes open.

thank you for your help.

@Ode-Tom The 5 series Pitboss at Lowes is $400 and will smoke 20 16oz summer sausage hanging from one rack at the top with s-hooks. Best deal on a smoker you will find anywhere!...It is a verticle smoker with a glass front door and 3 yr waranty!!!!!! My Traeger buddies are JEALOUS!!!!

@BRagland1 Lol. Yep, got my 3mm plate from a local Fleet Farm.

@moffitt7707 You said "I bought the blue ribbon maple bacon seasoning stick" did you buy the snack stick seasoning? That isn't the same type of cure, you should have bought [Blue Ribbon Maple Ham](https://www.waltonsinc.com/blue-ribbon-maple-cure-for-ham) as that is formulated as a ham cure, the stick one is formulated for being ground and formed. I honestly don't even know if it is able to be soluble? Let me know if that is what you did and I will see if I can get some help from our application specialist to convert this. You asked about a chart, did you mean this? https://meatgistics.waltonsinc.com/topic/700/cure-conversion-chart

Hi Do you have a chart for the pork leg making into ham? I bought a 19 # bone in ham. I bought the blue ribbon maple bacon seasoning stick. It says to add in 1oz of sure cure for the whole bag. I want to do injection to sit for 8 days. I have the ham spice, sodium Erthorbate. Then I would do a salt and brown sugar rub on out side. I would like to try this maple but don't want too mess it up.

@Jonathon Good, because my next question was going to be, why can't I find any #22 3mm plates on Walton's sure. Haha

@BRagland1 Yup, your 4.5 will be fine! And thanks @papasop for helping another community member out!

@BRagland1 I'm sure you'll enjoy it just fine. Good luck.

@PapaSop thank you. Wasn't sure how much difference in texture it makes.

@BRagland1 That will be fine. Have used a 4.5 many many times.

@grenier32 Yes, that is me Jon tremblay saying that not me a Walton's Employee!

@Jonathon The Hams look great we ended up smoking 12 hams and 12 slabs of Bacon this weekend. Long weekend but worth it. Quick question. I got the Hams up to between 136-142 internal. I know this is a little short of the 145 but I ran out of propane and it was very late. As long as when we eat the hams we bring it up to 145 we should be ok correct??    

@Jonathon I made a mistake I meant Sure Gel not Sure Cure. I am using the Country Brown Suger Cure. I am not doing it commercially I raise a few pigs every year for myself and my family. This year we raised 6 and everyone wants ham so I decided to bone them out to cure and Smoke. Each Ham is around 9.5 lbs +/-. I am going to mix the following please let me know if you see any problems with my calculations Total Weight= 114lbs 4 Gallons of water 9oz Cold Phosphate 27oz Sure Gel 4lbs Country Brown Suger Cure 1oz California Ham SPice .48oz Sodium Erythorbate Inject 20% or around 3 gallons total Then hold in a 50% solution for 24-48hrs Thanks for the advice and help!! This is the only place I will come to for all my meat processing equipment and seasoning mix!!!

@grenier32 Weigh all of them then add that weight up and calculate the amount. Then inject each one individually so it is pumped to the correct %. But we need to know a few things here. First, why add sure cure? Ham/Bacon Cures already have the cure mixed in to correctly impart a specific amount of ongoing nitrate in PPM. What cure are you using? 2nd, you are doing 12? Are you doing this commercially or do you just have a bunch of friends family who all want hams?

@Jonathon I have 12 fresh boneless hams that I am getting ready to inject, cure, and smoke. My question is do I take the combined weight and divide by 25lbs to calculate my Cold Phosphate and Sure Cure amounts or do I need to take an average weight of a single boneless ham? I am planning on smoking this weekend. Thanks for the help!!!!!!

M. Saboe If you do a 50/50 with an 80/20 cut and removed all the beef fat you’d end up with a dry product. THat would get you somewhere around 10% (a little more as youll never trim all the beef fat off) so I would either add more pork fat or leave the beef fat. Pork fat is better, no doubt but beef fat is better than no fat in my opinion.

I have 12 fresh boneless hams that I am getting ready to inject, cure, and smoke. My question is do I take the combined weight and divide by 25lbs to calculate my Cold Phosphate and Sure Cure amounts or do I need to take an average weight of a single boneless ham?

@cu_hunting Oh shoot sorry, I didnt respond to the ham rinse question. People do both, some rinse and some don't. If you don't like a lot of salt I'd say rinse it but if you are looking for that salty flavor go ahead and go right to smokehouse. A good way to rinse is put it in a bucket in a sink and fill the bucket, then turn the water on low and let it fill and drain for 20 minutes. Obviously make sure the bucket isn't blocking the drain so it can all drain out of the sink though. I don't rinse ham buit I do bacon, if that helps

@cu_hunting lol no, thank you though! Buy stuff from Walton's that's it, entire reason Austin set meatgistics up was to help our customers get the most out of their purchases. It has sprawled past what I thought it would be but at its core its still based on helping customers make good products!

@Jonathon do I need rinse or soak the hams in water after it's done with the brine soak? Thank you so much! Do you have a way to tip you guys? I want to show my appreciation for all your help!

@cu_hunting Let it soak for 4-5 days if you didn't include the sodium erythorbate, sorry but the cure needs that amount of time to work since it wasn't accelerated.

Okay I'm mad at myself... I forgot to include the sodium erythorbate in the injection, but I did include it into the cover brine. Not sure if that will help me at all or not? So mad at myself you wouldn't believe it... All this time and prep... Trying to do everything right and I forget something...

Jon thank you for all your help!!! Quick question if I use sodium erythorbate with all the ingredients mentioned, do I let it soak for just 24 hours or can it soak longer? Will it become too salty? Does it need rinsing and soaking in water after the soak? Thank you so much!!! Too bad you don't have a tip jar that I could donate to... You have been an amazing help to me and I greatly appreciate it!!!

@kroc It's not 100% the same BUT [Hickory Smoke Powder](https://www.waltonsinc.com/hickory-smoke-powder) does a great job of replacing the flavor. In fact, there was a while were @austin and I were doing our Will it BBQ videos and we would smoke something and then try that same thing with hickory smoke powder and we often couldn't tell the difference. Hmmmm smoked ice cream! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ky17U-ClJI

sounds good. I will give it a try. I live in apts. so i can't use a smoker.

@kroc I'd use that hickory smoke powder. I haven't used it, yet, but it sure does smell both good and authentic. I know that liquid smoke actually is made from smoke, but it always strikes me as acrid and just "off" for smoke.

making summer sausage in the oven. Can I use powdered hickory smoke to give it the smoke flavor or liquid smoke.

@TexLaw Thanks for finding that!

@Jonathon [HERE](https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/trichinellosis/data-statistics/tables.html) is that study you referred to. It was a survey done by the CDC in 2015. They found that USA commercial pork was the source of 2 whole cases in the USA from 2011-2015. Bear was tied to 25. @cu_hunting As it turns out, that survey also tied only 2 cases to farm-raised swine.

@Jonathon commercial pork is much safer than home grown pork like my hog that I butchered last Saturday.

@cu_hunting My understanding is that the USDA lowered the requirement of pork to 145 after the # of trichinosis cases from pork fell to an absurdly low level. Now, that isn't going to be of comfort to anyone who does happen to get it but I believe the studies they did found bear to be the biggest offender.

Also you want to cook pork to 160 degrees to prevent Trichinosis... curing smoking doesn't kill the parasite.

Thank you very much!!!! You are awesome! I do have sodium erythorbate, as I bought all ingredients from the first recipe on hoa to make a ham. I have food grade buckets and the liners too, I am all set! Thanks again!

George T I assume you mean keeping it in a 50% strength solution? If you mean out of the solution not long, it will start to expel water and might even gas out. If you mean in a 50% don’t do it more than 8ish days. We are only adding nitrite which is “quick” curing power. For longer cures you need nitrate which breaks down into nitrite over time.

Okay, ignore everything else. This is going to be a recipe tailored for you based 24 lb ham weight: First, we are going to make your injection, ingredients for that will be: Get 1 gallon of water and mix in 2 oz of your cold phosphate (mix really really well and this ingredient HAS to be first) Use 2 lb of country brown sugar cure to the 1 gallon of water Mix in 0.85 OUNCE of the California Ham Spice to the 1 gallon of water Next you are going to inject to 10%: Your ham(s) weighs 24 lb now, when you are finished injecting they should weigh 26.4 lb as they now have 2.4 lb of the solution mixed in. Then we will make your cover brine: Weigh your remaining solution 1 gallon of water is about 8 lb, 2 lb of cure (other additives negligible) so you have 10 lb but you injected 2.4 lb into your hams so you should have 7.6 lb of solution left. Now, take 7.6 (or whatever your left over actually weighs) and add that amount again of fresh water. This gives you your 50% strength cover brine. How you are going to cover this for 3-4 days I don't know, don't freeze it though. My suggestion would be to get something like a [Stark Butcket Liner](https://www.waltonsinc.com/stark-bucket-liners-for-marinating-brining) and use that to encapsulate the hams and the cover brine but you have to do something here. Just injecting and moving on isn't going to allow the cure to equalize in the meat and to allow the cure time to work. If you had added something like sodium erythorbate you could just hold for 24 hours but even then 3 days is really going to give you a better flavor profile For thermal processing: 1 Hour at 120° with no smoke 2 Hours 140° and begin smoking 4 Hours at 190° until internal temperature reaches 145° Ham doesn't need to be cooked to 160° as it is a whole muscle meat. If you are making a ground and formed ham then it needs to go to 160°. I have no idea why we did 160° in our initial video, I am adding a note to that but leaving the 160° n there as well, it isn't going to hurt anything. If you have any other question before you start please start a new topic as Urgent, that'll get my attention quicker than a normal post will.

@Jonathon Hi Jon, It's crunch time... I have been doing everything I can to find out the best information on how to make hams, bacon etc... for months I have been preparing and to find out now that the information I have now is wrong is really freaking me out. I now have two 25 pound hams on ice in my cooler waiting to be processed because I don't know which recipe to follow. I want them to turn out perfect. I have all the ingredients listed out on the country brown sugar cure. I don't have a cooler or a refrigerator that can hold these hams. My only option is to keep them on ice until I can cure them, or last option is to freeze them. So the recipe called for 2 oz California Ham Spice 0.24 oz Sodium Erythorbate, 2 oz Cold Phosphate for a 24 pound ham and 2 gallons of water with the 2lb of brown sugar cure which was wrong. So it's 2 lb per 1 gallon of water... The final temp changed too from 160 to 145 degrees??? Why the change? I need all the help I can get within the next couple days to get the right recipe down to be able to get the best hams I can get. Thank you!!!

@cu_hunting follow this process https://meatgistics.waltonsinc.com/topic/801/cured-whole-muscle-meat-105-ham-basics while I fix this one. I'm thinking that something changed because not only the post but also the video says 2 gallons for a 20% pump but now the instructions on the bag/box of country brown says 2 lb to 1 gallon for a 10% pump. There will be an update on this later today

@Jonathon is the recipe wrong then? 2lb cure per 2 gallons water? for the country brown sugar cure... or is it 2lb cure for 1 gallon of water? to inject it... then half strength for cover brine for 24 hours...

@cu_hunting I agree it can be confusing, maybe I need to split the post into 2 different ways to do it, one that would be using the full gallon of water and 1 that would be for a small single ham? Basically, Add 2 lb of cure to 1 gallon of water and inject your ham until it weighs 20% more than it did before you began pumping it. Then weigh the remaining solution that wasn't injected and add that weight in fresh water. This will give you the 50% strength covering solution that the ham will sit in to allow the cure to equalize within in the meat.

Some of the directions and ingredient lists are kind of confusing at times because you use different units of measure. Like for instance for a 10% pump, or use 2lb of brown sugar cure for a 24 lb ham... I think it would be better to list it out per pound, so like 1.33 oz of brown sugar cure per pound of ham or something along those lines. Or is it per gallon of water... I think I am confusing myself. So it's the strength or solution that is consistent and won't vary, but the weight or how much you pump in is the variable and will be a percentage of the green weight of the ham... I think I am answering my own question here... lol Okay but then why does the Excalibur listing say to use 2lb per gallon of water, and your recipe is 2lb per 2 gallons of water... Uuhg I am going to be doing this on Saturday and I need to get this right, it has to be perfect. 2 hams and 2 pork bellies for bacon.

bpschuebel I am fairly certain these are permeable but I will get verification on that and update this post.

Agreed I hope it end end April holding thumbs Stay safe all

I think it depends more on process. For one i would not add 20% water unless you have a vacuum tumbler. Yea you can add water if you want but just put a dab in to help mix the seasoning. Too much water can drown out some of the cure while marinating. Did you smoke it or just dehydrate it? If you want it a nicer red color marinate it for 48+hours. Even a little erthorbate will burn it redder as well. If you smoked it then put heavier smoke on it a bit longer. Hickory gives great red color. If you just dehydrate it then its harder to get it real red. My jerky cook cycle is 200 degrees the entire cook cycle, i also use humidity for an undisclosed time so 170 isnt that bad.

Doug Benton 3-6% of the products weight once they have been rehydrated if they were dehydrated. Pickled can cause problems with the cure and emulsion so I would avoid that and just use fresh. I love the taste of pickle jalapenos but it can cause issues so I avoid.

Musicsean The downside could possibly be it being overly salty if your brine was very very strong. 2 extra hours isn’t going to hurt anything at all.

SierraPete I love Muffaletta seasoning/taste, I used to have some Muffaletta mix that I would put on sandwiches and I LOVED it!

PapaSop ok thanks