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The casings are mostly for uniform sizing. If you are using a dehydrator, the trays usually have fine enough screens to dry the sticks without casings. If you plan to use your smoker, and the racks are too large, you could lay your snack sticks out on cooling racks.....the kind used for cookies.....the sticks should hold together well enough on those also without casings.
As for recipes, Hi-Mountain makes quite a variety of very tasty seasoning kits for snack sticks and jerky. Usually find them in grocery stores.
I use the smallest sausage stuffer tube along with the stuffer blades on my grinder and shoot the round sticks on jerky sheets without any casings. Then smoke and pig out. When you smoke them this creates a skin on the outside. I also have a round tube for my jerky shooter that works well also.