I’ve been making snack sticks for a while, trying different recipes and methods. I usually stuff collagen casings with my 5 lb LEM stuffer and put the sticks on the smoker for a while with various woods, usually hickory. I was reading something where a guy used a LEM Jerky Cannon to make un cased sticks and I got intrigued so I bought one. Here’s what happened.
The LEM Jerky Cannon came with a package of Backwoods snack stick seasoning so I decided to give that a try as I’m still looking for that perfect seasoning recipe. I did add some ECA for a bit of tang.
The Cannon came with not only a jerky tip (which I doubt I will ever use) as well as a ½ inch snack stick nozzle.
I mixed up 3 lbs of 80/20 ground beef and filled the tube. After stuffing the tube, I just started squeezing the trigger and out came nicely shaped rolls of meat. A slow and steady hand is helpful in this process.
As this was a total experiment, I decided to try using my Camp Chef pellet grill instead of the smoker just to see how that would work. The temps were low starting at 125 degrees moving up to 175 degrees so I was able to apply as much smoke as I wanted.
The racks stacked perfectly and fit in the grill area without an issue.
I kept medium smoke up for the first 2 hours, then reduced it to very low for the remainder of the cook time, which turned out to be about 3 hours to get an IT of 170 degrees.
When they were done, I was quite happy with the results. It was actually kind of nice not to have to mess with stuffing casings and all that entails. I also liked using the pellet grill.
The one lesson learned was that it’s a good idea to spray the racks with PAM which I neglected to do…
The LEM Jerky Cannon came with a package of Backwoods snack stick seasoning so I decided to give that a try as I’m still looking for that perfect seasoning recipe. I did add some ECA for a bit of tang.
The Cannon came with not only a jerky tip (which I doubt I will ever use) as well as a ½ inch snack stick nozzle.
I mixed up 3 lbs of 80/20 ground beef and filled the tube. After stuffing the tube, I just started squeezing the trigger and out came nicely shaped rolls of meat. A slow and steady hand is helpful in this process.
As this was a total experiment, I decided to try using my Camp Chef pellet grill instead of the smoker just to see how that would work. The temps were low starting at 125 degrees moving up to 175 degrees so I was able to apply as much smoke as I wanted.
The racks stacked perfectly and fit in the grill area without an issue.
I kept medium smoke up for the first 2 hours, then reduced it to very low for the remainder of the cook time, which turned out to be about 3 hours to get an IT of 170 degrees.
When they were done, I was quite happy with the results. It was actually kind of nice not to have to mess with stuffing casings and all that entails. I also liked using the pellet grill.
The one lesson learned was that it’s a good idea to spray the racks with PAM which I neglected to do…
