Chipotle & Cheese Meat Sticks (Fermented Semi-Dry)
THE RECIPE:
-----------------------------
This is basically a kabanosy-ish stick, with an added quick fermentation of a summer sausage for acid tang, seasoned to my personal taste, with the addition of cheese... so call it whatever you'd like!
Pork Butt = 3628g (8lb) (from Valley View Farms in Walkerville, MI)
-----
Kosher Salt (1.65%) = 59g
Cure #1 (0.25%) = 9g
-----
Nonfat Dry Milk Powder (0.5%) = 16g
Dextrose (0.5%) = 16g
Chipotle Pepper Powder (0.5%) = 16g (homemade w/ dehydrator)
Red Onion Powder (0.25%) = 9g (homemade w/ dehydrator)
Accent (0.25%) = 9g
Fresh Ground Black Pepper (0.15%) = 6g
Garlic Powder (0.15%)= 6g
Lava Jack High-Temp Cheese (12.5%) = 453g (from Butcher & Packer)
Ice-Cold Distilled Water (1.75%) = 64g/ml
-----
Room Temperature Distilled Water (0.5%) = 16g/ml
FL-C Starter Culture (0.025%) = 1g (but actually used 4g as 1g is pretty impossible to weigh out for such a small batch and over shooting here wont hurt anything/will put me on the safe side)
THE PROCESS:
-----------------------------
The night prior to starting, I deboned and cut up the shoulder into ~1.5" cubes with my helpful bud Felix. Weighed out the meat to 3678g (50g/~2oz heavy to account for what seems to be the inevitable grizzle loss that'll get stuck to the blade/auger), vacuum packed it and threw it in the fridge. Day of, I put the vacuum packs in the freezer to partially freeze the meat for ~1hr while I prepped everything else.
Cleared some room in the fridge and freezer. Sanitized all the grinder parts, two mason jars, a spoon, the humidifier, fermentation chamber, and the meat lug using Star-San. Chilled the grinder parts in the fridge after sanitizing them until ready to grind. Wiped down and sanitized the countertops as well. Weighed out all my seasonings and blended them together in my spice grinder then set aside in a sealed bowl for later. Filled one mason jar with the 64g of distilled water and threw in the freezer. Set up the thermo/hygro readers and humidifier in the fermentation tub so it's ready to go in a few hours.
I set up the grinder and ground 2/3 of the meat through the 10mm plate and the remaining 1/3 through the 5mm plate. (Note: I split it up this way since I stuff with my grinder. I find the additional once through the auger during stuffing tends to overdo it and create far too fine of a texture for me if I grind more through the fine plate). I sprinkle the salt, cure, and seasonings on to the meat in layers as I grind the meat. Put the grinder parts back into the fridge after grinding was complete to cool back down while I'd be mixing.
Added the (frozen) cheese and ice-cold water to the ground meat and mixed by hand until everything was well incorporated (aka until my hands were numb, and then a little more) then threw it into the fridge to chill for 30 minutes while I warmed up my hands and had a beer.
Prepared the culture in the second sanitized mason jar with 18g of room temperature distilled water (I over poured the water a bit and just went with it) and allowed it to rehydrate for 2 minutes then thoroughly mixed with a sanitized spoon.
Added the cultured water to meat mixture and mixed everything again by hand until well incorporated (aka until my hands were numb, again).
Threw the meat mixture back into the fridge to cool down once again while I reattached the grinder parts and got myself set up for stuffing.
Stuffed into 24mm clear collagen casings using the grinder (wish I had a stuffer, see my Final Thoughts near the end). Linked the sticks every ~12".
Unfortunately, I had three blowouts while linking them and basically lost a whole link's worth of sausage between the three explosions - never again with the collagen! They were on sale from Butcher & Packer, so I thought I'd give them a go instead of sheep casings as perfect uniformity seemed like a nice plus for snack sticks. I'm assuming I was just not gentle enough. That said, later I just fried up the loss with the stuffer tube/auger loss and added it to the au gratin potatoes we were having with dinner - waste not, want not!
Hung them inside my fermenting tub and fermented at 77º-79ºF for 28 hours, with a relative humidity of 81-99%. They pinked up nicely, and you can definitely smell the tangy sausage aroma throughout the house.
After fermentation was complete, I cold smoked over Pitmaster's Choice pellets with the AMNPS for two and a half hours (67-72ºF, 71%-84%RH). However, it didn't dawn on me until I lit the pellets that all my smoke sticks are currently tied up in the drying chamber, so I had to improvise and take apart a wire shelf unit we had in the garage to use the legs. Lucky for me, they fit perfectly. Got everything hung, threw on my trusty smoke towel, and we were off to the races.
Once smoking was complete they went into the (pre-heated) dehydrator at 165ºF until they hit an internal temperature of 140ºF (~3.5hrs). It was getting quite late so rather than wait it out, I threw them in the oven at 200ºF to finish them off a bit quicker, only took an additional 15 minutes to reach a final internal temperature 155ºF.
Ice-bathed the meat sticks for 10 minutes. Patted them all dry and cut almost all of the links into quarters to make 3" sticks; left just a handful long and linked for drying later. Put them all in a pyrex, then into the fridge overnight to sit uncovered to chill thoroughly/to make sure the casings remain decently dry. Then I hit the hay.
Vacuum packed 'em the next morning. The smaller ones to eat right away/into the freezer for later, and the big boys just to sit in the fridge for another day or two to allow the moisture to redistribute itself evenly within the sticks before throwing them in the drying chamber to try out drying some.
TASTING NOTES:
-----------------------------
- The recipe seems right on; really nice acid tang and a good slow heat from the chipotle and lava jack cheese. I wouldn't call them overtly spicy, just well spiced - you really only notice the spiciness about a minute after eating one. The casings give a decent snap, extremely similar to Old Wisconsin Snack Sticks. I'm undecided on if I'd add more or less smoke in the future which probably means they're right where they should be, but maybe I'll let some impartial third-party snackers weigh-in on that.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
-----------------------------
- [in my best Jan Brady voice] Stuffer, stuffer, stuffer. I think the texture of the grind came out well, but you could tell some of the cheese bits got overworked. I'll add it to my list of reasons why I should just go buy a stuffer soon. 8lb of grind + 1lb of cheese yielded a lot of snack sticks and was about all my fermentation tub could handle. That said, it'd be nice to be able to do a double batch near the holidays as I suspect these will be a big hit with our friends and family - so I'll likely be keeping my eye out for a larger tub/enclosure to ferment in. The uniformity and "professional" look of the collagen casings really do make them look quite nice, especially if I'll be gifting a lot of them in the future - maybe it's worth the frustration of a few blowouts? I'll have to stew on it some more. Lastly, I wouldn't hesitate to up the chipotle powder a bit next time (0.65%?), but that's more my desire for things to be rather spicy than a critique on the recipe.
Ok, that was a long read - now it's your turn. Please, do let me know your thoughts, what you'd have done differently, or if you have tips or suggestions. Thanks!
THE RECIPE:
-----------------------------
This is basically a kabanosy-ish stick, with an added quick fermentation of a summer sausage for acid tang, seasoned to my personal taste, with the addition of cheese... so call it whatever you'd like!
Pork Butt = 3628g (8lb) (from Valley View Farms in Walkerville, MI)
-----
Kosher Salt (1.65%) = 59g
Cure #1 (0.25%) = 9g
-----
Nonfat Dry Milk Powder (0.5%) = 16g
Dextrose (0.5%) = 16g
Chipotle Pepper Powder (0.5%) = 16g (homemade w/ dehydrator)
Red Onion Powder (0.25%) = 9g (homemade w/ dehydrator)
Accent (0.25%) = 9g
Fresh Ground Black Pepper (0.15%) = 6g
Garlic Powder (0.15%)= 6g
Lava Jack High-Temp Cheese (12.5%) = 453g (from Butcher & Packer)
Ice-Cold Distilled Water (1.75%) = 64g/ml
-----
Room Temperature Distilled Water (0.5%) = 16g/ml
FL-C Starter Culture (0.025%) = 1g (but actually used 4g as 1g is pretty impossible to weigh out for such a small batch and over shooting here wont hurt anything/will put me on the safe side)
THE PROCESS:
-----------------------------
The night prior to starting, I deboned and cut up the shoulder into ~1.5" cubes with my helpful bud Felix. Weighed out the meat to 3678g (50g/~2oz heavy to account for what seems to be the inevitable grizzle loss that'll get stuck to the blade/auger), vacuum packed it and threw it in the fridge. Day of, I put the vacuum packs in the freezer to partially freeze the meat for ~1hr while I prepped everything else.
Cleared some room in the fridge and freezer. Sanitized all the grinder parts, two mason jars, a spoon, the humidifier, fermentation chamber, and the meat lug using Star-San. Chilled the grinder parts in the fridge after sanitizing them until ready to grind. Wiped down and sanitized the countertops as well. Weighed out all my seasonings and blended them together in my spice grinder then set aside in a sealed bowl for later. Filled one mason jar with the 64g of distilled water and threw in the freezer. Set up the thermo/hygro readers and humidifier in the fermentation tub so it's ready to go in a few hours.
I set up the grinder and ground 2/3 of the meat through the 10mm plate and the remaining 1/3 through the 5mm plate. (Note: I split it up this way since I stuff with my grinder. I find the additional once through the auger during stuffing tends to overdo it and create far too fine of a texture for me if I grind more through the fine plate). I sprinkle the salt, cure, and seasonings on to the meat in layers as I grind the meat. Put the grinder parts back into the fridge after grinding was complete to cool back down while I'd be mixing.
Added the (frozen) cheese and ice-cold water to the ground meat and mixed by hand until everything was well incorporated (aka until my hands were numb, and then a little more) then threw it into the fridge to chill for 30 minutes while I warmed up my hands and had a beer.
Prepared the culture in the second sanitized mason jar with 18g of room temperature distilled water (I over poured the water a bit and just went with it) and allowed it to rehydrate for 2 minutes then thoroughly mixed with a sanitized spoon.
Added the cultured water to meat mixture and mixed everything again by hand until well incorporated (aka until my hands were numb, again).
Threw the meat mixture back into the fridge to cool down once again while I reattached the grinder parts and got myself set up for stuffing.
Stuffed into 24mm clear collagen casings using the grinder (wish I had a stuffer, see my Final Thoughts near the end). Linked the sticks every ~12".
Unfortunately, I had three blowouts while linking them and basically lost a whole link's worth of sausage between the three explosions - never again with the collagen! They were on sale from Butcher & Packer, so I thought I'd give them a go instead of sheep casings as perfect uniformity seemed like a nice plus for snack sticks. I'm assuming I was just not gentle enough. That said, later I just fried up the loss with the stuffer tube/auger loss and added it to the au gratin potatoes we were having with dinner - waste not, want not!
Hung them inside my fermenting tub and fermented at 77º-79ºF for 28 hours, with a relative humidity of 81-99%. They pinked up nicely, and you can definitely smell the tangy sausage aroma throughout the house.
After fermentation was complete, I cold smoked over Pitmaster's Choice pellets with the AMNPS for two and a half hours (67-72ºF, 71%-84%RH). However, it didn't dawn on me until I lit the pellets that all my smoke sticks are currently tied up in the drying chamber, so I had to improvise and take apart a wire shelf unit we had in the garage to use the legs. Lucky for me, they fit perfectly. Got everything hung, threw on my trusty smoke towel, and we were off to the races.
Once smoking was complete they went into the (pre-heated) dehydrator at 165ºF until they hit an internal temperature of 140ºF (~3.5hrs). It was getting quite late so rather than wait it out, I threw them in the oven at 200ºF to finish them off a bit quicker, only took an additional 15 minutes to reach a final internal temperature 155ºF.
Ice-bathed the meat sticks for 10 minutes. Patted them all dry and cut almost all of the links into quarters to make 3" sticks; left just a handful long and linked for drying later. Put them all in a pyrex, then into the fridge overnight to sit uncovered to chill thoroughly/to make sure the casings remain decently dry. Then I hit the hay.
Vacuum packed 'em the next morning. The smaller ones to eat right away/into the freezer for later, and the big boys just to sit in the fridge for another day or two to allow the moisture to redistribute itself evenly within the sticks before throwing them in the drying chamber to try out drying some.
TASTING NOTES:
-----------------------------
- The recipe seems right on; really nice acid tang and a good slow heat from the chipotle and lava jack cheese. I wouldn't call them overtly spicy, just well spiced - you really only notice the spiciness about a minute after eating one. The casings give a decent snap, extremely similar to Old Wisconsin Snack Sticks. I'm undecided on if I'd add more or less smoke in the future which probably means they're right where they should be, but maybe I'll let some impartial third-party snackers weigh-in on that.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
-----------------------------
- [in my best Jan Brady voice] Stuffer, stuffer, stuffer. I think the texture of the grind came out well, but you could tell some of the cheese bits got overworked. I'll add it to my list of reasons why I should just go buy a stuffer soon. 8lb of grind + 1lb of cheese yielded a lot of snack sticks and was about all my fermentation tub could handle. That said, it'd be nice to be able to do a double batch near the holidays as I suspect these will be a big hit with our friends and family - so I'll likely be keeping my eye out for a larger tub/enclosure to ferment in. The uniformity and "professional" look of the collagen casings really do make them look quite nice, especially if I'll be gifting a lot of them in the future - maybe it's worth the frustration of a few blowouts? I'll have to stew on it some more. Lastly, I wouldn't hesitate to up the chipotle powder a bit next time (0.65%?), but that's more my desire for things to be rather spicy than a critique on the recipe.
Ok, that was a long read - now it's your turn. Please, do let me know your thoughts, what you'd have done differently, or if you have tips or suggestions. Thanks!
Last edited: