After getting a mes and meat grinder from my wonderful wife for christmas,the only thing i could think of was SNACKSTICKS!! Being my first attempt at it i did alot of reading here and asked a few questions.I found some jerky kits and many prepackaged seasonings and thought that would be the way to go,so i bought afew from hi mountain and a couple other companies.Picked up a 10# pork butt and 5# of stewing beef.Trimmed all the sliverskin and most of the fat,i did leave some fat for moisture and flavor.Put it threw my alfa grinder after placing the screw,blade,and plates in the deep freezer along with the meat for afew to just get it close to frozen.It went pretty easy only having to stop grinding once to do a clean out.After grinding i weighed out 6# pork and 4# beef to get the 10# the package called for,put the rest in the freezer and mixed the 10# up with alittle water and back in the freezer it went too! After a quick clean up of the grinder and placing the parts back in the deep,i got my stuffing tubes,butchers twine,and 21mm collagine casings ready.Finally ready to stuff i was alittle worried about stuffing with my alfa after reading that it was not the best was to do it,but it was all i had and i wanted to give it a try to see if it would work out.To my surprise it worked awesome,no blowouts no problems only had to stop for casings and to tie the ends!!!!!Let them sit overnight then on to the newly seasoned mes for its first smoke.Started them at 140 for a hour then to 150 with heavy cherry and sugar maple smoke for 2 hours.After 3 hours i upped the temp to 180 for a hour and finally upped to 195 to finish.Total cook time was 5 and a half hours to get them to 160,pulled and set them in my mud room to cool cause its cold there with no heat.2 hours later i cut em up and put in ziploc bags for their nap in the freig.The next day we tried them...OMG they were awesome!!! great flavor,nice snap,good smoke.......i'm hooked.Gave away most of them to famliy,friends,and neighbors kept only one bag for ourselves.it gives me a excuse to make more LOL. Anyway i would like to give a BIG THANK YOU to smf and its members for all of your wisdom,without you i dont think it would have gone so smooth and been so good.Here is some qview for ya and again a big THANK YOU.
