Over the last several months I started making snack sticks. So far mostly beef, but one time pork. I use a recipe from Age Of Andersen's Youtube channel, Beef Bulgogi Sticks which is what I made today.
At first, I borrowed a smoker from a friend, a Masterbuilt Electric 30" digital. I made 3 batches using that, with one great result, one so so, and one I'll call a failure. I then purchased my own smoker, same model but this is 10 years newer and doesn't work as nice, I'll admit that. That said, I've had good results with the temps, (reasonably), it's the smoke that was tough so I bought the cold smoke attachment and used it the first time today.
Ok, smoke issue solved, but something that has happened several times now is the sticks (hanging on wooden rods I made) will hit a ceiling and won't get warmer. The failure batch was in 11 hours and some dried out to inedible, yet never reached 155F - 157F... Today, started 10am, still in a 5:20pm, a few of the 17mm sticks are up to 154F now, but the 19mm ones are still at 143F.
Am I missing something here? The smoker is set to 170 and I did have it at 180 earlier for a while till I saw some folks on this forum (where I"m obviously new) that 170 is the max. I don't have the overshoot and undershoot troubles I've seen others talk about. But the sticks seem to never get up to temp. When I had 17mm casings, those worked. My 19mm ones, not so much.
I did not add water (other than about 1.5oz to dissolve the cure) to a 6.4 pound batch. 6.4# beef and I think 8.3# total ingredients. They are quite slow to dry, which is fine with me, I'll dry them at room temp. I use a Thermoworks probe setup that I've calibrated in icewater and boiling water and it's dead on with every probe (should be for what they cost). I've used the Air probe on the Square Dot to verify the smoker display reads within acceptable error. Display says 170F now for easily 2+ hours and still no where close to the finish temp. One batch using the same recipe was done in 5 hours 10 minutes. Since, I've had a devil of a time. The 11 hour batch I ended up raising the temp and cooked the grease out... not so good. Not doing that again.
Any ideas?
At first, I borrowed a smoker from a friend, a Masterbuilt Electric 30" digital. I made 3 batches using that, with one great result, one so so, and one I'll call a failure. I then purchased my own smoker, same model but this is 10 years newer and doesn't work as nice, I'll admit that. That said, I've had good results with the temps, (reasonably), it's the smoke that was tough so I bought the cold smoke attachment and used it the first time today.
Ok, smoke issue solved, but something that has happened several times now is the sticks (hanging on wooden rods I made) will hit a ceiling and won't get warmer. The failure batch was in 11 hours and some dried out to inedible, yet never reached 155F - 157F... Today, started 10am, still in a 5:20pm, a few of the 17mm sticks are up to 154F now, but the 19mm ones are still at 143F.
Am I missing something here? The smoker is set to 170 and I did have it at 180 earlier for a while till I saw some folks on this forum (where I"m obviously new) that 170 is the max. I don't have the overshoot and undershoot troubles I've seen others talk about. But the sticks seem to never get up to temp. When I had 17mm casings, those worked. My 19mm ones, not so much.
I did not add water (other than about 1.5oz to dissolve the cure) to a 6.4 pound batch. 6.4# beef and I think 8.3# total ingredients. They are quite slow to dry, which is fine with me, I'll dry them at room temp. I use a Thermoworks probe setup that I've calibrated in icewater and boiling water and it's dead on with every probe (should be for what they cost). I've used the Air probe on the Square Dot to verify the smoker display reads within acceptable error. Display says 170F now for easily 2+ hours and still no where close to the finish temp. One batch using the same recipe was done in 5 hours 10 minutes. Since, I've had a devil of a time. The 11 hour batch I ended up raising the temp and cooked the grease out... not so good. Not doing that again.
Any ideas?
