Well inspired by Bear's beef sticks, I thought they could use a little more punch to them, so I tracked down a recipe on the sausage making forums to work off of and modified it a bit. Wasn't making a traditional pepperoni, but I wanted the strong flavor profile, with of course, a little (a lot) smoke as well. Started with this recipe as the base:
http://lpoli.50webs.com/index_files/pepperoni.pdf
Dropped the dextrose as I wasn't too interested in adding a sweet element, and went all beef, lean as I am going for more of a snack stick/jerky with no casing.
Ground up some lean top round in the Kitchen Aid, mixed it all together and threw it in the jerky gun. Squirted them out on a piece of parchment paper and a drying rack (had it stick on a different project, and figured the parchment paper would make for easy cleanup and wouldn't pool the fat as much as foil would.
Smoked them at 190 degrees for about 4 hours- internal temp up to 170- turned out pretty darned tasty! I may put some powdered cheese in a few next time to see how that turns out- here's the finished q-view! I'll agree with Bear that by not using the casings I like the taste a lot better, but they are on the ugly side.
http://lpoli.50webs.com/index_files/pepperoni.pdf
Dropped the dextrose as I wasn't too interested in adding a sweet element, and went all beef, lean as I am going for more of a snack stick/jerky with no casing.
Ground up some lean top round in the Kitchen Aid, mixed it all together and threw it in the jerky gun. Squirted them out on a piece of parchment paper and a drying rack (had it stick on a different project, and figured the parchment paper would make for easy cleanup and wouldn't pool the fat as much as foil would.
Smoked them at 190 degrees for about 4 hours- internal temp up to 170- turned out pretty darned tasty! I may put some powdered cheese in a few next time to see how that turns out- here's the finished q-view! I'll agree with Bear that by not using the casings I like the taste a lot better, but they are on the ugly side.
