DIY Snack Sticks Advice

Planning on making snack sticks for the first time in the near future. I have about 7 lbs of duck/goose meat that I plan to add pork to. Anyone have good experience from a store bought seasoning/casing kit? Is there a butcher/meat shop in the south metro that sells the seasoning kits? Seems like a lot of the kits include 21mm casings. Is this the size people usually use or would you say 19mm would be better? Also, thinking about adding high temp cheese. Anyone know were you can buy this locally?

Going to do this on a pellet grill smoker.

Treat duck/goose like beef. 50/50 duck to fat pork. By fat pork I mean like pork shoulder meat with the fat. Generally a shoulder, boned, and chopped to 1″ cubes with all the fat will be about 60/40, lean to fat. For such a small amount, buy pork steaks, bone, chop and mix with the duck.

Fleet Farm, Scheels, Cabelas…. will have seasoning kits with casing that will do about 10 pounds nicely. Or buy two of the 5 pound kits.

Chop everything, add the seasonings and cure. Mix well then grind thru the coarse plate. Then grind again thru a finer plate. Stuff and smoke.

The 21mm casings make a great stick. Apple and/or cherry makes a great smoke for sticks.

Do you have a small enough nozzle for 21 or 19 to go on? Even if you do, some stuffers don’t seal well enough to handle the pressure and when you push cheese through that small of a nozzle it makes it even more of a problem and can blow the seal out of the top.

dhpricco wrote:

Also, thinking about adding high temp cheese. Anyone know were you can buy this locally?

Von Hanson’s Meats normally has different high temp cheese on hand.

From experience the bigger casings are a lot easier to stuff. When they get so small it gets really hard to push the meat through the small tubes.

Add lots of water and it’ll push just fine through a 19. The water smokes out so you’ll never know. The guy I make mine with has been a butcher / stuffer and smoker for 20 years and his advice has helped tremendously.
Don’t be afraid to add 20 ounces of water or more over what the package recommends. Add it right on top in the stuffer

Stuffing will be your biggest problem. I have a custom stuffer that I’ve had up to 65 psi. Almost dangerous pressure. It’s a pneumatic cylinder that holds 20lbs. 2 in the world. Commercial equivalent more than $3k. Most people blow up their stuffer doing snack sticks until they add a whole bunch of water. Of course they gotta dry that outta there and then your left with dehydrated looking shriveled sticks. I don’t add any water to mine but I also have a stuffer that can handle sticky meats!

I buy ALL my seasonings from waltons.com

Sticks is probably the most challenging.

Enjoy! Great way to eat some fowl if you can get it done!

Shriveled out snack sticks ? No I don’t think so. Dont over smoke them. There is no need to over smoke because you add water. Water is a big help in stuffing. Then hang them a day before smoking. Works great for us.

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“Cody’s snack stick” mix from Curley’s Sausage Kitchen (they’re in Iowa, but can order online) is the best general snack stick recipe I’ve tried, hands-down. Just my $.02. They’re a good small business, give you the instructions if you need them and they make a ton of other great mixes, as well.

Bearcat89 wrote:

Add lots of water and it’ll push just fine through a 19. The water smokes out so you’ll never know. The guy I make mine with has been a butcher / stuffer and smoker for 20 years and his advice has helped tremendously.
Don’t be afraid to add 20 ounces of water or more over what the package recommends. Add it right on top in the stuffer

Yes water is your friend when stuffing snack sticks. Also the key is to stuff your sticks as soon as you are done mixing in the seasonings. Then let them rest over night to let the cure do the work to prevent botulinum toxin.

On the water…. do not use chlorinated or fluoride treated city waters. Use bottled water.

Jimmy Jones wrote:

On the water…. do not use chlorinated or fluoride treated city waters. Use bottled water.

Yup. I agree there.
If any one has ever eaten sticks from groundhoffers that is the old guy who I process deer with. We do all work in our garages. But it’s hard to say those sticks are bad, dry or shriveled up. They turn out amazing every time and he has 20 more years experience then me so I would take that tip any day of the week

Thanks for the tips everyone. I bought a used small 5lb stuffer and it looks like I am going to have to order a smaller stuffing tube to work with even a 21mm casing. The tip on using bottled water is good since I probably would have just used tap water.

Our new stuffer didn’t come with a 19 only a 21. So we rigged the old stuffers 19 to the new ones 21 or 23 with electrical tape and it worked great. I think it helped it initially move the meat through the chute as well. That was with a 20 lbs vevor electric stuffer.

Will see if I get around to doing this sometime this weekend. For cure time is there much difference between overnight and waiting 24 hours? Thinking I could grind this all up and stuff it Friday night and then let it cure in the fridge and smoke them in the morning Saturday. Otherwise could grind them Sat morning and wait a whole day and smoke them Sunday morning.

I did 57 pounds of sticks today. 21mm. 50/50 venison to fat pork. To this I added 3, 20 ounce bottles of water. As Bearcat has alluded to, wet the meat down enough to stuff easy. These will go in the smoker tomorrow for about three hours, then in the oven to get to the 152 degrees I want to so that the cure can do it’s job. Then they’ll hang a couple days before trimming to package length and vacuum sealing.

There’s two coolers full like the one shown.

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Here’s my batch, hanging to dry some for maybe three days. Then they’ll get cut to length and vacuum sealed. Over ten feet of goodness here.

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Got around to doing this a couple weekends ago. Lot of work, but they turned out awesome. Used the fleet farm brand 25lb kit called “the back 40” and added some high temp cheese from von hansons.

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