Hey guys, it’s Jon from Meatgistics and today we are going to show you 5 common mistakes that people make when they are making homemade snack sticks. Snack sticks are a great treat and a fun way to try some great seasonings as long as you are making them correctly! No one wants to put in all the time and effort into making a batch of snack sticks just to have an easily avoidable error ruin your batch! Read this article for the top 5 most common issues people run into when making snack sticks! …#3 will shock you!!!

#1 You are not using a Binder! The term Binder can be a bit misleading, yes it’s the main function is to help the product bind together but it does much more than that. A more accurate description of what it does is increases your margin of error for a few of these steps! For example, how long you mix and grind your meat are extremely important when making snack sticks because you need the correct amount of protein extraction, if you miss it by a little bit then your texture and taste are going to be off, well you can extend that margin of error by adding a low cost binder like carrot fiber! That is not all binders do, of course, they also give you more room for error in the smokehouse, make stuffing easier and they increase your final yield, meaning more snack sticks for the family to enjoy! For a few dollars, a package adding a binder is a great way to make sure you are making a better product. Have you ever had your casing separate from your meat during the cooking process? That is probably because you did not get enough protein extraction during the mixing phase and a binder can help with that!

# 2 You are not using Smoked Meat Stabilizer with wild game. Snack sticks can be made out of almost any meat block but you can’t treat an all-beef or pork snack stick the same as the one you are making out of a deer you got last weekend! If you are using any type of wild game like venison, elk, moose, etc. you need to be using smoked meat stabilizer. Smoked Meat Stabilizer is a cure accelerator that helps kill many common bacteria found in meat processing but especially in wild game! This makes your product safer and also helps to preserve the smoked flavor after packaging.

# 3 Your meat Block is too Lean! if you are making homemade snack sticks you want a fat percentage of 20% or more. The fat acts as a vehicle for the seasoning and coats your mouth and tongue with the taste allowing you to get more of the flavor and allowing it to linger longer. Fat also gives the snack stick a more pleasing texture and prevents it from drying up. Fat gets demonized by a lot of people because they associate the fat we eat with the fat on our bodies. Now, I am not saying you should switch to an all bacon and sausage diet but fat is essential to keeping our bodies running properly and it is going to give you a better all-around product.

# 4 You are cooking your snack sticks too quickly. If you start cooking at a higher temperature, you risk creating a tough and dry exterior and casing, sometimes known as case hardening. This can cause an issue because once the outside of the stick has cooked it will no longer efficiently transfer heat to the center of the stick, leaving you with an overdone exterior and an under-cooked interior. Case hardening makes it hard to fully cook the product up to a safe temp, and it does not allow moisture to escape as easily and in a semi-dried product like snack sticks, part of our goal is to dry the product out (to an extent, but not as dry as something like jerky). A slow and incremental increase in your smoker temps will help the meat temp rise at a rate that will help prevent case hardening, while still creating a safe and consumable product when finished. Within 2 hours we are getting the smokehouse temp high enough to get the meat up into a temperature range that will begin killing bacteria, and that should be within a sufficient enough time to not be a concern. For more information on this check out our Snack Stick Tutorial which will walk you through the process step by step!

# 5 You are either over or under stuffing your casings. If you have ever had your casings pop or burst during the cooking process there is a good chance you are overstuffing your casings. If you normally end up with an extremely wrinkly product then there is a good chance you are understuffing your casings. With anything you are going to link like sausages, it is better to understuff than to overstuff as you can always twist them a few more times to tighten them up, but you can not do that with a snack stick. It will take some practice but finding the correct stuffing proportions will help you with the appearance of your product and the ease of cooking.

So there are 5 very common mistakes people make when making snack sticks! If you have questions on what might be causing a specific problem for you leave us a comment and we will get back to you, or you can always follow me on here and send me a private chat if you’d prefer to not post your question so everyone can see it!

Learn about Using Your Grinder To Stuff Sausage with Walton's and Meatgistics. Watch the video, read the guide, and then post your questions or comments below.

Meat Hacks: Using Your Grinder To Stuff Sausage.
Most grinders have the ability to do more than just grind meat, you can use some of them to power meat mixers, hook up jerky or patty makers to them and most of them have the ability to stuff sausage into casings. One important note is that this is a feature of these types of grinders, it is not ideal and using an actual sausage stuffer will make the process much easier and faster but we are going to show you the process of using your grinder as a stuffer.

This is the Weston Butcher Series #12 electric meat grinder and it comes with everything you need to use it as a stuffer. First is the star stuffing adapter, this is going to take the place of a plate and knife and it’s main job is to prevent the auger from riding on the bottom of the throat which would damage both the auger and the head assembly.

Then we have 4 different sized stuffing horns to choose from. We have 20, 30 and 40mm stuffing horns that are tapered down to make stuffing easier, the issue with that is that it means the smallest casing we can get on the smallest of these three horns is the 32mm casing and only a small amount. Then there is a separate horn with a 10mm metal attachment at the end for stuffing smaller diameter casings, when using this it is also necessary to use this high speed auger in place of the star stuffing adapter. The smaller horn and casing you use the longer it is going to take to stuff your casings, so doing something like a summer sausage casing is going to be easier than making a bratwurst.

For our purposes today we are choosing the 20mm stuffing horn and a 32mm casing. The collagen is packed down so while we are only able to get a few inches of the casing onto the horn it will translate into a few feet of finished product at a time.

We are going to lock the stuffing horn into the stuffing f****e, to do so you line up the three slot on the f****e with the 3 knobs on the horn and push it into place. Then we are going to put our star stuffing adapter onto the stud where the plate and knife would normally go and finally we will put our locking ring over the stuffing horn to keep it in place.

I have already mixed my seasoning in with my meat, and for anyone wondering it is a brand new one we are carrying, it is Excalibur’s Chocolate Chili Flavored Bratwurst that I have been excited to try for a while now.

So we have everything all set up, we turn our grinder on, push down the meat through the hopper and as you can see it will come out the stuffing horn and into the casing. It is much slower than if we were using a sausage stuffer but it does work. I had six pounds of ground pork and it took me xx minutes.

So while a Sausage Stuffer certainly is a lot easier to use and we would recommend it you can stuff off most grinders, just make sure you purchase one that supports this feature and use the correct stuffing horn.

Make sure you subscribe to WaltonsTV and remember to tap the bell next to the subscribed button to get notified about all new videos, plus like and comment on this video, and visit waltonsinc.com and meatgistics.com to find Everything But The Meat!

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Join us every Friday when we share an interesting and helpful fact about meat or meat processing and how that can effect your product!

Most of the time this isn’t really something to worry about as all it is is the salt, sugar or tyrosine which is an amino acid being pushed out of the interior of the meat as the jerky dries. The salt is soluble in the water and oils of the meat so as the water is removed from the meat the salt no longer has anything to be bound up in and it is deposited on the outside of the meat in the form of dry white powder or crystals.

To prevent this from happening you can make sure that you are using the correct amount of seasoning or salt in your jerky as an overabundance of salt is the main cause of this. Another common reason for this to happen is overdried jerky, so if you are seeing this all of the time try adjusting your drying times.

Also, you can make sure your jerky is at or below room temperature before packaging it.

Now, there is also a small chance that this could be mold. A good way to make sure it is not mold is to vacuum seal your product after it has been dried, mold needs the presence of oxygen to grow so if you see the white crystals or powder on the surface of the meat while it is vacuum packed you can be assured it is not mold.

You can wipe it away with a damp towel if the appearance is something that really bothers you. This might be somewhat difficult depending on the level of dryness and texture of your jerky.

Join us every Friday when we share an interesting and helpful fact about meat or meat processing and how that can effect your product!

When making any type of sausage out of leaner cuts we always recommend that you add pork fat. Fat plays a few important roles in sausage making including binding, flavor, and texture, wild game or lean cuts just don’t have enough fat to give you a quality sausage. You can add other types of fats but pork fat does have some characteristics that make it uniquely suited for use in sausage.

First pork has the lowest melting and solidifying temperature of any of the major red meat fat sources. This is part of the reason that it has such a nice creaminess to it, this helps coat the inside of your mouth when you are eating it and allows the flavors from the sausage to linger longer. As you can see here the texture of this pork fat is much different than the beef fat. Now, part of that is the pork is belly fat and the beef is fat I trimmed from the round but the larger portion of it is the general difference between beef and pork fat.

Second Pork Fat is a nice Bright white color making it very appealing in products like Summer Sausage, Pepperoni or Salami where we are really looking for particle definition. Beef fat tends to have a light yellowness to it that just doesn’t pop as well as the pork fat does. The only other red meat fat that I am aware of that is as nice and white is goat and that brings us to another reason, flavor.

Pork fat has a very neutral flavor to it meaning that it won’t interfere with the flavor of your sausage much, if at all. Beef fat tends to have a pretty strong beefy flavor which isn’t necessarily unpleasant but it is strong.

Join us every Friday when we share an interesting and helpful fact about meat or meat processing and how that can effect your product!

When making homemade meat snacks like Jerky, Summer Sausage or Snack Sticks at home it is important that you keep the meat as cold as possible before and during processing. This isn’t only to keep the meat out of the “danger zone” that zone between 40 and 140° F that bacteria will grow most rapidly, though this is important. The other reason is that it is going to make things easier and give you a better-finished product.

When slicing jerky a cold almost frozen piece of meat will slice much easier, cleaner and more consistent than a warmer piece of meat. It will help prevent the meat from “tailing” where it fails to cut through the back edge of the meat and creates what looks like a tail on the piece of meat that is on the carriage.

When grinding meat for Sausage you will notice that close to frozen meat will grind much quicker than warm meat. This might be surprising but it is giving the auger a more solid surface to push down the throat of the grinder and towards the plate and knife. This is especially effective on the second grind of meat where we are typically using a plate with smaller holes as well as trying to force already broken down meat towards the plate and knife. Since the meat is in a much softer form at this point it has a tendency to spill back over the auger instead of traveling forward as it should. On a second grind, you can often finish 2 to 3 times faster when your product is ice cold vs when it has just been taken out of the refrigerator

You will notice a significant difference when you are stuffing your sausage into casings. This happens because as you cool the meat especially the fat, it becomes less sticky. This means it will take less energy to turn the crank and push the meat through the tube and into the casing, not only will it be easier to stuff but your meat will be less likely to cause problems inside the casing as well.

Learn about Cooking Bacon With Water with Walton's and Meatgistics. Watch the video, read the guide, and then post your questions or comments below.

Adding Water to the Pan for Bacon?
Few things are better than waking up to the delicious smell of frying bacon. However, if you cook it in a pan you get splattering everywhere and if you cook it in the oven you almost have to run the clean oven cycle when you are done. Recently there has been a lot of talk about using an old trick when making burgers on a stove and that is adding water to the pan. It is supposed to reduce splattering and make everything easier to clean up. Sounds like a great excuse to cook up some bacon to me!

So the first step is to get your bacon in the pan before it is hot, then since we are cooking it in water the salt is going to leech out a little so I recommend you sprinkle a salty seasoning like the Signature Pork Seasoning or one of Excalibur’s Rump Rubs, I did the St Louis Rub and it was excellent.

Next, add enough water so the bottom of the pan is completely covered, you can add more to where the bacon is covered but then you have to wait around for all that water to boil off. I tried both methods and found the greatly reduced cook time from covering just the bottom of the pan was well worth the tiny amount of extra clean up that was necessary.

Then you can follow a fairly normal process for cooking the bacon. I started it out on high at around 450° until most of the water had evaporated and then reduced the temp down to about 380 until the bacon was nice and crispy.

I was fearful that I was going to end up with something that was either totally floppy or tasted just like ham but it retained its flavor, though a little less salty than it would have been just in the pan and you can cook it as crisp as you want.

So, would I do this again? Absolutely! And I have been, I have been cooking bacon all day here playing around with this method and trying different things out. So a couple quick tips, thicker slices will perform a little better, if you want a salty bacon then sprinkle on a seasoning with a good salt content like the signature pork rub and once the water is cooked off reduce the heat a little, it will take slightly longer but it seems to improve the texture.

Make sure you subscribe to WaltonsTV and remember to tap the bell next to the subscribed button to get notified about all new videos, plus like and comment on this video, and visit waltonsinc.com and meatgistics.com to find Everything But The Meat!

Easily subscribe to any category or topic on the Meatgistics community site by clicking the green “Subscribe” button to get an email each time a new post is made!

Hey guys it’s Jon from Meatgistics. Jerky, whether it’s made from beef, venison or any other type of wild game, is a great way to make sure you always have a healthy snack around. Read this article to see 5 easy tips to make sure your homemade Jerky comes out amazing!

#1 Make sure your equipment is clean
This is an obvious one but it is one that many people overlook and is especially true if you are using wild game. If you have dirty equipment or a processing area bacteria will grow on it. Bacteria then gets into your meat and starts spoiling it, you can kill the bacteria but you can not fix spoiled meat by cooking it. Some of the bacteria associated with spoiled meat can reproduce incredibly quickly, doubling their numbers in under an hour.

# 2 Cut Cold and Against the Grain
If you have ever tried to slice warm, uncooked meat thin then you will appreciate the necessity of slicing your jerky meat when it is still a little frozen, if it has some ice crystals in it that is still better than trying to cut it when it is warm. Also cut against the grain, this will make for a much easier to chew finished jerky which will in turn feel more tender. Aim for pieces around 1/4" thick, if you have a good deli slicer this is the perfect time to use it.

# 3 Air flow is very important
If you don’t have a dehydrator then you can dehydrate your jerky in the oven but you need to make sure it has the correct amount of air flow. The easiest way to do this is just to crack the door. We recommend using a combination of an over and a dehydrator, start it off in the oven and then move to the dehydrator once the meat has reached 160°F. Most dehydrators will not get your meat to 160°.

# 4 Use a pre-packaged seasoning
I know a lot of people want to use the family recipe but companies like Excalibur are around for a reason. They spend years perfecting their seasoning and spice blends to ensure that it has the correct amount of salt, spices and cures to give you the best possible product. They have a large variety of jerky seasonings with everything from the classics like Colorado Jerky seasoning to Habanero Lime!

# 5 Marinate overnight or vacuum tumble for 30 minutes
Once you have sliced your jerky and used the correct amount of seasoning you need to make sure that you let it marinate for the appropriate amount of time. Usually 12 hours or overnight will allow the cure to penetrate and keep the meat safe through the dehydrating process. If you have a access to a vacuum tumbler then you only need to let it vacuum tumble for about 30 minutes, this is because the combination of being under a vacuum and the impact energy from the tumbler will pull the muscle fibers apart and let the cure penetrate much faster.

So there are 5 good tips to keep in mind when making Jerky. If you have questions on what might be causing a specific problem for you leave us a comment and we will get back to you, or you can always follow me on here and send me a private chat if you’d prefer to not post your question so everyone can see it!

Hi guys, I had some close friends over recently and I fired up the grill to cook a few KC Strip Steaks for everyone, other than my wife who is a Communist, whoops, sorry I meant Vegetarian! One of my friends told me that steaks from my grill always seem to taste better. Since flattery will get you everywhere with me and they are friends I told them everything I do to a steak before during and after cooking it. All of my tips seemed very basic to me, things I just assumed most people did but they had either never heard of some of them or thought they were old wives tales. I decided to check with some other friends and family outside of this building, since most of us have been in this business long enough that we are meat snobs! I was surprised to find out that most of what I was talking about was not common knowledge even amongst people I consider to be very good cooks. So here are just a few tips to make your next dinner party or BBQ a hit!

#1 Not all Steak are equal
If you are buying your steaks at a grocery store the person grabbing them for you is usually not the butcher, they are just help that got assigned there for their shift and they probably know as much about choosing a steak as I do about Nuclear Fusion. Don’t be afraid to ask for specific steaks or to ask for a closer look at a specific steak. What you are looking for is a nice even marbling of fat throughout the entire steak, this is going to give you a nice tender cooked steak.

#2 Let the steaks warm up!
Take your steaks out of the refrigerator 45 minutes before they go on the grill so they can warm up. A cold steak on a hot grill is a recipe for a tough as leather disaster of a steak!

#3 Consider Tenderizing
If you purchased a steak that did not have good marbling on it or has other imperfections consider tenderizing it with a mallet or even a Jaccard meat tenderizer. Tenderizing a steak works by damaging the collagen and connective tissues to make the texture and taste of the steak better. If you have purchased a great steak there is no need to do this.

#4 Ultimate Steak and Roast Rub
This isn’t one that everyone would know but Excalibur’s Ultimate Steak and Roast Rub is the best thing to put on steaks! It is pretty much the only seasoning we put on steak anymore and I’ve tried everything from just salt and pepper to a hazel nut coffee rub, which was better than it sounds. Ultimate Steak and Roast Rub is our bestselling shaker for a good reason and is something you should add to your pantry for any steaks but also for veggies and salads.

#5 Reverse Sear!
I cannot say this enough, Reverse Searing is the best way to cook your steak. It gives you a perfect cook throughout the entire steak and still gives you that nice crust.

#6 Only flip once
You do not want to flip your steaks often, the less you flip it the more juice your steaks will retain. Also flip it with tongs or a spatula, DO NOT pierce your steak to flip it. If you are reverse searing then this tip only applies to the final searing portion.

#7 Butter is your friend
You need to start putting a dollop of butter on each side of your steak as it is finishing up on the grill. A lot of people like cooking their steak in a pan with butter if they are cooking inside on a stove. The issue with that is butter has a low smoke point and you are going to want to get to some temperatures well above that, so put the butter on the top side and let it melt down over the steak instead!

#8 Pull up short of your target
The most commonly ordered steak is medium rare so unless specifically told otherwise that is what I aim for. Like Hank Hill said, if someone asks me for a well done steak I politely ask them to leave my house! The correct temperature range for medium rare is 130° to 135° so I make sure to never go above 130° as they are going to continue to cook another few degrees after you take them off of the grill.

#9 Re-Season
After you pull your steaks off of the grill hit them with some more seasoning, most of what you have on there before you put them on the grill is lost during the cooking process, so make sure to at least hit them with some more salt and pepper.

#10 Let them rest
There are differing opinions on the effectiveness of napping your steaks. Some people say there is no proof that it has any real effect. I don’t care what anyone says, I know it makes a difference when I let my steaks sit for 2-3 minutes before serving them. Just do it trust me on this!

So there are 10 easy things you can do to have your friends drooling anything time you are grilling for them!

It is well-known that eating meat products can provide many health benefits and nutrients in our diets. However, many times we are shopping at the grocery store we do not stop and look at what is in a meat product, what the fat ratio is, or what the proportions are. We simply grab an item off the shelf and go on our way. Making homemade sausage, jerky, snack sticks, summer sausage, hams, bacon, and so many other meat products can be done easily at home in a healthier process without sacrificing taste or flavor, and many times you can improve or customize the flavor to fit your distinct palate. Here are our top five reasons why you should begin taking control of what goes into your meat products and making your own homemade sausage, jerky, and other meat snacks from home.”

You have probably heard the saying that if you enjoy sausage you don’t want to see how it’s made. This saying is referring to the questionable portions of the cow or pig that processors used to put into sausages (cheeks, lips, etc.), this is not as much of an issue now but that doesn’t mean that we can’t still learn something from this saying. One of my main issues with purchasing a snack stick, summer sausage or other type of processed meat product at the grocery store are the ingredients. When I make my bratwursts or snack sticks at home I control exactly what is going into them, for example I know my chicken brats have 100% chicken breast along with carrot fiber, no other fillers and no preservatives, so if I am tracking my calories its super simple to do. I know the nutritional value of each and every brat, same goes for anything I make out of pork butt or shoulder. I control how much fat, cheese and salt goes into each one and I know that all premium ingredients were used, no old or questionable meat was processed into my food.

Something interesting happened when I started making more and more of my own food, I started to become much more conscious of exactly how many calories were in everything I was eating, whether I bought it at the grocery store, ordered it at a restaurant our made it myself. When I started doing this I had three basic goals for everything I made, I wanted options that had a good balance of taste to calories, a healthy fat content and I wanted everything to be easy to make. Now I weigh the health versus taste benefits of almost everything I put into my body. Even meat snacks I make myself I’ll find myself asking do I really need to add 20% pork fat to this venison sausage or can I get away using a binder, is the pork fat going to make it that much better? Or, if I’m already making a pork brat, do I really need to add cheese and therefore more fat to this? Asking yourself these questions is important, they can be a great way to balance the calories with the taste of the product.

Another thing I hate about buying meat products from the store are the portions. For example, if I bought two store store brand bratwursts, each one is 4 ounces but I only really need to eat 6 oz to fill my nutritional and hunger needs…well if I make two Brats then two Brats are what I am going to eat! Those other 2 ounces that I did not need or even particularly want but still ate are the reason most of us are carrying around 5, 10 or more pounds than we should be. It is also the main reason why I make my homemade brats into smaller portions. I use 28 mm casings, which is smaller diameter than the 32 mm you normally use, and I make them shorter than what you see in the store. You wont even notice it being thinner than the store bought kind and with them shorter and thinner you can probably have 3 of those instead of 2 store bought ones. Your brain will see that third one and be convinced you are getting more even if the total weight you consume is the same or even less.

Processing your own food can make healthy eating fun! I know that sounds like an oxymoron but we have an incredibly wide variety of seasonings available at Waltonsinc.com, have you ever seen a Habanero Mango, Supreme Pizza or Reuben Flavored bratwurst in your supermarket? Processing at home allows you try out all sorts of flavors that you would otherwise never have access to. It took us a long time to find out which seasonings worked best with chicken for brats or to marinate extremely lean beef in but we made sure we kept notes on what worked and what did not and ended up having a great time. There is also a great feeling of pride that comes from people saying that your sausages taste better than what they buy at the store!

Instead of just plopping down money at the store for something someone else went through the effort to make you will be the one cutting, grinding and stuffing. This might not burn a ton of calories in an of itself but staying active is almost always healthier than laying around on the couch right?