Walton's Employee

mikemikemike Can you stick something to the inside, or make a mark and count the RPMs? I think your cool packet will work. Sorry. on the hams, are you injecting first and then tumbling?

Eric1 No worries, the same day response is about as much as we can ask for! Okay, so my first suggestion would be to use a binder. It is going to help a lot with all sorts of snack stick issues and any time there is a texture or casing fall off issue that is what I’d suggest since you said you use an ice bath. That is almost always the biggest cause of casings falling away. Ahhhh I just reread and I think you are getting moisture in your bag when you seal them. I didn’t correctly read that they come out of the freezer, for some reason I read that as cooler. Okay so after ice bath put them in a cooler overnight and then let them sit at room temp for about an hour to make sure the moisture from the fridge has dried off. I’ve done that before and after a week in the freezer (or less honestly) you can start to see that happening.

If you are already laying them out after the fridge to let them dry off then try running a fan over them for 20 minutes or so, then let them sit for the remainder of the hour. Check the surface and if they are moist hit them with the fan again. Snack stick is semi-dried sausage so there will always be some moisture but the majority of it should be bound up in the meat and not on the surface. 5 oz to 5 lb is a fine water to meat ratio so no worries there!

bubba_mcnabb surprised to see that much of it in tubed, those are usually the pick of the litter so to speak. I’ve asked in the past and been told it is just a slightly thicker section of the casing wall. I’d imagine when cooked it won’t b e noticeable but please let us know if that isn’t the case!

Chef TexLaw
Not going to get in trouble with me. I’d prefer people speak their mind here and let us know their honest feedback. What we can or cannot do may vary at times depending on the requests, but it is always worth it to throw ideas out there and ask questions.
Everything from Excalibur is blended to use the “appropriate” level of salt in a product. Jerky, fresh sausage, cured sausage, ham/bacon cure and anything in-between has a different percentage of salt that is needed to make the seasoning perform and taste properly, plus make the meat perform and be a certain consistency. For example, fresh sausage usually has a lower salt content than cured sausage. Cured sausage needs more salt to help in protein extraction during mixing to achieve a proper binding of the protein, fat, water, and seasoning. The quickest and easiest way to change the salt content is to just use more or less of the seasoning, and if you need more flavor from spices, add your own extra specific spices. Like Jonathon said, if we did custom blends on it to remove the salt entirely, it would require a large quantity for a minimum, and the price would be quite a bit higher. The hard thing for us is that with as many different blends that we have, we cannot make a salt-free version of everything. It could be possible to do, but we’d have to pick and choose just a couple to start with and see what the demand was like. I would be worried that the demand would justify it for everyone. All of our blends at least don’t use MSG unless specifically stated. We made that change a long time ago. I really don’t know if creating a line of salt-free sausage seasonings would be feasible, unless there was a lot of users asking for it, or someone specifically wanting multiple cases of 1 seasoning at a time (not just 1 or 2 bags of it). We could potentially entertain doing something here, but I wouldn’t get hopes up too high for it.

Departing Contestant You can’t say [censored] on the radio, or [censored] or [censored] or [censored], you can’t even say I’d like to [censored]
Monty Python

zbigjeff Sorry, I missed your initial question, smoked collagen casings can absolutely be used to hang and smoke, I just told him to use the clear b because he was using the fresh so I assumed he didn’t want to use the mahogany-colored casings. I’d say the same thing for yours, I’d switch to clear IF you are hanging them. if you are just coiling them (sounds like that is the case, sorry, trying to answer as I go!) then using fresh should be okay. If you try to hang fresh casings you are eventually going to open your smoker and have all your sausage on the floor because they will break.

Read first! You are fine to continue using fresh as you are laying on a rack and not hanging. I am going to leave the above information for anyone who might want a little more information on it but as long as you don’t want to hang them you are good to go. You may possibly have a texture or “bite” difference but it isn’t anything I think would be worth buying double the casings for!

Eric1 Are you using a binder like sure gel and how much water are you adding? Also, you said water bath, did you mean either shower or ice bath? You don’t want to let it sit in cool water, it has to either be ice water or spraying it down with running water and have a powerful fan blowing on them. If you do the shower go 1 minute shower, then 1-minute fan and go back and forth. I assume the casings are smoked collagen?

mikemikemike
Smoked turkeys it is speed at 50 with a 20" vacuum for 1.5 hours
Brisket 8 rpm with a 21" vacuum for 1 hour (2 different recipes said same thing)
Bone-in ham would be 7 rpm for 3.5 hours. Now for that, I imagine it has to be in a cooler, just adding ice water isn’t going to cut it for 3.5 hours
For boneless products they all simply say tumble until all liquid is absorbed, there appear to be too many variables for them to list a vacuum %, speed or time.

mikemikemike I’m fairly certain we cut the water out entirely with the glycerin. I looked up the one that we got (had a red white and blue label and just said Vegetable Glycerin) and it is not $35, I am pretty certain we paid 20 something so it does seem to have gone up, but that price is for a gallon which would get you through a few batches, so up to you if it is worth it. I’ll try to get some tumbling schedules up for you on those items later today!

PapaSop Yeah, we are absolutely going to have him back on, great guy and great organization. He and I were kicking around ideas for that civil service topic after the podcast like we were going to fix the country somehow! Very fun conversation and once we can do events again we will have more from them.