Pineapple in Snack Sticks

[sakepower]

Looking for some advice. Would like to put tiny chunks of pineapple in a snack stick but am concerned about the papain turning everything to mush. I understand cooked pineapple (like you get canned) diminishes the amount of papain but would rather not have the added moisture. Has anyone tried dried pineapple?

[craigrice]

@sakepower acidity in the fruit can cause problems waltons dose have a pineapple seasoning

[Jonathon]

@sakepower Dehydrated will be better than fresh for sure but you might still run into a little bit of a problem with the papain working in the meat. I’ve never added cooked fruits to my sausage before, I would imagine this would be effective as the enzyme has probably been destroyed but I would also imagine the flavor has been mostly leeched out of the fruit as well.

I’d recommend you go with dehydrated pineapple chunks, if you are looking for them in large quantities we can special order them for you but they should be readily available in smaller quantities at a local grocery store.

Anyone else tried cooked?

[sakepower]

@Jonathon Thanks for the reply! Not papain, but bromelain, my bad. Do you think it would help to encapsulate the pineapple with something, like how Encapsulated Citric Acid works—melting away at a certain temp so the acidity (enzymes) are contained? Not sure what I would use though. This is probably a pro/food science question!

[sakepower]

@Jonathon Maybe Egg white powder?

[Jonathon]

@sakepower It would help but I don’t know how you would do it. The citric acid is encapsulated in cotton seed oil (i am ALMOST positive that is what it is) and that dissolves into almost nothing above 130° F making it the perfect for use here. I don’t know a ton about egg white powder but I feel like it would wash away when it got wet? The only thing I could find on encapsulation and egg white powder was it being encapsulated for some reason. I would ask our application specialist but he is attending AAMP now.

So, it might work but I do think the simplest thing to do would be to use dehydrated.