@Departing-Contestant “Hot as a monkeys bum she said while she smiled quietly to herself!” She’s a good Shelia, Bruce and not at all stuck up!

If you want 20% fat (in that range is what you are looking for) then it would be 5 lb of fat for 25 lb of meat. Now, most meat you start with is going to be in the 20% range anyway unless you are suing deer or another low fat ungulate. What is your initial meat block?

Fat is included in what is added up to 25, so if you did 25 plus 2 lb of pork fat that is now 27 lb and you would have to use more than a full bag of seasoning.

No apologies necessary, getting things right is always worth and extra question or two!

There were a few people who were excited when we were ordering the taco snack sticks. Has anyone tried it and what are your thoughts? I love it but wanted to see what other people have thought

Now, you can mitigate them opening back up by twisting them hard and then slightly freezing them before cutting them into individual links but the rounded, closed edges are most easily achieved with natural casings.

@Njlungbuster That’s the biggest downside to collagen. Check out this portion of Fresh Sausage 104 - Casings for Fresh Sausage

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES TO COLLAGEN AND NATURAL.

The main advantage of Collagen over Natural Hog Casings is that Collagen does not require any preparation, you simply remove it from the package, load it onto your stuffing tube and begin stuffing. Collagen casings are also stronger and less prone to blowouts when stuffing than Hog Casings are. The main disadvantage to Collagen casings is that they will not hold a twist, once you cut them to separate them they will come unraveled.

Hog Casings main advantage over collagen is that it will hold a twist once cut. Its major disadvantages are that they have to be rinsed and soaked (and sometimes flushed) and they are more susceptible to blowouts during the stuffing process.

@Meateater1 If I understand your question correctly you are asking if you include the seasonings, additves and waters weight to your meat block or if you just count the meat? The answer is…different people do it differently (surprise surprise!) We do the 25 lb based on the meat alone, so if we are using something like Habanero BBQ that weight 3 lbs then the weight of everything before it goes into the smoker will be closer to 30 as the seasoning weight about 3 (guessing here) and we will most likely use 2-3 lb of water.

Sorry if that wasn’t the question!

@BobbyMac Yes, a clamp is essential if you are working by yourself. The only other option I have ever seen that worked better was someone removed the baseplate and then bolted it directly to/through the table! Now, you have to have a table you don’t mind ruining bit it didn’t look like that thing was going to rock!

I’ve done it after it got to 200° on the top and bottom racks for about an hour and when I checked the graph the highest variation was 7 degrees and lowest was 3 or something like that. I just did top and bottom I did not do front/back or left/right and my dampers were fully closed.

@blackjac How much water you are adding is a possibility for sure but do they seem wet before you put them in the fridge? My guess is that your fridge is either adding too much humidity back to the sticks or you are stacking them in the fridge. Now, there really isn’t a way for most people to be able to manage this but laying them out in single rows (not ontop of each other) the fridge overnight that won’t be opened at all. When you open a fridge it is going to try to add more humidity to the compartment and that’s not what we want. This is why we often say cooler because we generally roll our entire cart into the walk in cooler that has a fan and is low on humidity. We realize this isn’t possible for 99% of people though so fridge is the best option.

So, could be how much water you are adding, could be what additives you are/aren’t using (carrot fiber would be a cheap way to hopefully fix the issue, if it is not because of your fridge’s humidity) and it could be your fridge is just putting out too much humidity.

@PapaSop Totally agree, they displease me greatly!