Polite forum protocol : If you disagree with a poster’s response a thumbs down would generally be considered bad form other than the friendly competition mentioned by Jonathon. Stating why you disagree with a poster, supported by verifiable data and facts and done in a polite, constructive fashion is a great way to maintain a happy forum, avoid hurt feelings and flame wars.

Everyone has opinions. Opining on a subject and leading in with " in my opinion", is a polite way to voice an opinion on subjects that may have no right or wrong answer.

All of the above is just " in my opinion"

I am talking about cleaning and sanitation. (Yawn). Before you fall asleep or move on, here is why I am kind of OCD about cleaning. I spent a few years working Summers in the family sausage business. Cleaning and sanitation is HUGE, and literally can mean the difference between staying open or being shut down at an inspected commercial processing plant.

For most home processors, keeping our equipment and work space clean is about improving flavor, quality, and shelf life of the products you make. It also is about food safety, and making products that don’t have dangerous food-borne pathogens that could make you or others sick. Just because you cooked a product up to 160 degrees, does not mean it can’t make someone sick. Last of all, clean and well maintained equipment just works better.

When you think about cleaning work surfaces, start to think about anything that could directly or indirectly make contact with the meat. That includes your hands, by the way.

Anyone who has made sausage has probably observed how dried emulsified meat is like glue and is a real pain to get off of equipment. If you are working alone, do yourself a favor and as soon as you are finished with a piece of equipment, or a processing tub, rinse off the big chunks with the hottest water you have. Hot water is one of the best things I have found that can melt the fat and loosen the protein from surfaces. If the water is too hot for your hands, wear disposable rubber gloves.

Once you have the chunks off, you can go back later when you are all finished and scrub the rest off with a soap, hot water, and minimal effort to finish the clean up. Once the heavy gunk has dried on, it is much more difficult to remove.

Another thing that simplifies clean up is to use a plastic scraper to remove all the excess meat off of equipment before wash down. This does a couple of things: It reduces the amount of cleaners required and keeps the meat out of your sink or wash basin. In general, meat and fat in your drains is going to lead to problems sooner or later

If you are working with helpers, it can greatly simplify cleaning if someone can start washing down a piece of equipment as soon as you are done using it for the day. This allows the clean up to start before any meat residue begins to dry and reduces the time and effort involved. Depending on your processing area, you probably can use the space created by cleaning up and putting away dirty equipment sooner rather than later.
My favorite cleaner is a strong alkaline cleaner called Greased Lightening and it cuts fat and even smoke house/grill residue better than most other normal house-hold cleaners.
After you get everything cleaned up and dried, figure out a storage system that keeps it clean till the next time you use it. Equipment stored out in the open on the shelf in the garage or basement is going to accumulate dirt and grunge. Store your clean equipment in a tote with a lid or cover it with plastic film till you are ready to use it again.

Kind of just scratching the surface here. There have been whole books written on the topic of cleaning and sanitation. Would be interested to hear some of your own cleaning tricks.

Photo of my small removable equipment parts after wash down. The big stationary items have to be washed down on the carts and tables they operate on.

Here is a marketing opportunity for Walton’s.

I cooked a 5 gallon batch of beer today. Does that count?

Here is a picture of the fermenter with the yeast just added to the freshly brewed German Alt wort.

Here is the electric brewing equipment: Hot liquor tank on the upper left, control panel on the wall, mash/lauter tun in the middle, and boil kettle on the right.

Here are a couple of fermenters with finished beer, being transferred into kegs.

Here is the dispensing and consumption area which I refer to as the wall of beer. Looks like I need to do some tidying up.

Home-build electrically heated smoker with pellet feeder for smoke generation. This used to be a hospital blanket warmer in its previous life.
Originally it had separate upper and lower compartments, so the center partition had to come out.
Then cut openings in the top and bottom for air intake and vent. The old heating elements were only 400 watts so I install a 2400 watt oven element in the bottom. The old analog controls came out and I installed a second-hand digital PID temperature controller and temp probe.

For the smoke source, I basically copied and build a pellet feed auger system and burn chamber with a small heat element igniter. I wasn’t happy with the igniter element and chamber and did a recent modification where I put in a pellet burn pot and igniter stick like is used in most pellet smokers and grills.
This has been an ongoing work in progress with tweeks along the way where I felt improvements were needed.

I liked the fact that the original box was well insulated and well sealed. It is tight enough that I can run it in my basement without smoking up the house. It vents smoke out of the house through an abandoned furnace flue.

Unionguy1019 said in Drink of Choice:

Well my bourbon of choice at the present time is Long Branch by Wild Turkey. Rye whiskey is Dad’s Hat Rye finished in vermouth barrels. Have taken a liking to Pio Caesare wine, have been using this berbarra wine to ferment sausages. My son bought me a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue Scotch, its nice and smooth sipping but at $280 a bottle, I won’t pour it down the sink but I have had other lesser cost Scotch that is just as smooth.

I am not one of those guys with a sophisticated scotch palate, but scotch is my whisky of choice.
When I retired, a few of my wonderful co-workers gave me a bottle of JW Blue as a retirement gift.
It is definitely one of the smoother whiskies I have sampled.
My son-in-law, me, and oldest son sampling some JW Blue.

I just took these two pheasants out of the brine tank where they have been curing for 3 days. Ready to go in the smoker this morning after a short drip-dry.

One of them shows some signs of being hard-mouthed by the dog. I need to have a little conversation with her about that.

Her side of the story goes like this. " If you were a better shot, I wouldn’t have to chase down these cripples and hard-mouth them"…

Yeah, she has got me there…

gChart said in What did everyone cook today?:

Yeah, nice Enterprise! (I’ve got one too). Salami looks great.

Thanks.
Another hobby of mine is restoring and using old equipment.
Here are before and after pictures of that stuffer.

I also added the “torque amplifier” to replace the OEM crank.

Fired up the Brinkman grill tonight to cook this 2 inch tomahawk.
No fancy prep. Just beef, salt, pepper and fire. You will have to forgive me for forgetting to get a picture of it right off the fire before slicing it up.
I just seared both sides over the fire and then moved it off to the side and closed up the grill till it got up to 130 degrees on the inside.

More simple beef. Fillets from Trader Joe’s. Wife wrapped them with some of my bacon.

A charcoal fire with a few chunks of ash thrown in for flavor. Then served up with fresh spinach, skillet blackened brussels sprouts with fresh garlic and fresh bread.

Jonathon said in How To Make Homemade Snack Sticks:

keoni02 “Surprise snack stick is the the name of new band, called it”

Shoot, it isnt there, if you are referring to https://www.waltonsinc.com/parmesan-garlic-bratwurst-seasoning then it would be .8 of an oz of seasoning for 2 lb of meat if this was a regular fresh brat you were making but for a snack stick you will want to use that amount of seasoning to 1.6 lb of meat, or to go the other way 1 oz of seasoning to 2 lb of meat. That second one might not be 100% correct but it would be really close.

For the adjustments to seasoning and meat, I get those same numbers, we are either both right or both wrong, but I’m betting right

twilliams said in Vegan or Vegetarian Sausage:

Chef i bet processhead can find something. Hes always posting a bunch of great different varieties of sausages. I dont recall if there was vegetarian ones in there.

I won’t say vegi-wurst doesn’t exist, but it never really interested me so I never researched it.

I am pretty much a carnivore when it comes to sausage. I would try a vegi-sausage if the opportunity was there, but I have not gone looking for them.

A Google search usually turns up something.

twilliams said in What does everyone do for a profession?:

jpurol i have thought about going back and getting my GED to get into a unionized electrician position but the thought of starting over is overwhelming.

Go for it! Many of us are not wired for a formal classroom setting as kids. As our brains mature things start to change. Sometimes it’s just all the distractions while we are kids.

Hope it tastes as good as it looks.

Sounds like a success story with a happy ending. I was wondering about the lack of drying while vacuum sealed. Some of that controlled drying could probably take place after cooking and once removed from the vacuum sealed bag at room or cooler temperatures, if needed at all.

Jonathon said in How To Make Homemade Snack Sticks:

processhead It is a combination of that and the fact that the salt content 'needs" to be higher in the cured sausages because the salt plays a functional role as well as taste. Good question.

I just re-read my question and realized I misread what you wrote. ie misread decrease the meat amount as decrease the seasoning amount.

Yeah, decreasing the meat so the salt level is proportionally higher makes sense to me.

Jonathon said in How To Make Homemade Snack Sticks:

keoni02 I agree with processhead (as usual) make a small batch to test it out. I would start at using it at a ratio of 4/5th the amount of meat (20 lb of meat to a 25 lb batch of seasoning) and then just fry up the results to see how it goes. Absolutely use sure cure if you are going to smoke it.

Just curious Jonathon, is reducing the seasoning by 4/5 because of the added drying and overall moisture loss in the meat during thermal processing?

Jonathon said in Spring Archery Turkey Hunt:

Nicely done, do you do anything with NWTF?

Thanks.
No, I haven’t really done anything with them.

Assuming that this is the seasoning you are using,
https://www.waltonsinc.com/parmesan-garlic-bratwurst-seasoning

I would add 1 oz of cure powder #1 to the meat and spices while mixing and process it like any other snack stick recipe as far as stuffing and thermal processing.

Since you are deviating from a proven recipe, I would strongly recommend making a smaller test batch and frying up a sample to check on the flavor/ saltiness before stuffing and smoking . You can make seasoning/salt adjustments to tweak the flavor before committing to a larger batch size.

If you do a smaller test batch, remember to scale down the seasoning and cure powder #1 proportionally.

This sounds really interesting. Be sure to let us know how it turns out.

keoni02
I am not sure if I can answer your question, but here are some things to think about.

Most bratwurst recipes are fresh sausage recipes and have less salt and no added cure.

Most snack stick recipes are a cured and cooked product that have somewhat higher salt levels to aid with shelf stability and curing.

Assuming you wanted to make a bratwurst flavored snack stick, I think you would need to adjust the salt levels and add cure before cooking/smoking.

The result would be something with quite a different flavor profile than a freshly grilled fresh bratwurst. You would taste the seasoning, but being cured and cooked/smoked it would be different.