This fermented snack stick uses both a barbecue rub recipe and a commercial sauce. The sauce, while low in pH, is not sufficient to lower the pH to a safe range without fermentation. The sauce in the recipe, Sweet Baby Ray’s Original Barbecue Sauce, was chosen for its wide availability. If desired, it can be replaced with a similar sauce.

1000 g Lean pork shoulder

The par-frozen meat is minced with a medium plate (6 mm) then mixed with:

21.6 g Salt
2.5 g Cure #1 (current EU regulation 1.9 g)
64 g Sweet Baby Rays Original Barbecue Sauce
20 g Magic Dust*
added last
0.6 g SafePro F-LC

Fill the mix into either 22mm/24mm (pre-soaked) sheep’s casings or collagen casings; 19 mm or 21mm would be fine. Save the sausage mix that’s left in the stuffer, wrap it tightly in a plastic bag or and put it into plastic food wrap (UK-cling film).

Weigh the sticks and make a note of the weight.

Ferment the sticks and the mix that’s wrapped up at 75°F (24°C). I do it in my oven with just the light on. Check the pH using a pH meter or pH strips after about 24 hours and (approx.) every 12 hours thereafter. Use the bit of mix that you wrapped up to do the tests.

Initial pH = 5.5
24 hrs. pH = 5.2
48 hrs. pH = 4.6

After drying on a rack in a fridge, the sticks weighed 548 g (45.8 % weight loss) after 7 days.

Magic Dust* from Mike Mills and Amy Mills Tunnicliffe “Peace, Love, and Barbecue”

15.9 g Paprika
14.3 g Sugar
4.2 g Mustard powder
8.95 g Ancho chile powder
6.45 g Cumin
4.2 g Black pepper
10.3 g Garlic powder
4.5 g Cayenne

For more information:

• Easy Salami – Snack Sticks – An Introduction

  
  This describes the general process of making fermented snack sticks.