Snack sticks, along with jerky, are an increasingly popular option for people looking for a fast, portable, high protein snack food. Most snack sticks are a cooked product (heated to 68-70 C). Some are smoked and / or dried as part of the manufacture. Fermented snack sticks, on the other hand, are an interesting subset of salami products.
To review, the process to make fermented snack sticks is the same as it is for any salami.
The basic process
- Making the sausagemeat
- Adding a salami culture
- Stuffing the sausagemeat into casings
- Fermenting them in a warm environment for a controlled time period
- Hanging them at a controlled temperature and relative humidity to dry
Let’s examine this process in some detail for snack sticks. The meat can be beef, pork, lamb or game meat. Chicken should be avoided because of the prevalence of salmonella. The meat should be well chilled and ground with a medium plate (5-6 mm). The lean meat to fat ratio should be around 90 / 10. For fresh sausage 80 / 20 is recommended. In the fermented snack stick, the moisture lost by drying comes from the lean meat, so the apparent ratio of lean meat goes down by the time the snack sticks are dry.
The fermentation culture can be added directly to the sausage meat after the salt and seasonings are mixed in. The culture should not come in direct contact with undiluted salt. The meat should be mixed until uniform but achieving a good bind is not necessary.
Using sheep (24 mm) or collagen (19 mm) casing is critical as the drying time is dependent on the casing diameter. With small casings, the drying time is reduced to 10 – 14 days allowing for the use of cure #1. The short drying time also allows for more latitude in drying conditions since case hardening does not seem to happen.
For Beginners
Case hardening is a condition in dried salami where the outer rim of a salami is fully dried but the center of the sausage is not dry. The moisture is trapped and not able to leave. This creates a poor texture and allows the possibility of toxic anaerobic bacteria to survive.
Making this type of salami does not require a dedicated drying chamber with controlled temperature and humidity (step 5. in the basic process). A standard refrigerator at normal temperatures is capable of drying snack sticks. The fermentation step, with the proper selection of salami culture, can be done in a cold (off) oven with a dish of hot water for warmth and humidity.
In addition to the simplified equipment requirements of fermented snack sticks versus traditional salami, they can also be produced in small batches in short time frames. This makes them ideal for testing out new ideas and flavors without committing a large amount of meat or the 6-8 weeks larger salami would require. Existing salami recipes using cure #2 and a fermentation culture can be simply converted by replacing cure #2 with cure #1. For those new to making salami, snack sticks provide an opportunity to get accustomed to the process with a high chance of success.
Notes:
1. Numbers after the meat such as 90/10 refer to the ratio of lean to fat 90% lean meat: 10% fat. It’s also sometimes listed as 90/10VL where the VL stands for visible lean. 80/20VL is usual for fresh sausage; we use 90/10 or thereabouts for salami sticks as the meat shrinks during drying, but the fat doesn’t.
2. The size of a grinder/mincer plate is often referred to using a # followed by a number; for example, a #5 grinder or mincer plate is a plate that will produce a meat mince that’s about 5mm (3/16th inch). The holes in the plate may not be exactly the width of the grind. A medium plate is 5-6mm – #5.
3. Dextrose is another name for glucose.
4. Cultures increase the acidity of meat (reduce the pH). It’s often advised to mix it with distilled water before use and to use more than the amount in our recipes. However, it works perfectly well without dilution in the amounts specified as can be seen from the pH details listed in the recipes. It doesn’t like salt, so add it at the end of mixing.
5. pH is often tested by making a slurry of the meat, but we test the meat ‘neat’ by pushing the pH probe into the meat. We put the meat, leftover after stuffing the casings, to ferment at the same time as the sticks and use that for testing. A pH below 5.3 is considered safe. pH is tested using a meter or pH test strips that are available quite cheaply from online sources.
6. The level to which you let the sticks dry is, to an extent, a matter of personal taste. However, it’s the combination of lowered pH, achieved by using a culture, and lowered water activity (Aw) in the meat, achieved by drying, that makes the product safe. Anything above 35% weight loss should be fine, but we suggest leaving it to 40% before tasting.
Further information can be found here:
Safely Drying Meat and Sausage
Some snack stick recipes to make:
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