Snack sticks can be flavored with commercially available sauces.  Sauces are often high in salt and acid (which act as preservatives), so this must be considered.

This is the first snack stick I’ve made with beef; I used ground beef from the store with some added pork back fat. 

The Lee Kum Kee black bean garlic sauce is labeled as 1060 mg sodium / 18 g.  The math of this works out to 15 % NaCl in the product.  This has a strong flavor and is not for everybody (I love it).  Korean black bean sauce is much milder and is not a substitute.

The small batch also allowed me to easily use a LEM jerky gun.  It left only 40 g of meat behind of 565 g total.  

Ingredients

450 g Ground beef 93 %
50 g Pork back fat
Par-freeze the meat, then grind/mince the par-frozen meat with a medium plate, then mix with:

50 g Black bean garlic sauce
4 g Salt
2 g Black pepper
1 g Red pepper flakes
1.25 g Cure #1
2 g Dextrose
Added Last:
0.4 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.

Place the sticks to ferment at around 24°C, 75°F – an oven that’s not on is often at this temperature – if it’s a little on the cool side, switching the internal light on can help.

The mix had a pH of 4.6 when tested after 24 hours due, in large, to the addition of the black bean sauce.

The sticks were put into the fridge to dry.
Their initial weight was: 515 g
Their weight after 168 hrs, 7 days was: 296 g (42.5 % weight loss)
After 240 hrs, 10 days, they were 266 g and ready to eat. (48.3 % weight loss)

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