Spicy Pepperoni Snack Sticks

If you saw my previous post about pepperoni I made just 2 1/2 pounds of each style. I found the recipe I wanted and now that deer season was over, it is cooking season. So this one is about making 20 pounds of spicy pepperoni snack sticks for my enjoyment in the down time between hunting seasons.

I always mix of my spices before I get too far into the process, because living in the county you don’t hop 5 minutes over to get a good supply of spices. Walmart is 10 minutes up the road but I like hitting the Mennonite farm store in Hagerstown called Martin’s Farm Market. The spices are cheaper, plus they come in wide mouth topped containers. I hate those narrow McCormick style spice bottles that you can’t get a teaspoon in, much less a tablespoon. Plus leveling your spoons your end up spilling spices all over the counter.

Above you can see all the spices mixed and then I put a lid on it and move on to everything else.

The next ingredient is the meat. Here we have 6 packs of 1.7 pounds of deer meat, total of 10 pounds ground on medium when butchered. Plus 10 pounds of 73% ground beef. The end result leaves me with a 13.5% fat in the end product. You could substitute 80/20 ground beef if you wanted to make this and don’t have the venison to use up.

Then the venison going into the LEM Big Bite Mixer I Upgraded in butchering tools over christmas time as I just needed better stuff. I got this mixer and the LEM Big Bite #12 grinder and man they make this stuff so much simpler!!!

Then the ground beef on top of it. Mix for 15 or more minutes and you’ll get what we have below.

The pepperoni ready to be stuffed.

Filling the stuffer. This is the Cabelas stuffer, but it is the same as the LEM 5# Vertical stuffer. You want a 5# stuffer for snack sticks, not the 10# or larger. The older guys all call this out as the larger stuffers don’t get the correct pressure for the smaller casings but work great for summer sausages.

Ok, I am going to cover how I make my snack sticks and hang them in the smokehouse. The above picture is me stuffing casings on my kitchen island. The stuffer is clamped down on two pot holder pads. Then I crank out about 6′ of casings. Of course one end was tied first with 10″ of string or so. That end it brought back up and tied around the casings at 6′ to make the first loop.

Then one end of the string is run under the casing in to the middle and the far end the loop is lifted and pulled back toward the stuffer and turned to lay flat. Then the tow ends of the string are tied twice.

A loop is tied into the two end tags so it can hang on the poles in the smokehouse. I know this is confusing when typed and difficult to understand. Watch the YouTube video when I get it posted down the bottom.

The casings all stuffed and ready for the fridge to smoke the next day. Notice the texture, color and quality difference. The first, bottom, casings didn’t fill as well and just don’t look as nice. The darker ones are the Sausage Maker 21mm collagen casings and these looked and worked perfect. I think I am pretty sold on using these straight forward all the time.

The gasket and gears on the sausage stuffer needs oiling. I got this can from a food shop, but you really need something like this to oil the gasket, gears and screw shaft. When I first started someone told me to use crisco. Don’t every do that on the gears or shaft!! The seal is fine, but the crisco built up and dried into the gears and shaft and after a few times it just about needs to be power washed to get that crap out of there. Using that Crisco on the gears and shaft was a pain in the Arse!

Get a good food grade spray lubricant that can go onto any of your food tools. I spray just a tweak on the gears each time. I also hit just a bit on a paper towel and wipe down the gasket pulling it away. It stays oiled when I open it back out of the box and after the first stuff it is oil with fat from the sausage until cleaned again. A can of this should last us amatures ten years or more.

The snack sticks after cooking. Sorry no food prep pictures. I cut them the width of my four fingers on my left hand and stuff ten in a small vac seal bag.

Enjoy!

Rumble Video here

The recipes

This one is the Spicy Pepperoni I use for this batch

This one is the Original recipe that is for the ones wanting a seriously spiced pepperoni.