Mixing water, seasoning, and cure into meat for making snack sticks

[Beef1424]

Has anyone ever just tried putting recommended amount of water, seasoning and cure in a mixing bowl blended it up, and then just pour it over the meat while its rotating in the meat mixer?

[erich52]

Beef1424 That is exactly what I do when making both sausage and snack stick to get a more even distribution into the meat. I have read that some of the folks on this site like to add the cure separately but I have good success by mixing all of it in the water and dumping that evenly in the meat as it mixes.

[Beef1424]

erich52 Thank you much

[twilliams]

Beef1424 im not sure there is a wrong way to do it here. Especially since you mentioned in a mixer. By hand may be a little more tedious and procedure specific. As i always mix by hand, will add seasoning first to get proper distribution before protein extraction happens. I minimally and religiously dissolve the cure in the water before adding to the meat

[PapaSop]

Beef1424
Yep. Absolutely. As twilliams said, no wrong way. Experimented with adding seasoning before first grind, after first grind and when it’s moving in the mixer. Found no significant difference. The one constant is that the cure is always dissolved in water before adding.
When using the mixer I gradually add instead of just dumping it in and then mixing.

[akdave]

I like to grind the fat or pork 1/8 and then grind the meat 3/8 then thoroughly mix the two together then grind 1/8 and feel that it really helps with the protein extraction then I mix all the dry ingredients together in the water and then thoroughly mixing it with the ground meat is the best way to get it evenly distributed .

Dave

[Jonathon]

Yeah, there isn’t really a wrong way to do it here. A lot of commercial processors do it this way. I add the cure to the water for sure, it helps make sure you have a more even distribution. It is slightly better to do this when making a fresh sausage when you are doing a cured sausage you are going to do so much mixing that everything should be evenly distributed but with fresh you only want to mix it a little bit.