Tang flavor & refrigerating over night - Encapsulated Citric Acid
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Jonathon - you answered our question in yesterday’s live stream about using Encapsulated Citric Acid and refrigerating over night. I typically mix up my sausage at night and put it on the smoker in the morning, so I don’t have a need to speed up the curing process. A lot of the seasoning’s and other videos talk about the “traditional” tang flavor to snack sticks. I am curious about the change in flavor and want to give it a try, which drives the question.
If I understood your response correctly, I would be better off if I put the sausage on the smoker immediately after stuffing as opposed to refrigerating over night.
If I would have researched it better I would have seen the following, which came from the product page https://www.waltonsinc.com/encapsulated-citric-acid
How To Use Encapsulated Citric Acid?
- Do NOT regrind sausage after mixing in encapsulated citric acid
- Do NOT hold the product for an extended period of time or save partial batches for further processing later (encapsulate could break or dissolve over time, releasing citric acid at the wrong time)
- IF you ignore rules 1 & 2, you can still successfully make and eat your sausage safely and it will be totally edible, but it just won’t have the same or correct end result
- Always wait until the last 60 seconds or so of your mixing cycle to add encapsulated citric acid so you don’t over mix or break the encapsulates, and you just need to mix long enough to evenly disperse
- During thermal processing, make sure you maintain an internal product temperature of 135° or higher for 1 hour. This will ensure the encapsulate has plenty of time to melt, dissolve, and thus release the citric acid.
- Use 4 oz per 25 lb of meat for achieving a product with a pH low enough to potentially be shelf-stable. You may use less than 4 oz though if you do not like as strong of a tangy flavor in your cured meats.
Hope that helps someone else!
Thanks for all you guys do!
Andy - Wichita, KS -
alcurtis24 Yup, you are better off going directly to the smoker. You’d probably be okay but in general it is best not to invite Mr murphy into making sausage!
