bocephus said in Habanero BBQ Snack Sticks w/ Hot Pepper Cheese:
… nice to be appreciated even if it is only for food.
My personality pushes them away but my food brings them back! 😉
Salt outside of snack sticks
-
Has anyone ever had salt start to appear on the outside of their snack sticks? I made a batch, vacuum packed them, and 2 weeks later they started to develop what looked like a white coat around them. When I cut the bag open it was salt. Any idea what could cause this or prevent it from happening in the future?
-
It is pretty unusual to to see solid salt form on finished packaged product .
Usually the salt binds pretty tightly with the water and protein in the sausage.
Did you taste it and confirm it was salt? -
maurermeat Do you have pictures? This could be “ghosting” but doesn’t normally happen on snack sticks, more common on jerky. Did you use any other additives? Did they make it through the casing as well, or are they skinless snack sticks?
-
mold is notorious on the outside of snack sticks and has lots of different appearances
-
maurermeat Did they have cheese and if so was the white around the cheese? Also could you add any info as to your process from start to finish including the smoker?
-
processhead We did taste them. They tasted completely fine other than the grittiness of the salt. We make these cheesy jalapeno snack sticks all the time and this is the first time it has happened. We used to make a pizza snack stick that kept doing it as well and we stopped because of the issue with the salt.
-
Jonathon they made it through the casing. I should have taken a picture of them but we ate them to see if they were still good, which they were.
-
Cabelas90 the cheese didn’t have white around them. We have a commercial smokehouse that gets smoke generated from a prosmoker sg 300 smoke generator. Our program is 135 for 2 hours, 145 for 1 hour and then 185 until internal temp reaches 162. Then the sticks are showered. We have made several batches of different sticks including our cheesy jalapeno sticks, and have never had this issue. The only other item we have made that had this issue was pizza snack sticks.
-
maurermeat We have a pro smoker and have fought the same thing. What is your fan speed? I recently turned ours from 55hrz to 45.5hrz and so far I have not had this issue come back. for us it was only on shelf stable sticks with cheese.
-
maurermeat said in Salt outside of snack sticks:
processhead We did taste them. They tasted completely fine other than the grittiness of the salt. We make these cheesy jalapeno snack sticks all the time and this is the first time it has happened. We used to make a pizza snack stick that kept doing it as well and we stopped because of the issue with the salt.
When I asked about tasting, I was talking about the outside…just to confirm it was a salt residue and not something else like a milk/dairy residue from the cheese.
-
maurermeat what seasoning did you use? Any other additives? Good on you for eating them all anyway, that’s a power move
-
processhead outside was a gritty salty taste
-
Jonathon we have a blend of salt, pepper spices, sodium phosphates (11.85%) and Sodium Erythorbate (1.52%) dried jalapeños and high temp cheddar cheese
-
Jonathon Felt comfortable eating them because they were immediately vacuumed pack and were less than 3 weeks old. Plus I really like snack sticks so I would hate to see them go to waste!
-
maurermeat said in Salt outside of snack sticks:
Jonathon Felt comfortable eating them because they were immediately vacuumed pack and were less than 3 weeks old. Plus I really like snack sticks so I would hate to see them go to waste!
Totally agree. You have a cosmetic issue, not a food safety issue.
Suggested Topics
Sponsored By:
Visit waltons.com to find everything for meat processing.
Walton's - Everything But The Meat!
