I got a gift certificate to Bass Pro and used it to purchase the High Mountain Hickory Snack sticks. It came with casings, spice mix, and cure. The instructions were good and had different amouts of spice/cure to use depending on how much burger you wnated to use. I followed the instructions and mixed 80/20 burger. I own a Jerky shooter (Shore Lunch from Cabella's) and attached the casings as best I could on the round tip that came with the gun. I had a lot of difficulty keeping the casings from sliding off and when your hands get slppery it was a challenge. With some effort I was able to make about 3 pounds of link type sticks. I used a paper stapler to close the ends and that worked great. I refrigerated over night. Let them come back to room temperature then smoked about 2 hours wtih 1 hickory chunk to a temp of 165. CS elite cooker.
I was generally pleased with the end product. This was my first attempt using casings. Some of the links did not fill as full as they should have and affected the snap consistency that we all know about and like, but mostly all were OK. Maybe a little salty for some. Maybe a little too much smoke flavor. I suspect there is some smoke flavor in the spice kit and doesn't need much more than that. There is enough in the kit to make quite a lot of sticks and I will try again. I think my problem with the casings had mostly to do with the tip of the shooter. It was too large to get the casings to slide on very far ( 1/4 inch) and so it kept sliding off. I think I will use leaner burger next time 90/10. Is ther a better tip/nozzel that will fit my Shore Lunch jerky shooter???
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