How to make Deer Smokies (sticks) & smoke them on a pellet grill, by The Bearded Butchers!

hey guys sub perkins here whitefeather meets one of the

butchers

beards today. I want to show you how we

make

Smokies. You could use this practice for beef bison elk venison lamb whatever you prefer Smokies aka

sticks

we're going to grind

them

we're going to stuff

them

and then we'll take them to the trigger

grill

and

smoke

them so follow us today we'll start with just over ten pounds of meat that we have trimmed taking most of the fat. from there no gristle or anything like that and we're also going to use a little over a pound of pork fat so we're going to go ahead and add your meat now the meat we use will be about 85/15 or 90/10 somewhere right there with the meat to fat ratio so we want to go ahead and add the pork fat to it and it will end up giving us a nice juicy product when we're done so this is the same principle that applies when we're making our sausage , so if you watch the venison sausage making video this is pretty much the same practice we used there we want to go ahead and mix up the fat end a little bit now what we're going to do is go ahead and we're going to add our seasonings this uh scott had a total now of 12 pounds of mixed lean and fat trimmings and he's going to add a six shaker of our cajun mix.

We chose Cajun as the flavor for this

smoke

. The ratio for this is obviously you can use 1 ounce of our mix for any two pounds of meat so you want to double this recipe obviously just use two shakers to

make

12 pounds of meat 1 6 ounce bottle of seasoning go ahead and just mix while mixing as we go we like to put the spices in the garnishes before we grind them and then what we're actually going to do a triple grind on this just because we want it to be a finer bite when we make our Smokies , so we're gonna flip the spices before we grind it and then that's going to blend as we grind it so we can go to the fourth grind once and then we'll do a finer grind twice so after we add our six ounce bottle of Cajun Beard Butcher's Blend Seasoning You also want to use a tinted cure, so this is a nitrite for 12 lbs.

We're going to use half an ounce of pink-tinted joy. You can get this ink from Waltons. You can get this at Butcher Packer com2 it comes usually in a one ounce package - makes 25lbs of meat we just split that package we're going to go ahead and add it to our mix so you want to get this pink ear salt mixed in the meat thoroughly so we're not just mixing it here but we're also going to get another mix in the grinder, we're going to go ahead and add the nitrates in there, mixing as we go so you'll notice I mixed about half of the bag in the first round .

I'm going to go ahead and just add the rest. This will give the meat a nice pink color and will also help control the risk of botulism. give it a window of time by adding the nitrite especially with game meats it will really help prevent the botulism spore from causing problems with your Smokies so this product in the end will not be shelf stable so we are going to plan on sealing them sous vide you can freeze them you can keep them in your fridge but once you open them you want to eat them within a day so let's go ahead and start grinding so we're using the westin number 12 we like this grinder so which we're going to go ahead and put through our seven-millimeter thick dirt plate, which is a little over a quarter of an inch, they'll crush the whole batch first, and then we'll repeat that with the smallest four point five millimeters, which it's a little over an eighth of an inch and we plan to do that twice, so as you can see it's good to leave some of your trimming in strips.

When I leave the meat in a strip the grinder will really grab it and I'll feed it into the worm a little easier so just keep that in mind when you're c Although it's a little easier to grind when you leave it in a little strip as well let's go ahead and get started you want to put a little bit inside your grinder before you turn it on that way it doesn't work. a dry run and cause any friction to the metal with the blades in the grinder as you can see this number 12 will go through this 12 pound of meat in quite a hurry one of the best things about training multiple times is that we have the mat the lien ratio we're going to mix that every time we grind we're going to continue to reduce it in size and then it will make a much better mix for the finished product so we find that handy spices before we brine grind them with the spices you don't have to worry too much by the fat to lean ratio in the trim level shipment, in other words, when you send them through the grinder simply because we're going to be manual. mixing I'm a sports ground so there you go just one side of solo o For two and a half minutes we grind with our course plate now we're going to switch to our client plate and grind it two more times at this point you'll just want to take and mix it all up with your hands one more time smelling really good that's just going to evenly distribute a spice and then as I mentioned the fat to lean ratio so we like to just knead fold everything back in again this is after the coarse grind and before we start the fine grind so we've switched let's move to a smaller plate and start with grind number two so if you notice the first round we didn't have to use the plunger because the way it was cut the strip you're going to want to get him ready for this second round just because he's not really going to feed himself what he's going to be doing here is just making some kind of shots they all have golf sized balls and they drop them in alder run at your own pace while you cry second routine and then of course you're using a fine If the plate takes a little longer you're breaking down this muscle even more it's not going to go as fast as that so you'll just want to work on this process, whatever Reiner's campaign hit, I don't want to exaggerate. grinding number three a second time through the fine we call it a fine but seven and a half excuse me four point five millimeters translates to about an eighth of an inch you can see this still has some of the fat pieces in there which are a little bit big so we want to go ahead and give it one more spin just to crumble those pieces up a little more that way and the end product becomes a little more palatable a little bit easier to pick out come on and let's get started now , mind you can you can probably get even another grind out of this eventually what will happen is this will get so hot that the proteins will start to stick together and you hardly get it through the grinder there are tricks to the trade you could add the ice it certainly does not stop here if you feel like you have the time and energy to keep going, you'll just get a softer bite, but we found that for all the reckless purposes you need, we break it down pretty good, of course, Brian and two. football fine grinds drown this out start refilling everything good the third grind is complete now at this point we are going to add some water because it will get sticky as you grind it and there is no way you can get this through the refill without wetting it down, So how much water do you have there Seth?

I have two cups of water. Now you can feel as you mix this, the consistency and whether you feel like you know a lot depends on what species you're on. If you're working

deer

, bison, veal, lamb, or whatever you're working with, it will react differently to the moisture you put on it, so use your own judgment to feel for when it starts to loosen up. above you may not need the two cups full so I would say I have t it's at a point where you can see it's very pliable but still not too soft because if you make it too soft what will happen is that your Smokies don't wrinkle too bad in the end, it's just them. it's not going to be that desirable so go ahead and get this consistency here and then at this point we're going to go ahead and add a little over a pound of high temp pepper jack cheese to our Cajun Smokies to make this just like Seth mezack mentioned a high milk cheese that comes in these nice diced cubes and the reason it melts a lot is that when we put it in our smoker it won't actually melt it will still look like that now get this cheese for our store in large quantities.

We live near Amish country. One of the largest cheese purveyors in the world. You can find this online. Just look for a high temperature or high mount cheese. You can use any flavor you find. we like to go to a 10% ratio so the stuff mentioned still 1.2 pou nds here and pull that into the mix and then at this point we can turn it into our stuffer and start making some

sticks

nice so the mix in your stuffer now all these are not created equal but similar manual crank stuffer this one happens to be a bit more of a commercial model just because it's what we have here in the store it has a 25 pound capacity obviously 12 pound goes to kill half so start 4 loaded and we're going to go ahead and start by taking out some Smokies so we like a 17 mil mahogany collage shell now in this case it won't actually fit on our filler horn; otherwise you could slide the whole thing in there but it's too tight so if you have this problem you can just manually transfer it if it goes straight into something warm so that's just a little tip you can do a smaller diameter smoke with one of filler that's a bit G based just transferring the casing like this just for emphasis normally ju stack everything in there if we have a smaller filler horn but in this case we transfer it manually so a little knot is tied and it will start to take out some Smokies so at this point you should try to avoid air gaps this filler has a feature where there is a little valve at the top of the plunger that you just push and it will push all the air out of the top of the plunger if you got air maybe when you start at the end you could just just poke a little hole in it but there's our first strand so we'll move on Go ahead and we'll get these twelve pounds out of here cut them to length and put them in our smoker so the result is 12 pounds now what we've done is we just go ahead and stitch them together or make a loop 24 inches long, that's it that we know that's what's going to fit in our smoking tray, so we're just going to put it in there.

You can join them individually at this point. You could twist them, yes. so that's up to you what we've done the method we like d or is we just go ahead and smoke them and long strands like this and then after we're done smoking which we'll show you we just go ahead and cut them in portions that you would like as you can see there's no air bubbles there it's your stuff very nice and tight and you can also see our cheese chunks and friends they're ready to smoke so we have our ironwood 80-85 trigger on super mode We smoke our tray of Smokies and we're just going to go ahead and load them into the smoker, we're going to go up to a certain temperature, we're going to start at 165 for two hours, then we're going to go to 185 for two hours and that's going to end at 205 for two hours until they get to an internal temp of 160 to 165 so we're actually using a combination of triggers for big game it's white red oak hickory with rosemary herbs so we just filled our left smoker an air gap between them that way the smoke can go through there obviously you want to plumb it right in the center and then like i lied on 165 for two hours 185 for two hours and then 205 until it hits an internal 165 it comes back when everything okay so it's been four hours we got to 165 internal and never had to go up to 205 we just came out of an oven temp of 165 to 185 and our internal temp of 165 and it's time to get these beauties out of here we're going to transfer them to a wire rack and several ways you can do this in this case we're just going to rinse with cold water so they cool down a little faster we're going to ride we've reached that high internal temp we just want the internal temp go back down and that gives way and puts them off with a little bit of cold. water so the idea here is that we're just going to use feet of cold water in the process of cooling them down at this point it will also soften the King sings a bit the steps are optional you can also put them in a cold water bath once they we are done I have an ice bath let's say a minute or so we'll transfer them to the chiller and then once it cools down to 40 degrees internal we'll go ahead and slice it and bond them nicely so these Smokies are a beautiful color chill and we'll go ahead and cut them up so we have 12 pounds of meat. add the spices, cheese, and water so we were about 14 and a half pounds starting weight and we're down to about 9.5, we've already eaten quite a bit, so maybe a little closer to 10 pounds, I'm done, wait so that's going to happen here andshow you a good way to measure them you can do it multiple times meta so go ahead and line them up usually what I do is use my palm to about the tip of your thumb you measure them that way it gives you a nice size stick filled with that delicious cheese we're going to start stacking them up so we wanted to mention obviously we start with the garnishes we add the pork it's summer and your season is going to be around the corner here before before we realize, so if you have a freezer with ground beef, just ground venison, you might have four relatives or whatever, and you feel like it's not going to go through the rest as ground venison by the end of the day. this year or before the new season starts, you can go ahead and take those packets of ground venison and put it into this process. the garnishes like we did, but you can mix your seasonings before you grind and basically if you're sitting there what am I going to do with my ground beef?

I haven't eaten it it takes a day and you with the use of a grinder fill the seasonings and then obviously a smoker you can absolutely turn this product like this now the smoker that step if you have something that has absolutely used the trigger , but if you have it is a

pellet

smoker if you have Anything you can really control the temperature of your house what we call the house template you will be your smoker temp and you can you can start with no more than 165, you could be cooler if you wanted to for a couple hours just let those pores be open in the meat before they close and put that smoke in there and then you can just look up to increase the internal temperature of the meat it will just be matter of time at that point as I mentioned we did this in a flat four hours just a little bit of four hours to hit an internal 165 so what we can do at this point is put them in a ziploc bag we can put them We just put them in a polythene bag with a twist tie or we can vacuum seal them and freeze them that's what we like to do if you have that many and you're not going to check them because what we're saying is they're not, they're not necessarily non-perishable , that's more of a water activity thing and you'd have to keep drying them for a pH water activity thing, so we wouldn't consider them to be shelf stable, um, they'll be fine and you know a day or something so if you're packing but what we'd like to do is like say like a week or so in your fridge obviously frozen almost indefinitely so what we'd do at this point is go ahead and stack them free in the freezer and put them in your lunch box and give them to your friends to take away one at a time they are going to defrost real quick you can see that high temp cheese in there and a very successful day of turning some ground beef scraps whatever you have into one s wonderful delicious Smokies don't forget to check us out on Facebook Instagram and here on YouTube and don't forget to subscribe more videos to come thanks guys