Beef Snack Sticks Using the LEM Jerky Gun

Today we're going to use the Lem Jerky Gun and the little smoker boss here behind me to make some meat

sticks

, so thanks for joining us and let's get started, okay, I've got a pound of ground

beef

here. The first thing I do is I want to do and by the way we're

using

just the seasoning mix that came with the

jerky

gun that I have so let's try it and in that mix is ​​the actual seasoning and the curing salt so I just used the instructions on the back of the package and took it out and measured it so the first thing I'm going to do is take an ounce of water again and I'm just going to follow the instructions and I'm going to mix that salt in to cure and I'm going to let it sit for a second and I'm going to prepare my ground

beef

, just break it up a little bit again.

This is the first time I've done this. It's just going to be kind of an experiment, we'll see how it goes, don't worry, okay, so first I'm going to take my seasoning and sprinkle it on, spread it out a little bit and this is going to be the water and the curing salt. That's all that's really called for in the recipe, but I'm going to make it myself, just a little bit of seasoning, it smells really good, so in terms of making it my own, I have some freeze dried jalapenos that I have here. I'll show you just one jar that I bought.

I think I bought it on Amazon, so I didn't even measure them. I just put in what I thought looked good. You might actually end up making them quite spicy. I'll see and We also have high temperature cheese, so if not, you haven't heard of high temperature cheese, they use it in things like this, it will resist melting up to 400 degrees or something, so let's just go. to add a little bit of that and again I didn't measure this um actually I don't even think I'm going to use it all yeah what the hell we'll just do it we'll see how So now I'm going to mix this up and incorporate it as much as I can and then The last thing I'm going to do is pour the water into some warm water, so I wanted it to cool down.

Remove just a little bit and you have healing salt, that number one Prague pink powdered salt or whatever it's called, it's not regular salt, although it's important to know, so now I'm just going to mix this together like this. is 80 20 ground beef, the package suggested I could have used any meat so I would like to get some ground venison and use some venison at some point but once I am fully incorporated to use the

jerky

gun I will I will do. Get out here in a second, you need to get it ready to attach the jerky gun and the best way I've seen to do it is to just roll it up like you would a sausage.

The jerky gun is about two inches wide so I just want it to be able to slide down on the jerky gun and not get all the sides dirty so I'll do my best I can create a couple of probably three or four log shapes that fit across the diameter of the jerky gun you could also make a small size meatball that fits in there. I think this will actually be better so you don't have air pockets in the meat

sticks

. I just have to do one last thing here, so we have the jerky gun game. up and we'll bring them back, so I decided to pivot a little.

First of all, I decided to use little meatball shapes to put in the jerky gun and I also decided to make two pounds of ground beef, so I basically just added another pound of ground beef and made the recipe double

using

the seasonings that the gun of beef jerky is actually just a meat caulking gun so I'm going to start loading it and here's the other end that just screws on and it literally works like a caulking gun so I'm going to take out the plunger and we're going to set this up so I'm going to start to place these meatballs and I hope that they contain maybe a little more than a pound of our jerky or our meat. meat sticks, some of these are going to be too wide, so maybe I'll roll them up a little to make sure they fall easily enough.

I want to try to keep the outside of the jerky gun as clean as possible. It's possible, sorry, I don't know if I'm actually capturing this very well on camera, but I hope you get the idea and this will be pretty close to completion. Maybe I can use one more, the smaller one, and then maybe. one more, so I'll have to reload to do part of this. I think if I remember correctly, this will hold a pound and a half, so I'm hoping it's close to a pound and a half there, so get the jerky gun ready and load our collagen casings on the end here and we'll make some of these sticks. of meat, so we'll bring you back, okay, so I'll start feeding these tripe and we'll see how.

It happens again the first time I do this so I'm hoping we get some decent meat sticks so I'm going to start pulling the trigger on this and eventually it'll start coming out the end and there it goes hopefully my grills. for the little boss they are about 10 inches square, a little over 10 inches, so I want to make sure I can always cut them if I need to, but I want to try to make them a good size so I don't have to cut them. so it's probably a little too big, but we'll accept it and cut this one in half and then I'll make the rest a little bit less.

The tip I'm using is actually a little small. these collagen wraps so it's going to cause a little bit of an ugly case but I don't think it's going to affect anything but again live and learn so we're going to keep doing this so they do these. casings in a much wider version too so you can make them like a summer sausage so I might take my summer sausage recipe and throw it in a casing next time if you haven't seen it I have it in another video really . simple to make, tastes great, i think i said in the video that you would never buy hickory farms again, it's really good, okay, that's all the casing i could get for that round, so what i'm going to do.

What I do is add more tripe. I'll probably have to add more sausage mixture. Hopefully the rest will be here shortly. I'm going to go ahead and do that and then I'll see you in the little main smoker, so I'm done with that. These, um, live and learn. The second half was much nicer. I don't think it affects the flavor, so I'm not going to worry too much about it, but I hope you can see on camera the difference between the second one. half of these in the first half as far as looks again I think they'll still be good I don't think they'll taste any different I know they won't taste any different uh I'm a little disappointed I didn't try it figure this out sooner but you know this is real life here .

I'm not going to edit it just to make things look pretty, so let's load them into our little main shelves. I want to leave enough room for the airflow to move around a lot because ultimately what we're going to do is there's certainly going to be some heat involved and we're going to get them up to 165, but we're really drying them out, you know, there's healing salt. in these. I'll dry them, they'll last a long time that way and we'll talk a little bit about the little boss process when we get out here in just a minute, so I'll finish stacking them up and we'll see. go to the little boss to start this okay here we are at the little boss uh if you don't know how the little chi works for the big boss either one is pretty much the same principle it's just a box of aluminum, essentially the wood chip pan smokes and adds flavor to the meat.

There is a heating element at the bottom. I have it plugged in so I'm going to make sure it's on and this is how you put the pan with wood chips. I have my meat sticks in place, I have three trays with six or eight on each and then we just cover the opening in the front. I have an option where you remove the top and lift the food down. I thought this would be easier, but this is a really inexpensive little smoker that you can make salmon on. You can add smoke to any meat and then transfer it to another kitchen because the temperature only rises to about 165 or higher.

The outside ambient temperature certainly affects that. but you can add smoke to a lot of different things and then in this case we're going to make all of these meat sticks 100 in this unit other foods that you can move to another smoker that gets hotter or even into your oven so I. I'm going to let them go, uh, you can add as many trays of wood chips as you need, just dump the old ash into a metal bucket of some kind because it's bound to be hot and then I'll add more wood, by the way. Using walnut today the walnut will add a nice mild flavor and won't be overpowering once you think you've added enough smoke then it will actually act as if the temperature of the dehydrator is maintained but it won't provide any more smoke flavor because you can certainly smoke in excess. things like this and you don't want to do that so I can only add two pans, I might even add just one, it just depends on how I feel, what I don't want to do is over smoke them and not consume them.

It'll be good because I think the flavor will be pretty good no matter what, so if one pan I decide isn't enough, I'll add two next time, but this time I won't add more than two and it might stick. I haven't decided on one yet, so we'll let this happen. The first pan will probably take about an hour and a half to burn. I'll review them then and probably bring them back. My suspicion is that these will. Be in six hours maybe something like that, we'll bring them up to an internal temperature of 165 and then we'll put them in an ice bath to cool them quickly and prevent them from cooking, which will also help keep the casings from wrinkling.

I'm going to have that problem with half of mine anyway so I'm not too worried about it so thanks for tuning in as always and just a quick question from me if you could take the time to like this video and subscribe. the channel would certainly be grateful if you haven't already, so we'll bring you back, okay, our meat sticks have been smoking here, it's probably been about two hours, maybe not quite an hour and 45 minutes, I'm going a Check my wood chips carefully, they are tied up pretty well. The smoke going around here has been really good, but I don't think I'm going to refill the tray with wood chips, I'll just empty them, it's a little windy out here. so I'm going to bring them back here for a minute so they don't fly all over the place and then I'm going to let the little boss act as a dehydrator now for the rest of the cooking, I just want to be careful not to smoke them too much.

Again, first time, next time, we can do more wood chips if we think it would be better, they look great, the color is great, it firms up a little and is still a little soft so I definitely have more time to finish, so I go. To get these wood chips out, then I'll leave this for probably at least another two hours before I look at them again and then we'll do a sort of firmness test. I could test the temperature of one of those tiny things. It's hard to measure the temperature, but we might be able to get an idea of ​​the temperature, so we'll bring you back, thank you, okay, that's been the right six hours for these meat sticks.

I looked at them once they looked good, I think they're probably ready so let's take a look together here. The color is great. Just get one here. I'll take out one of the nice ones where I learned how to use the jerky gun better. So this is really what I was filming for. I think they're ready, so I'm going to take them out and we'll take them inside. What I'm going to do. I'm not going to put this on video because it's no big deal, I'm going to get a small saucepan with some ice and water and put them directly in it to completely stop the cooking process and also, from what I understand, prevent the guts are getting too wrinkled, although a lot of mine has already been wrinkled just from the way I made it as a first time meat stick maker, so I think these are going to be pretty good, so the We will bring back and try one all.

Well, here is the finished product. I think they actually turned out really well, so they let them sit, put them in an ice water bath and dried them, so I'm going to try one. I haven't tried it yet, of course, some of them. They're a little wrinkled, that's my fault the way I used the jerky gun, so I'm going to try this one and not bother doing it on camera, so it's a Slim Jim on steroids that's pretty well smoked, but No. too smoky, I'm glad I didn't use more than one tray of chips, it's a great

snack

.

I am very pleased with how they turned out super easy. I will put a link in the description for the lem jerky gun and the small one. chief smoker, so check them out sometime and consider making them yourself. Thanks again for watching the Horse Chestnut BBQ Channel. By the way, they are not too spicy. I have to say, I was a little worried about it because of those freeze-dried jalapenos, but thanks for joining. Me today please like and subscribe to the channel like this video. I would really appreciate it and see you next time.