How to Make Snack Sticks: The Process, Step by Step

Snack sticks are cured, smoked or dried sausage in a 19-21 mm casing. Grind the meat twice with everything chilled to about 32 °F, mix in a seasoning-and-cure blend by weight, hold the cured mix about 24 hours before smoking, stuff onto a 10 mm tube, then finish to a measured internal temperature — LEM says 165 °F for its collagen snack-stick casings.

The two things that actually sink a first batch are temperature during grinding and tube diameter at stuffing. Everything else is recoverable.

What you need before you start

A grinder, a stuffer whose smallest tube is 10 mm or smaller, 19-21 mm collagen casings, a seasoning-and-cure blend (or Prague Powder #1 and your own spices, dosed by weight), a thermometer you trust, and a dehydrator, smoker or oven.

The tube is the item people discover too late. Most stuffers ship with a 16 mm tube as their smallest, and a 19 mm casing will not load onto it. Measure your stuffer's tube base before buying anything — LEM recommends a 1/2 in. outside-diameter tube or smaller for its 19 mm casings, and our snack stick kits page covers both the kits and the add-on tube that fixes a stuffer that stops at 16 mm.

Grinding: 32 F and two passes

Mississippi State Extension's sausage guidance gives the number: chill the meat to approximately 32 °F to minimise fat smearing, and keep the sausage meat cold throughout the process. Smearing is the enemy in a thin stick, because smeared fat will not render into the texture you want and the stick comes out greasy and crumbly at once.

MSU's sequence, applied to snack sticks:

1. Coarse pass. Cut the meat into grinder-sized pieces and run it through a 1/2 to 3/4 in. plate.
2. Mix the seasonings in — in a mixer, with a paddle blender, or by hand — making sure they are thoroughly distributed.
3. Fine pass. Re-grind the seasoned meat through a 3/16 in. plate. That is the texture a snack stick wants: fine enough to fill a 19 mm casing without voids.

If the meat warms past about 40 °F while you are working, stop and put it back in the freezer for twenty minutes. Our how to grind deer meat guide covers the chill-and-trim routine, and plates and knives the parts that make a clean fine pass possible.

Cure, mix and hold 24 hours

A kit solves the dosing for you: the cure arrives in its own packet, pre-measured against the seasoning for a stated batch weight. If you are mixing your own, dose Prague Powder #1 by weight — see our curing salt guide — and follow the package directions, which MSU stresses is very important.

Then wait. MSU: if curing sausage with sodium nitrite, the blended sausage should be allowed to cure for about 24 hours before smoking. That hold is part of the method, not a convenience.

Stuffing a 19 mm casing

Collagen casings in this size are no-soak — slide them straight onto the tube. Load as much casing onto the horn as it will take; MSU's instruction is to force as much of the casing onto the stuffing attachment as possible, hold it firmly between your fingers on the horn, and use enough pressure to fill the casing fully so there are no air pockets.

Thin casing and high pressure is where a motorised or two-speed stuffer earns its money, because both hands stay on the casing while a foot switch or a second speed controls the rate. If you are choosing one, read best electric sausage stuffers.

Finishing: temperature, not time

However you finish them — dehydrator, smoker or oven — the stick is done when its internal temperature says so, not when the clock does. LEM states 165 °F internal for its 19 mm collagen casings. USDA FSIS's safe minimum internal temperature chart is the reference for the meat itself, and its smoking guidance covers the separate question of smokehouse temperature.

A thin stick heats fast and dries faster, so the usual mistake is overshooting into something hard and dry rather than undershooting. Probe the thickest stick in the middle of the load, not one at the edge of the tray.

If you are drying rather than smoking, the dehydrator pages are the right companion: see best dehydrators for jerky for machines that reach and hold a useful temperature, and time and temperature for the cited drying bands.

Storing them

Treat finished sticks as a refrigerated or frozen product unless you have followed a published recipe designed for shelf stability. MSU notes that smoked pork sausage, properly cured and packaged airtight with protection from freezer burn, will keep up to six months in a freezer at 0 °F or lower. Vacuum sealing is the simplest way to get that airtight package — our sealer picks cover the machines.

What goes wrong