Moody Monday's: How To Make A Snack Stick

Photo by tlpoague

The shift of warm to cool air burrowed into the folds of her coat. She slightly adjusted the scope attached to her favorite .243 semi-automatic, Belgium Browning rife. Her target...a meager 400 yards away. It was going to be a gamble, but, one she was willing to take to keep from loosing her game.
Taking a deep breath, she applied pressure to the trigger. Recoil from her weapon nearly scoped her. Her shoulder ached from the impact. Her ears rang from the percussion of the shot. Still, the bullet held true to its target. It was a clean shot, hitting its mark.
When I was a child, I had many memories of going out to harvest our own meat. Sure, we could have bought it as easily as our neighbors, but Dad always claimed there was a lesson to be learned when providing for yourself. As a child, I thought everyone knew this and it was normal. Little did I know then, as I do now, that not everyone has an opportunity to learn the things as I did.
Harvesting the meat was fairly easy, as long as you had a strong stomach. It was the process that was time consuming and often messy. But, in the end, well worth it.
This year, the hubby and I decided we would break out the meat grinder to make jerky sticks again. It had been a couple of years since the last time we did it, so we had to prep the machine, clean the parts, and make sure everything was in working order. While he did that, I prepped the work space. Living in a small house made it a bit more difficult to have room to work in, so we turned the dinning room table into our processing center.

Photo by tlpoague
Hubby is making sure the machine is ready to go. 

Instead of going out to harvest our own meat, we used what we had from the freezer. We began by de-boning those that needed it.

Photo by tlpoague
Here is the chicken that needed to be de-boned.

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I'm hard at work trying not to cut a finger.

Next we needed to run the meat through the meat grinder. (We used the largest steel hopper plate to grind it the first time.)

Photo by tlpoague
This is the first grind with the large blade.

Once that task was done, we changed the blades to a smaller setting and ran the meat through it again. (If you look closely to the right of the bowl of meat, you will see the hopper blades I am talking about.)

Photo by tlpoague
This is the second grind with a smaller blade.

Once the meat was ground to the texture we want it, it was time to add the water and seasonings. (Here you will need to follow the directions on the box of seasoning you are using.)

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Hubby is making sure that he has the right measurements of spices and water.

Then it was time to run it through the meat grinder again to make sure everything was mixed evenly. (We ran it through twice on the small blade.) The next step is to start loading the casings with the meat mixture.

Photo by tlpoague
Filling the casings with the meat mixture.

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The finished product before cutting them down.

After they are filled, we cut them down to the size we wanted. 

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These are now cut down to size and ready to cook.

We let our sticks cure over night in the fridge before we baked them according to the direction on the seasoning box.

Photo by tlpoague
These treats are ready to eat.

We ended up with a total of 23 pounds of snack sticks after all the work was done.

tlpoague 2014