To say my husband is addicted to jerky, snack sticks or any other form of "Slim Jim-like" treats is an understatement. Not a week goes by that we don't have a fresh batch being made, in the dehydrator or stored away in a Seal-A-Meal package. He takes it to work for snacking, takes a bag along for a ride out further in the country when we're house/property hunting or he just grabs a stick or two when he's relaxing after working his 12-hour shift.
I've made a variety of flavors (from sweet and tangy to hot and spicy) and he always prefers the hottest of the hot.
We purchased a meat grinder and a sausage stuffing machine for ourselves late last year when we realized we wanted more than just jerky made on the dehydrator. I checked into the price of casings (natural hog casings- for bratwurst/kielbasa and also the edible collagen ones for the snack sticks) and after figuring out the cost of constantly buying these packages of processed meats versus making our own was a huge cost we could do without.
When I was growing up, my parents would spend an entire Saturday twice a year grinding meat and feeding it into their sausage stuffer. Our home smelled of garlic, marjoram and sausage for days while this process was going on. I can remember my dad was in charge of "feeding" the fresh ground pork (and sometimes beef mixed in) into the sausage stuffer, while my mom handled the casings being filled with the meat and seasonings at the bottom of the machine. They used my paternal grandmother's commercial size stuffer that held 20-pounds of meat at a time.
Sausage Stuffer
While they still make those commercial size sausage stuffers for home use and purchase, there was no way we needed one that big. We settled for a 5-pound model. It came with one filling tube (funnel) which is perfect for making larger kielbasa and bratwurst. You can purchase, separately, a smaller tube for making snack sticks and small breakfast sausage links, but that's OK with me; as we also have the Weston meat grinder which also stuffs sausage casings and edible collagen tubes. The one accessory I would like to purchase one day is the 2-inch tube/funnel for making our own summer sausage; which require the 2-inch edible smoked collagen tubes.
This sausage stuffers is a hand crank and I love the fact that it's not electric. This allows the person making the sausage to control the speed of which the ground meat goes through the "feeding tube" into the casing. For the electric versions, it's usually only one speed and once the casing begins to fill, if you don't have the correct rhythm of filling the casing, you risk the casing bursting. Hand cranking the meat is super easy once you get the hang of it.
Meat Grinder & Sausage Stuffer
What's real nice about the meat grinder we bought is that it comes with three different size tubes (funnels) for three sizes of sausage. One is for kielbasa, Italian sausage and bratwurst, one is for hot dogs and breakfast sausage links and the third is for snack sticks (19mm).
The hardest part about the entire process, set up process that is, was converting the casing sizes from mm to inches. We didn't learn the metric system when I was a youngster back in the day.
LEM Products 1606 5-Pound Stainless Steel Vertical Sausage Stuffer
Weston #8 575 W Silver Electric Meat Grinder with Sausage Stuffing Funnel
Hayos Edible Drying Sausage Casing Collagen Sausage Casings for Flavorous Homemade Sausages
