Recipe for snack sticks:

6 lbs lean ground beef, buffalo, venison, or elk
4 lbs lean ground pork
5 tablespoons Morton Tender Quick or Sugar Cure mix
6 to 8 tablespoons seasoning mix (mine is a mix of white pepper, black pepper, cayenne pepper, seasoning salt [not too much or the mix will be too salty], garlic powder, onion powder, thyme, adobo, and a splash or two of chipotle tabasco sauce)
2 cups ice cold water
two hanks of 17-21mm collagen casings. (one hank will do 5 lbs of meat)

Freeze ground meat. Let it thaw until it is just soft enough to crumble with your hands. In a large bowl, break up and mix the meat together with the cure, the seasonings, and water. Mix by hand for at least 5 minutes. Immediately stuff meat into casings, as the cure will start to set up the meat and make it stiff in about 15-30 minutes. When casings are stuffed, twist off to appropriate serving lengths (30 to 45 sticks from two hanks) and refrigerate for at least 6 hours for the cure to do it's thing, but not more than about 24. Sticks can be dehydrated in the oven or you can smoke them until they become stiff and resilient. Usually I can dry them in my smoker for a day and they are firm enough. You can dehydrate them considerably and they become quite tough and chewy like good jerky, just the sort of thing to enjoy on the trail.

Dumb question time, is the meat raw or pre-cooked?

-Blast

Raw meat. The cure prevents spoilage and botulin from developing.

How was the Alder?
I usually think of Alder for smoking fish instead of sausage, but my brother used to use it for deer.

Would you be likely to use it again instead of Hickory for this same recipe?

Was that guy on the way to Ocala? Is so, I think I've seen him as well.

The alder worked well. Perhaps not as good as hickory or maybe fruit wood (I've done cherry wood to smoke sausage in the past with really good results). I used alder exclusively for smoking fish while growing up in Washington state. We typically put out perhaps 300+ lbs of smoked fish a year in my mid-late teens. I actually got burnt out on fishing.

The smell of the alder smoke in this batch does definitely remind me of my smoked salmon days. It is suitable for use on well seasoned red meat and pork.

For most birds, I prefer to smoke with Mesquite. Mesquite on chicken is one of my favorite flavor combos.

I love Pecan wood for smoking.

I haven't tried pecan yet. I hear it is a mellow smoke, a little sweet, and good with pork.

I love it with pork, beef and Poultry. A pacan wood smoked Turkey is wonderful, IMHO. Very close to a sweet hickory,m but without the bitterness.
I often add Red Oak, Apple, Cherry and/or Maple to my Peacon for long smokes

Okay, so this weekend I cranked up the meat machine and made 10 lbs of italian sausage and another 10 lbs of snack sticks, this time using a pepperoni recipe and hickory smoke.

The italian sausage was excellent. The wife had a bite of the test batch (always cook up some of the sausage before casing or packaging it up to make sure the seasoning is right) and said it was very tasty, and just the right amount of peppery heat. The dog added his approval of course. I stuffed it in collagen casings at 32 mm and made three pinwheels for the freezer.

The pepperoni sticks are good, but not quite what I expected. The seasonings seemed weak after the smoking/drying process. The hickory smoke flavor is strong, almost overpowering, indicating that next time I need to use one less pan I think. The texture and consistency is still spot on, so at least my technique is holding up well. We had a little more meat than the casings would hold, so I formed those into strips and ran them through the dehydrator, and the seasoning flavor weakened in those too. I suspect that the aromatics from the fennel and the garlic are volatizing off more than I planned on, and I will adjust my recipe some more.

My only concern now is that I may need to find a way to preserve them longer. As it is, 10 lbs of sausage just doesn't last that long. Perhaps I should consider giving less of it away. That would definitely make a difference. Of course my new found friends may revolt, smelling the sausage on my breath after I've eaten some in private.

Do you use a "Cure" in your sausage recipe?