Earlier this year, I spent a whole day having fun with family and friends on our annual Grinding Day. It’s a specific day we choose after deer hunting season when we get together to grind up vast quantities of venison and pork to make a variety of sausages, snack sticks and other good things to eat.

On Grinding Day, we make all kinds of meat products: Italian sausage, jalapeno brats, regular brats, cheese brats, breakfast sausage, pepperoni, bologna, kielbasa, summer sausage, snack sticks, hamburger patties, bulk hamburger and more. Everyone makes two, three, or more of their favorites. It’s a real meat-lover’s extravaganza and a great way to spend time together.

This year’s event was attended by good friends and relatives. Everyone had their favorite recipes ready for the products they planned to make, and it was “all hands on deck” for most of the day. Three, heavy-duty motorized grinders were in use, along with a motorized sausage-stuffing machine, a manual sausage-stuffing machine, an automatic hamburger patty maker and a heavy-duty vacuum sealing machine!

Some had their own recipes, while others used kits from Hi Mountain Seasonings to make bologna and snack sticks. The kits made the process quick and easy, especially since they came with everything necessary to make the sticks, including the edible collagen casings.

It was fun to make the different meat products and see what the other guys were making, too. After a full morning of grinding and stuffing sausage casings, at lunchtime, we fired-up the charcoal grill and cooked-up some of our creations. Jalapeno brats were among the favorites, while I enjoyed the cheese brats and Italian sausage. Actually, everything was great!

One of the guys had brought their full-size, six-foot tall professional grade smoker, and it was filled with long strings of hanging snack sticks and many tubes of summer sausage. With all the different products that were being made, we worked well into the evening and long after dark. It was a lot of work, but it was satisfying. Especially when we thought about the bounty that would be in our freezers to be enjoyed by our families for the rest of the year!

The following day was reserved for cooking some of the other items that required them to be cooked before freezing, like the snack sticks, pepperoni and bologna. We each did our cooking at our own homes. Since there were several batches, it took most of that day as well. I cooked my double batch of snack sticks at home. Snack sticks can be slow cooked in a smoker, but since we didn’t have extra room in the smoker, I just used my oven. Coiling the long snack sticks on cookie sheets works just fine. Just like summer sausage, snack sticks must be brought up to the correct temperature (165 degrees) and then plunged into ice water to quickly stop the internal cooking process. You don’t want the fat inside the sticks to keep cooking or render; otherwise, it will turn the sticks into something resembling shoe leather.

Once the snack sticks were properly cooled and drained, they were cut into the desired lengths and then vacuum-packed before freezing. I like to cut my snack sticks into short lengths of 3 to 4 inches. That makes them just about bite-size!

Another indispensable piece of equipment is a vacuum-sealing machine. I have a Nesco vacuum-sealing machine, and vacuum-sealing meat sticks is vastly superior to simply putting them in a zipper-sealed bag for freezing. Frost always develops in the zipper-sealed bags, which can lead to freezer burn and a soggy product once the package thaws. I put several finished snack sticks in each vacuum-sealed package and then all those packages went directly into the freezer.

Of course, the snack sticks (each flavor) had to be sampled before storing them in the freezer, and they were excellent! Even though both flavors were very good, and even though it was a tough decision, I decided my favorite was the Hickory Blend Snackin’ Sticks.

I’ll have to remember that for next year’s Grinding Day. It will be here before we know it!

You’ll find recipes to prepare using the meat and fish that you’ve harvested yourself in every issue of MidWest Outdoors, available by subscribing on our website.