Smoking / Curing / Sausage Set-Up Question

[JerBear]

This is a two part question. Tonight I'm going to be making snack sticks for the first time and using collagen casings also for the first time. I only have the ability to cold smoke so was thinking about going from stuffing straight into the smoker for a few hours and then finishing in the oven. Would there be any problem to this? Previously I've always let things set-up overnight, then equalized temperature for an hour then into the smoker.

Second question, I'll also be testing out a new recipe tonight for chorizo and figured I'd try smoking half the batch. Because of the quantity of spices I figured that it would be easier to mix everything together at once, however, because some will be smoked I have to use cure #1. That said, it would be easier if I added the cure at the same time as the other spices. I'm guessing it's not a problem to have cure in non-smoked fresh sausages as I do it in my bratwurst but I also want to go straight from stuffing into smoker (natural hog casing). Any concerns?

[NCPaul]

Nitrite reacts fast but maybe not that fast?

[Oddwookiee]

I do a snack stick in a 21mm collagen casing. I'll mix, have the meat sitting by 1pm and in the smokehouse and running for 10 hours hot smoke by 6pm and have never once had an undercured batch.

[Big Guy]

the only problem I see would be getting the cases dry before adding the smoke, a wet or damp case won't take on smoke.

[Oddwookiee]

I stuff my collagens dry and keep them absolutely dry until the door closes. They may pick up a little condensation, but that shouldn't matter. The problem with hanging a snack stick sized collagen is they have a tendency to tear the longer they soak up moisture from the meat. It's doable if you're very careful, though.

[JerBear]

This is what I ended up doing. I roasted the sticks until the required IT was reached (actually overshot by a few degrees). Cooled overnight then about a third of the batch I laid out on a cooling rack in the smoker for a couple hours. Haven't had one of the smoked ones yet but they taste awesome!