Trinidad Scorpion chilli snack stick recipe

Not for the feint of heart, these snack sticks require a cold beer and a love of spicy foods, but are friendly enough to not cause a “National Emergency at the southern border”.

Recently i made some chilli snack sticks with Calabrian chillis, in search of something with a little more zing (https://www.dinnerdinnerfatman.com/blog/calabrian-chilli-snack-stick-salami-recipe) . Whilst delicious, they didn’t quite hit the bar in terms of heat, so i went back to the drawing board.

I’ve been growing Trinidad scorpion chillies this year, and while they are unlikely to deliver the heat they would in their indigenous Trinidad and Tobago (they were ranked hottest chilli in the world in 2011 ! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinidad_Scorpion_Butch_T_pepper) they are still likely to deliver more kick than your average chilli - so i decided to repeat the Calabrian chilli recipe but add a few of these nutters in.

A delicious flavour, but a lot more poke than normal. You can try the same with scotch bonnets if you can’t find any of these bad boys!

• 500 g Pork shoulder diced
• 100 g Pork fat diced and frozen
• 14 g Salt
• 2 g Bessastart culture
• 5 ml Distilled water
• 2 meters lamb casings soaked
• 1.5 g cure #1
• 2 g Pepper ground
• 2.5 g Dextrose
• 1 g smoked, spicy paprika
• 1 tsp minced garlic
• 40 g Calabrian chillies, in oil, finely chopped, seeds included
• 2 Trinidad scorpion chillis, very finely chopped

• Soak the lamb casings for at least an hour and run some water through to clean thoroughly.
• Add the Bessastart to the distilled water at room temperature and leave for 30 mins  
• Chill your grinder in the fridge, along with the diced pork shoulder.
• Put the fat in the freezer.
• Assemble your grinder, and when the fat is frozen, roughly dice it and put through a course grind along with the diced pork shoulder
• Add all of the ingredients above, along with the Bessastart in the distilled water, to the ground shoulder and fat. Mix thoroughly
• Add to stuffer and churn out a number of 8 inch lengths
• To start the fermentation, add to your drying chamber at 95RH and 23c for 48 hours
• Then switch to 75RH at 12c for the rest of the process, until the sausage has lost 35% of its weight. This should take around 8 – 10 days!