Meat Processing

@Jonathon Thanks!

@Denny I’ve never ground it, makes sense that certain portions would lend to that task. What I have done is smoke it like a brisket for 26 hours - and it made the best pulled/chopped meat you could image! Jiggled, wiggled, and wobbled onto the prep board.

@bcompton53 Yeah, the meat mixers in general are much easier on your hands. I’ve become spoiled and have a 50 lb that will do as little as 15 lb batches and hooks up to a few different grinders (surprisingly) but even a hand crank one is a lot easier than doing it with your hands.

@wvhunter1965 It was good, I was surprised how much I liked the combination. I tasted the cheese whiz by itself and it tasted sort of nasty but when put ontop of a hot Philly brat made from beef was tasty!

If you planned this out first with blanching peppers and maybe simmer them a little longer then use that “pepper juice” as the spiced up water to help mix the meat. I was wondering how much “heat” that would give snack sticks or summer sausage. Normally I use beer but hey spice it up right.

@Jonathon , thanks

@PapaSop most days!

I also like to lay them out on paper towels and dry them off then i pack them in non-iodized salt and into a ziplock bag for long term storage. In the fridge never the freezer. They will last for over a year for sure.

@Jonathon no problem! Btw i switched to waltons seasonings last year for a bunch of my stuff. I just switched over to using your ham spices as well. They work out pretty tasty! [image: 1592395774335-20200615_175358-resized.jpg]

Jonathon, thanks for the info. Here’s what happened last night with my snack sticks. Had a nasty thunderstorm come up, so ended up having to do them in the oven, not what I wanted, but couldn’t put them off. I used the Hatch Green Chili seasoning and sure cure. I increased the seasoning by about 10% or so. Unfortunately the lowest my oven goes is 175, so started there. I have jerky grid style trays that I used, criss crossed them to keep air between the sticks. I did cut them in lengths to fit in the trays, 14" or so? Some of the meat did extrude in the process, but not a big deal. They fit on 3 trays, which I rotated after about 90 minutes. After about 3 1/2 hours or so some of the sticks were at 160. Some were at 140. Ended up having to check every one. Put them back in, after about another 45 minutes, more of them were done, but about 4 of the sticks, half of a rack were not. I put them back in for another half hour. They were still in the 140 ish area, so I ended up cutting them in half. In the middle of a few of the sticks, they were still at only 127! Having needed to get to bed, I put them in our toaster oven at 300 just to get them to 160. Those ones will be consumed by me. I did take some pics this morning, recreating my setup but don’t know how to post pics here. I used 4 lbs ground beef, 1 lb ground pork. I did screw one thing up on the recipe I think, and I’m sure it has alot to do with the results. However, I’m still very confused as to the inconsistency in temps of the product. I have a nice oven, and the trays sit on top of each other, so it’s not like they’re a foot in difference in the oven. I miscalculated since I was doing 5 lbs of meat, I put a little over 2 cups of ice water, where I think it should have been 1 1/4 cups? The other thing I’m not sure may have had an effect is I did have an orange shirt on

@sbtech Rarely will you go too far wrong with more fat, yes it is possible to add too much fat and it will render out but generally if you add a binder and get good protein extraction and have close to the right fat content (70/30-80/20 range) you will be all good!

@RBoyette Click this link https://meatgistics.waltonsinc.com/topic/617/seasoning-conversion-chart-for-1-lb-and-5-lb-meat-batches that takes you to the chart showing a breakdown of all of our seasonings. Most popular is the H Summer which for 5 lb would be ½ cup, 2 tbsp (4.7 oz) and 1 tsp of sure cure would be just about correct (close enough for sure) For water, if you are adding a binder you can add a little more but 8 oz of water should be a good amount with or without a binder. When you have made a batch or two you can experiment with more or less water.

@Denny Thanks, I’ll give this mix as well as just brisket a try.

Thank you guys! much appreciated.

I did two 20# hams over the weekend, both are excellent! followed the recipe i posted above. I used all the additives listed. including sure gel Thanks

@truckmountgirl Yeah, if you are going to have a wet solution tilt will absolutely be a big help in dumping, otherwise I suppose you’d have to come up with some sort of shoveling system that is going to cost time and effort. We have 3 phase vac machines with plugs on them here as well, they can be hard-wired or they can use that special plug, it has 4 prongs with one of them having a 90° angle in it (that will make sense when you see it) Yeah, sorry, I don’t have any idea what would grind bones the best for dog food. A quick google search yielded no helpful article. I will see if anyone in our commercial sales department knows. We do some stuff with a guy in texas that does some pet food though if memory serves me he doesn’t grind up bones but adds calcium dust or bone dust or something. If you wanted to do patties the easiest way would be to stuff it into Poly Tubing then freeze it and cut it. I don’t see a mold inside of a vacuum sealer working well. Maybe it would though? I’ll update the post with anything I learn from the commercial sales guys.

@tenderloin That’s an interesting point, I have heard that from some commercial customers in the past but still haven’t done it!

@sbtech the W Pepperoni only comes in 100 lb units so I would be cautious about trying that one as you would have to weigh out a really small amount for a small batch. If you want pepperoni the Pepperoni Unit is what I like to use for pepperoni. You can use carrot fiber if you want, it doesn’t add protein though so I would recommend Sure Gel instead. Encapsulated Citric Acid is a cure accelerator like @tmeiners82 said, it is an optional ingredient though, you can use it if you want but don’t have to. The sure cure that will come with the seasoning is not optional, you need to add that if you are going to smoke it. Hope this helped!

@Derek_D Sorry, are you saying when you said the 21mm clear in your first post you were actually talking about fresh? I’d guess they were cooked too hot or something went wrong as I grill fresh collagen all the time and unless I get distracted and the internal temp goes up around 190 they don’t split on me. Possible that they were a bad batch I guess but I’d imagine we’d hear from a lot of our commercial customers if the casings themselves had an issue?

Thank you Jonathon, will try that this weekend! Cheers