Meat Processing

MNmeat: Sorry to be late sticking my oar in your pond. I’ve made a lot of different brats both as fresh sausage and as smoked. I get best results stuffing fresh pork casings. You do not need to mix the meat as long as when making summer sausage or snack sticks. Also, if you grind the lean meat and the fat through different grinder plates, using a slightly larger plate for the fat, then mix the fat and lean together it seems to give a better, pleasing appearance to the product. The fat contrasts with the darker color of the meat and gives your sausage a nice marbled look. Good luck. G

@hinoon If you are looking for a seasoning the Habanero BBQ Snack Stick or Summer Sausage is a favorite of mine and would give you some of the sweetness of the BBQ (don’t let the habanero scare you as they aren’t that hot in my mind) the Honey BBQ Snack Stick will give you the BBQ and the sweetness you are looking for and the Sweet Maple Bacon Snack Stick will give you a nice sweetness. For the mix ratio, if you can get your hands on straight pork fat I would add around 25% of the products weight in fat. This will give you a good taste and texture to your stick. If you can’t get your hands on pork fat you can use pork butts and go 50/50 on the pork and goose. We like pork fat because it has a creaminess to it that other fats cannot seem to duplicate. If you dont want to use pork fat you can use beef fat, it just won’t have quite the same taste or “mouthfeel”. During the 2nd grind is the best time to add the pork fat to ensure that it gets well mixed in with the meat. If you want to stay low on the fat content then you should consider adding Cold Phosphate to increase the water holding capacity of the meat and some sort of binder. Super Bind is a mix of Carrot Fiber and Potato Starch so you get the water holding capacity of the carrot fiber and the potato starch starts to gel at the same temperature meat starts to expel it’s water so it soaks it right up. If you don’t want to spend the money for Super Bind then Sure Gell or Carrot Fiber should work as well! Also you have a stuffer and a mixer but it sounds like you are going to need a grinder. If your bill is usually around $1,000 Im not sure how much of that you are wanting to spend on this but buying a really good grinder would pay dividends for years to come. The Weston Pro #22 and the Pro-Cut #12 KG-12-FS Meat Grinder are excellent grinders. Don’t let the fact that the pro-cut is a #12 fool you, your children’s children will still be using that grinder, they build those things very well! The entire Butcher or Pro Series from Weston are good grinders though until recently I did almost all of my processing for our videos with the Weston Butcher Series #12

@thegunnut It would give you some similar benefits but wouldn’t really be the same. The milk will add protein content and, I think, has a little bit of a taste to it as well. Now, I also don’t taste anything from Carrot Fiber and I have read on here that some people can taste some carrots when adding it. Now, if you are right in the middle, or just about to start processing and you have Carrot Fiber and don’t have milk then absolutely go ahead and use the carrot fiber. However, I wouldn’t go beyond 4 oz of carrot fiber per 25 lb of product!

@KellyJordet I spoke with our application specialist about this and he says if you are really getting a tacky surface then the issue is most likely your smoker no producing enough smoke. He also said that a possibility is that the outside is too dry and doesn’t recommend that you dry them for 2.5 hours. We’d also recommend that you not jump right up to 160° instead step it up in stages. Start at 120 for an hour then 140 for about and hour then to 160 and finally at 175 until it reaches 160°

@Jonathon Oh come on, this was work related…you know you’re more than welcome anytime! I did just pick up this bad boy yesterday from a supermarket auction. Hobart 403 cuber. This things is a beast and we got it for a steal, couldn’t pass it up. Beyond cube steaks we were thinking about doing jerky with the cubed meat. Thoughts?![image: 1545328049945-cuber-resized.jpg]

@minnesotameat that would be great

@jonathon I never cook, or process…without wine.

@parksider

Thanks jonathon! Its good to see insight in this. I actually use no water and only a small amount of liguid smoke as i use powdered smoke. Its good to know their wont be any poor effects persay on the meat!

@wvhunter1965 This is a recipe I use for making hams. It is pretty good. Use a 1/2 cup of tender quick to 4 cups of water to make a brine. Inject 1 oz of brine per 1 lb of meat. Rub 1 tbsp of sugar cure per 1 lb on the outside then refrigerate for 10 to 14 days. Then wash off excess salt with warm water. Then you can smoke and cook it or just plain cook it to an inside temp of 160 degrees. Very good with pork and pretty good with deer. Just have to remember deer is going to be different.

@jonathon I was hanging them one at a time, so the max weight was 13.5 oz. The casings did not appear dry at all. Maybe just a bad batch of casing?

@bromeat what @gerygaub says is true, injection is absolutely faster though it requires an injector where rubbing it only requires the cure and a meat lug (or another container). Bacon Taste Booster is something that is made to help fight off rancidity in the cooler and to help impart the old world taste with modern methods, like injecting. Now, it is most effective when you are tumbling as generally after tumbling you go right to the smoker instead of holding overnight but it can be used when injecting and holding overnight. So you might want to consider adding some if you inject, I add it when I inject and I do think that it adds something nice to the bacon!

@gkimmina We have Braunschweiger Casings that are made from a plastic and are specifically for making Braunschweiger. I don’t think that Mahogany would cause any real issues though. They are certainly strong enough and even though the casings are perforated and Braunschweiger is more of a spread so it does not have a firm consistency I don’t think you would see any real bleeding out the small holes in the casing.

@1grinder The only downside I would see to that is that there is moisture in the freezer and we obviously want to avoid these rusting. I want to say that this is a great idea but I am going to check with our application specialist first and if it works I think this would be a good thing for people to follow your example on! If nothing else at least you always know where they are!

@dsmythe I’m not sure what albs is but for 25 lb of Jalapeno Snack Sticks you can either use Jalapeno Summer Seasoning and then 1 oz of sure cure (included with the purchase of the seasoning) 6 oz of Sure Gel 4 oz of Citric Acid and between 1 and 2 qts of water. Or, you can use another Summer Sausage Seasoning and then take Jalapeno Pepper Flakes rehydrate them at a rate of 1 oz of flakes to 5 oz of water and then use 3-6% of the rehydrated flakes for your meat block. So if you were making 100 lb you would rehydrate 3-6 lb of flakes and use those. If you are looking for brekadowns of how this you can go to Seasonings Page under the Walton’s Learning Center and we have broken down cures, seasonings and additives into 1 and 5 lb batches.

@steve-brown45 The big issue would be the outside diameter of the back edge of the flange. If yours have the same diameter, which is 2 - 1/16th inch, then it should work. The Inside Diameter might possibly cause an issue as these are designed to have the force of a stuffer behind them and the RedHead might not have the same pressure but I really don’t believe it will cause an issue. Let us know if you need anything else!

@MikesMeats A ratio of 2 qts to 25 lb of meat will make stuffing a lot easier. The first time I used that much water I was concerned that I had measured something incorrectly because it was almost soupy but in the end, it stuffed wonderfully and the finished product had a good consistency!

@angel4us Yes, those brown spots are areas where the cure was not mixed in with. The other possibility is that something you added interacted with the cure and causes it to turn the meat brown/green around it. As good as you mixed it with your hands this will sometimes happen when hand mixing (can even happen with machine mixing) as the cure didn’t get every little bit of meat. Personally, I don’t think it causes too much of an issue as long as everything was cooked to 160° and is kept refrigerated.

@mtnjim You’ve probably already done all of this but just so it doesn’t go unanswered: Yes you can do that, I don’t like to when using Carrot Fiber though as it makes it a past and that can be a little harder to get mixed in with the meat. Absolutely can be done though and often is. It’s a choice between lesser evils really. 60 seconds might not get you perfect distribution but it will be good enough and it is is certainly better than doing it too long and having the encapsulation break and release the acid into the meat too early.

@mouljb Yes, you can absolutely proceed without the Sure Gel, the sure gell helps with protein extraction and consistency but it is not necessary. As for the Cure Excellerator no, it is not the same as sure cure, though the two are connected. Cure Excellerator speeds the cure so that it will work right away and eliminates the need to hold the product for 12 hours so you can go right from stuffing to smoking!