Meat stuffer issues meat exploding out of canister

[Jonathon]

Chicovt I have the same thing happen here from time to time. Here are the most common reasons I have found that this happens. By far the #1 issue is letting meat set up too long before stuffing. A few weeks ago I was making some snack sticks to try cooking in sous vide cooker, I knew they wouldn’t be great so I decided to experiment with a few different things and one of them was set up time. This is the time from after I have added everything and mixed it until I stuff it. When I let it set up more than 4 hours there was a noticeable difference in how hard it was to stuff, when I was cranking it was a lot harder and it would do the same thing. I swapped out to another gasket and it continued to happen. I took the entire canister and put it in the freezer for 20 minutes, opened the air release valve more and this helped greatly.

Then I did some testing with stuffing at different temperatures to see how quickly you could stuff a few feet of snack stick casings, unsurprisingly the meat that was around 30 stuffed much faster and easier than 40. So how cold your meat is will have an effect on it.

It also could possibly be a worn out gasket, I always recommend people have an extra one as if this goes you are down until you get another one.

The Air Valve also can help with this, the more it is open the more air will pass through and might stuff slightly easier.

Water and fat content of your meat is also important, obviously.

And the casing you are stuffing it into and tube you are using. The smaller it is the harder it is going to be to stuff and there will be more back pressure which makes the blowout more likely. It looks like you were using 19mm though so you could have been using the 12mm tube and that shouldnt be too bad under ideal circumstances.

[Chicovt]

Jonathon thanks jonathon
I pretty much started stuffing after I mixed
Had a good meat extraction and was cold
Using a 73/27 ratio
Can you confirm what way the gasket goes on
I had someone else mention possible some lubricant in canister and plastic wrap as well
Have you feed that
Yes was using 19mm and 12 tube
How will stuffing go if I let cure overnight instead of using the citric acid won’t that become stiff and hard to stuff?
Also do you find that the citric acid overpowers the spice blend did buffal blue cheese all I could taste was the range from the citric

[Jonathon]

Chicovt Buffalo blue cheese already has some vinegar taste to it so I dont think the citric acid would overpower it, though if memory serves it is not the strongest tasting seasoning so it might overpower it. I don’t love blue cheese so I have steered away from that one! I’d say you would be okay, maybe use 3 oz per 25 lb instead of 4 if you are concerned about it.

It is harder to stuff when held overnight no question about it, this is why you want to stuff your meat into casings and then hold it overnight if you are not using citric acid or another cure accelerator. If you are looking for a good cure accelerator that does not impart much of a taste sodium erythorbate is a good choice.

If you don’t lubricate the gasket it can be harder to stuff or the gasket might possibly start to roll up and create an open space for the meat to escape into and then above the cannister.

The lowest point on your gasket should be the outside ring when it is laid flat on a table. If you look at it from the top down and run your fingers around the outside of the gasket there should not be anywhere for your finger to go, no crease just the gasket touching the ground. If you feel a crease or a gap at the bottom then this is upside down. Sorry, there just isn’t a great way to explain this, I hope that helped!

The rest of your process sounds good, lean to fat is nice, sounds like it was cold and good protein extraction, make sure your air valve is mocing freely.

I didn’t see where you said how much water you added? I’ve done 2 qts before when stuffing small snack sticks, it makes it almost soupy but it stuffs like a dream and the water cooks off during the smoking process. It will take long to cook though, know that going in! Hope that helped!

[AndyMan]

D R Baron said in Meat stuffer issues meat exploding out of canister:

check seal may be upside down, i had that problem once.

[rodneycaudill]

mine did the exact same thing today, very frustrating

[Jonathon]

AndyMan How is your gasket orientated? It is counterintuitive how they should be inserted but it should stop it from coming up over the side. The first picture below shows it orientated correctly with the gap facing down(towards meat). The second is incorrectly installed with the gap at the top(towards stuffer gear box).

[leafthebeef]

Jonathon thank you very much for the pictures. I have been wondering myself which was the correct way.

[Matz]

Chicovt You must be careful when the gasket enters the canister, it will always try to push a part (lip) of the gasket to the top. I bring the plunger down until the gasket just touches the canister. I then check all the way around to see if the gasket is faceing down. When not I take my fingernail and go aruond the canister pushing the gasket in position. it usualy is about a fith of the dia.

[Dave R]

Chicovt don’t feel like the lone ranger, it happened to me as well. Just flip the gasket over and you will be fine

[blackbetty61]

Chicovt
I may be grasping at straws but is your stuffer a bigger one say #25 one or #15 one? We’ve made sticks with our 15 lb stuffer and meat always oozed around the gasket…there was just too much pressure when making sticks, then I bought a 11lb one with dual speed and it works sooo much better on snack sticks.
Just my experience…good luck

[akdave]

blackbetty61 your problem can be several things, bad gasket on stuffer, sausage mix too dry, we had problems with this one time, added a little more water to the mix and it worked wonderful, and stuffing very small snack sticks causes extra pressure on the stuffer.

Dave