Electric Stuffer

1st, when I was up at Iowa State we spent a little bit of time in their processing room, doing some , stuffing, mixing and grinding for dried and semi-dried sausages. Actually I should say grinding, mixing, grinding, and stuffing because they did their 1st grind, mixed then went back to 2nd grind and mixed more. One of the questions we get occasionally is why we don’t mix between the 1st and 2nd grind. My response has always been that we don’t do it because a) it is unnecessary, b) it is harder to clean the grinder and c) honestly, it just wasn’t how I was taught. Turns out there is another reason, when commercial operations do this, they are going to mix in all the spices and then grind again, then go back to the mixer and add their salt and starter culture. Since we use packaged seasonings we can’t separate out the salt.

Close Up

However, I did ask the guys at the meat lab why they do this and they said they think it gives them better dispersal. I asked about how much harder it makes the cleaning and they said something that surprised me to the point I made them do it to show me. They said it doesn’t make it any harder IF you spray it down with COLD water before cleaning it. So, I just did a batch where I mixed between grinds and I added all ingredients aside from |High-Temp-Ghost-Pepper-Cheese and |Encapsulated-Citric-Acid and then ground it again, and added those ingredients. I sprayed down the grinder with as cold of water as I could get from my tap and all the meat came off pretty easily. Now, I don’t see a benefit from doing it this way BUT one of our concerns has been addressed with the Meat Hack of cleaning 1st with cold water…shocking. Also, I have begun applying white il to all surfaces that touch meat when I am done cleaning and about to put something away until I need it next time, and this could also play a role in the ease of removing this meat. But I did see these guys spray with cold water and the meat all came shooting right out.

Next we finally got the 13mm stuffing tube replacements for our Electric Stuffer while I was gone last week. We had some difficulties, or complaints about the quality of the initial batch they sent us, and we had to argue back and forth for some time, they even sent us a batch that we rejected and made them go back to the drawing board. I am very happy to announce that the 13mm stuffing tubes on the stuffer worked swimmingly! We added the full 1.5 L of water to a 25 lb batch, and we added sure gel, so it might have been a higher water content of what you would normally want. But we ran it at top speed, which is insane, should never be run that high, and it didn’t trip once, just kept pumping it out. So, the next thing to do is a few batches at lower water content and see how low we can get it. With this Stuffer there will absolutely be a requirement that a certain amount of water being added to the batch AND the only binder that is acceptable for use is the |Sure-Gel-Meat-Binder We tried the |Soy-Protein-Blend a few months ago and it didn’t work at all. I was frustrated with that but then I was talking with Brett Walton and he mentioned that when sure gel first came out one of the Meat Lab proffessor’s we speak to occasionally said that it would be the best thing to happen to snack sticks because how easy it would make stuffing. I’m rambling and just spitting out little annecdotes, sorry, I am just really happy to be back to making sausage things instead of focussing all of my attention on the website!

Old pic of Austin and Jon going insane to break up the wall of text!

We also tested a new Hand Wrapping Machine that our product development specialist (that may 100% be his title, of it could be 0% his title but its what it is in my mind) with the cling wrap and it worked well. It just holds the roll of the film, has some rollers to make applying it smooth and then a warming plate to “seal” the wrapping film.

Anyway, ton of fun this morning here aside from the cleaning!