Homemade Sausage Making

Hello Everyone

I've been struggling with emulsified sausage for far too long - in all my attempts, I only managed to get it right once.

I'm here begging for some help - what am I doing wrong?

Here's my process. I'm using a commercial spice from Crown National

Ground Beef 60/40 - 1kg
Iced Water - 200g
Spice - 100g

I keep the ground beef as cold as possible. I'm using a food processor to emulsify 2 to 3 minutes in total. I wait till the mean is sticky and tacky - all the water is properly absorbed and nothing noticeably leaks out. Mixture is left in fridge overnight to develop flavour. Upon removing mix from fridge, everything is still intact and no noticeable leakage whatsoever. I stuff immediately in small batches so mixture remains very cold. I place stuffed sausage back in the fridge to cool down then into my oven at 180f till internal temperate reaches 150f.

In all of my attempts the casing is filled with water after cooking process. The sausage ends up mealy and mushy. It lacks flavour totally and in actual fact becomes inedible due to flavour lost in the water.

My understanding is my emulsion broke but how is a mystery since I followed all the rules of emulsified sausage as close as possible. I've attempted this many times and only once did I ever get it right.

Please help me - I'm so desperate knowing I can make something decent even if I only managed to do it right once

Thanks
Mo

Are you using your kitchen oven? If so it is not uncommon for the temp to vary +-30 degrees, you may be overcooking them. As long as you are not smoking them I would switch to poaching.
Reading this topic will also help you - http://wedlinydomowe.pl/en/viewtopic.ph ... lsion+tips

Are you truly trying to make an emulsified sausage like a hotdog texture? If you are some cutter phosphate might help. Also crushed ice instead of water. What is the temperature of the emulsion when you're done? It way be too high and the emulsion is failing.

When emulsifying your farce should warm up to about 12 - 14* C. Do not let it cool down but stuff right away.
Unless you have a very powerful processor meat at 60/40 can be quite a struggle in one go. I would start with lean meat and add fattier meat later in the process. I messed a few bunches until I had the processor blades sharpened.
Good luck next time

Generally when making an emulsion you use lean meat, salt spices and ice, then add the fat last. Fat doesn't absorb water so adding the fat at the end then taking it up to 12-14C as stated above. Maybe try and separate your lean and fatty meat. I use wild game as my base for emulsified sausages and add in pork back fat.

Hi

After another failed attempt, the frustration got the better of me and I just abandoned this whole experiment but my fingers started to itch again and have another go.

I've been reading these responses again and was quite interested in the fact of heating up the mixture to 12-14c. Every tutorial I have read stressed on keeping the mixture absolutely cold or the emulsion will break.

Im giving it another go soon and would like to follow some of the tips below - I've just summarised them, if I'm heading in the wrong direction, please guide me.

75% beef
25% beef fat
I'm using crown spice product called Cooked Russian/Salami and I think there's phosphate and emulsifiers in the product already.

Add lean beef first with water and spice.
Once lean meat absorbs water, add fat and emulsify till farce is sticky
Warm up farce to 12c then stuff
Poach

I wish it was easy as it sounds but hope I don't run into issues.

Thanks

I know the smart people have chimed in already and they are definitely the ones to pay attention as there is some really valuable experience on this board. But I haven't had an issue at all with emulsification. Maybe I don't get as smooth a farce as I could. Even with a buffalo chopper I get more grain than commercial products. But if I were to wonder out loud these would be my thoughts:

• is there an issue with the beef fat rendering out or otherwise altering the texture?

• why cool the farce overnight, why not grind the meat to its final grind, say 3mm or smaller if you have the plate and chill freeze the meat down to crunchy?

• The night before make sure to figure out a way to get my ice into as close to snow as possible so it blends in quickly

• Be as quick as possible with the food processor to minimize some alteration to consistency/protein/etc in the meat that I don't yet understand

• Maybe settle for less smoothness and more granularity in this batch of the finished sausage until I knock out a few other elements

Part of my approach would be that I think more than one thing is going on and I would try to work through one of the issues at a time. Just my 2 cents and its worth less than that even

S@usage wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 07, 2022 12:54

Hi

After another failed attempt, the frustration got the better of me and I just abandoned this whole experiment but my fingers started to itch again and have another go.

I've been reading these responses again and was quite interested in the fact of heating up the mixture to 12-14c. Every tutorial I have read stressed on keeping the mixture absolutely cold or the emulsion will break.

Im giving it another go soon and would like to follow some of the tips below - I've just summarised them, if I'm heading in the wrong direction, please guide me.

75% beef
25% beef fat
I'm using crown spice product called Cooked Russian/Salami and I think there's phosphate and emulsifiers in the product already.

Add lean beef first with water and spice.
Once lean meat absorbs water, add fat and emulsify till farce is sticky
Warm up farce to 12c then stuff
Poach

I wish it was easy as it sounds but hope I don't run into issues.

Thanks

I think the problem here might be with temperature that you are bring the emulsified to. Everywhere we read that we should take it up to 12-14C. But those temperatures are for pork fat, and not beef. With beef fat you have two options, emulsify up to only 4C or you have to take it all the way to 21c (40F or 70F)

Take a look at this excellent summary:
https://meatsci.osu.edu/node/130

I have been making emulsified sausage for over a year in a food processor with no problems with the emulsion breaking. My process is to have the meat almost frozen and grind in a 3mm chuck. The fat is frozen and ground with a 3mm chuck twice. the proportion is 80/20 plus 150ml of water at 0 C. where the curing salts and spices are added, already having everything at adequate temperatures to emulsify, proceed to emulsify in the food processor once the paste is made, fill the casing and leave it dried from there it is smoked with a time of 1 hour at 60 C. After this time they are placed in hot water at 70 C. for 25 minutes. This has been my process for more than a year and as I mentioned without problems but I wanted to. better my emulsion process and I adapted some blades of a processor to use them with a drill and behold, my sausages when put in hot water at 70 C. the fat comes out of the emulsion resulting in a broken sausage could someone tell me I'm doing wrong greetings and thanks in advance