Let's talk processing

[Jmort1754]

Now having the room to do some of our processing away from family that has all the equipment here is my list of things I have to get-- any input?

Grinder- 1/2 to 3/4 HP
Mixer
Sausage stuffer
Cutting boards
Knives- Can't think of the name but the white handled butcher style
Vacuum sealer- higher quality- currently have a cheaper food saver that works but takes forever

 

[thinhorn_AK]

A 5”‘boning Ning knife is where its as t. Weston finders, vacmsers, extra supplies on had…

 

[bpa556]

Bump the grinder up to a #32 with stuffer tubes. Add a foot pedal switch and forget about the mixer and stuffer.


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[Azone]

Meat lugs and whetstone. Keep your eyes peeled for a deal on a stainless steel table.
When you buy your sausage stuffer make sure you get a spare gasket/o ring for the piston.

 

[Wapiti1]

Stainless or nylon tubs for moving meat, finished cuts or to hold in the fridge. For sausage, you'll be holding in the fridge overnight, or longer to cure before stuffing.

Dexter or Victorinox knives have been the best for me. But my Rapala fillet knife seems to get a lot of use as well.

Minimum 10lb stuffer. I have used the grinder attachments as well, and they work, but do not work well with finer grinds or styles that need large fat chunks, etc. If all you ever make are brats and salami, the grinder will work. I prefer the stuffer overall since the grinder is usually now clean and put away by the time the sausage has cured and is ready to stuff. The stuffer is way easier to clean verse the grinder.

Maybe a dehydrator for jerky and snack sticks.

Smoker, because you need one if you want to call yourself an American.

Jeremy

 

[roadrunner]

www.waltons.com

Everything you need you can get from Walton's; their prices are better and have more to offer than that other brand. I would go with Hakka Brothers USA for the stuffer. As a minimum, go with a #22 1 hp grinder. I would recommend a Weston, but the Walton's brand is a good one as well.

A belt sander sharpener to put a good edge on your knives, but also have a quality steel to keep them honed up while slicing and dicing. A couple lengths of boning knives are a must. One 5"-6" for working around bones and joints and a 7" for slicing. As mentioned, Victorinox are good.

If you have the space in a garage or shop, get one of their 3' X 3' boning tables that has the poly cutting board top with it. If not, the biggest poly cutting board you can find that fits on a countertop. You don't want one of those small ones that sporting goods stores sell for "field to table" applications.

One to two 50 lb. luggers and at least twice that many of the smaller 25 lb. size. Get all nylon. If you take care of them and wash them properly (do not use an abrasive brush or scrub pad!), they'll out last you barring any accidental drops.

 

[IDLassie]

Get the foot pedal for the grinder. Bigger is better won't heat up as fast and break down as fast as the small one. Buy once cry once. Learned the hard way.
Dump the mixer. We bought one it's a pain to get the meat out after mixing. Just use our hands.
Get the stuffer. Have tried the attachments on the grinder and for us it doesn't go slow enough and always having the casing busting. Bought the sausage stuffer and its light years ahead for us.
Get several meat lugs .
Now we need to build an actual meat cutting room and a walk in freezer. Maybe buy some stainless steel tables for meat cutting.

Been cutting our meat for 40 years now.

 

[Tod osier]

Now having the room to do some of our processing away from family that has all the equipment here is my list of things I have to get-- any input?

Grinder- 1/2 to 3/4 HP
Mixer
Sausage stuffer
Cutting boards
Knives- Can't think of the name but the white handled butcher style
Vacuum sealer- higher quality- currently have a cheaper food saver that works but takes forever

Comments beyond what has already been said...

Big grinder is better, but try to get one with helical flutes not straight flutes inside. The straight flutes are a cheapy way to do it and are not as efficient or as tight tolerances. Good professional grinders have helical flutes.

Get a chamber vac, if you can afford it. The Vacmasters are good and you can get parts to repair. There are a lot of popular chamber vacs new to the market, there is a lot going on inside one to fail and you want to get replacement parts. The new popular vacs have not started to fail yet, but when they do will support adn parts be there?

If you want to make sausage, real sausages of a variety of types you need several dedicated tools. You need a stuffer, do not get a 5 pounder, you have to reload too often, but a 10 pounder and up is great, also metal tubes (look at the hakka stuffers, they are all metal, well built and replacement parts are available on amazon and ebay). You need a mixer of some sort, no way you can develop a proper bind for sausage with your hands with a batch over 10 pounds and keep it cold enough not to break. A kitchenaid will work, but a dedicated mixer is better.

Dehydrator for jerky. The only recommendation is not to get a gardenmaster style with the circular trays (bitch with jerky), otherwise, they are a heating element with a fan - tough to screw up.

 

[GSPHUNTER]

If you are going to be making large quantities of sausage or ground for other uses, Weston has an all in one grinder, mixer, stuffer. the grinder can attach directly to the mixing tub, or it has a hand crank for smaller amounts. Food handling gloves are a must, a good kitchen scale, and hog rings and pliers.

 

[FrankAbagnale]

+1 for the foot pedal. I also really like the LEM meat lugs. They’re super handy.

 

[butcherboy]

Good knives like victorinox, the biggest grinder you can afford, electric stuffer, poly top tables for cutting, stainless for packaging or any table with a smooth washable surface for packaging. Skip the mixer, you can mix small batches by hand just fine. For summer sausage, snack sticks or other sausages you can run through your grinder once coarse then another 2-3 times fine when the sausage needs emulsion. Just be sure to add super cold water or crushed ice. You can also add a binder to it so it doesn’t fall apart if you have trouble with the emulsion. A chamber vac is nice but not needed for steaks and roasts if you wrap in a good plastic first then freezer paper. Stuff your burger and bulk sausage into poly tubes and use a tape machine to seal it. Skip the pliers and hog rings. There is a small handheld clipper tool that uses staples instead of hog rings. Much easier to use. Lots of luggers, boning hook, steels, sharpening stone, a knife scabbard is also nice. Lots of ideas here and don’t get overwhelmed with everything, just get a few things here and there and keep adding on. That’s how we started and before you know it we had so much equipment that we started doing it commercially. Went from a room in a garage to a full scale slaughter and processing plant. I recommend keeping it small for just you and some friends though

 

[Tod osier]

I also really like the LEM meat lugs. They’re super handy.

If you find lugs in store, buy a bunch matching (8?) with LIDS. They are really expensive to order and ship. Rubbermaid ones are good as well, they are often sold for table bussing, but be sure to get lids (the lids are the expensive and hard to find part) .

 

[fellerr]

Good knives like victorinox, the biggest grinder you can afford, electric stuffer, poly top tables for cutting, stainless for packaging or any table with a smooth washable surface for packaging. Skip the mixer, you can mix small batches by hand just fine. For summer sausage, snack sticks or other sausages you can run through your grinder once coarse then another 2-3 times fine when the sausage needs emulsion. Just be sure to add super cold water or crushed ice. You can also add a binder to it so it doesn’t fall apart if you have trouble with the emulsion. A chamber vac is nice but not needed for steaks and roasts if you wrap in a good plastic first then freezer paper. Stuff your burger and bulk sausage into poly tubes and use a tape machine to seal it. Skip the pliers and hog rings. There is a small handheld clipper tool that uses staples instead of hog rings. Much easier to use. Lots of luggers, boning hook, steels, sharpening stone, a knife scabbard is also nice. Lots of ideas here and don’t get overwhelmed with everything, just get a few things here and there and keep adding on. That’s how we started and before you know it we had so much equipment that we started doing it commercially. Went from a room in a garage to a full scale slaughter and processing plant. I recommend keeping it small for just you and some friends though

I second about everything mentioned here. We butcher a lot of cattle, hogs and deer every year.

We sold our mixer. Use tubs and mix by hand. We’ve got a 2hp carnivore grinder from cabelas. Surprised we haven’t burnt it up yet. The stuffing capability on this grinder is to dang slow. We have a LEM manual 20 or 25# stuffer. It works great for burger, sticks, sausage, brats etc. we don’t have the electric hookup for it…just manual crank at the moment. Works well for us, and that is even stuffing up to 400# of burger in one shot.

We used to use hog rings…switched to tape. Haven’t looked back. Victornox knives are great as well!

A solid, solid table to work off of is a must. We used crap folding tables for a long time and finally got some super heavy duty wood folding tables. Should have done that a long time ago. Good big cutting boards are handy as well! Vacuum sealer is also a huge plus. Another thing I wish we had invested in a long time ago.

I hadn’t heard the saying buy once cry once till I joined this website. But if you can afford things…it for sure holds true!!!

 

[Roger17]

Lot of good advice already. I'll just throw another vote for Victorinox knives. I still process everything using mine that I bought back in '91 for my meats class lab in college. Use for everyday kitchen work as well.

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[TraderMike]

I found double-bagging (freezer bags) and freezer paper to be a faster process and better at protecting my game from freezer burn than vac-sealing. More affordable as well. Perhaps my Food Saver brand vac-sealer was second rate as I seemed to get an unacceptable number of failed seals resulting in freezer burn after some time in the freezer. Double-bag + freezer paper doesn't fail me.

 

[GSPHUNTER]

I found double-bagging (freezer bags) and freezer paper to be a faster process and better at protecting my game from freezer burn than vac-sealing. More affordable as well. Perhaps my Food Saver brand vac-sealer was second rate as I seemed to get an unacceptable number of failed seals resulting in freezer burn after some time in the freezer. Double-bag + freezer paper doesn't fail me.

I'm a freezer paper fan as well, mainly for foods I know I will be using within 4 months or so. I had the same issue with my foodsaver so, I just got in the habit of double heat sealing each bag, a little PITA but it works, most of the time. If it does fail after double sealing, it's likely because there was moisture, or something on sealing area.

 

[Tod osier]

I found double-bagging (freezer bags) and freezer paper to be a faster process and better at protecting my game from freezer burn than vac-sealing. More affordable as well. Perhaps my Food Saver brand vac-sealer was second rate as I seemed to get an unacceptable number of failed seals resulting in freezer burn after some time in the freezer. Double-bag + freezer paper doesn't fail me.

Chamber-vac is a solution for that if you want to pursue. My first trip to Alaska, we brought our foodsaver and sealed a ton of sockeye fillets, 5000 miles later a huge percentage failed. Next trip chamber vac - zero fails. I see just a couple failed seals per year with a good chamber vac. Best thing about the chamber vac is that if you seal unfrozen meat the bag freezes to the meat - even if the bag is compromised (say by a banging puncture in the freezer) the bag stays intact.

 

[Lawnboi]

Food saver vac are terrible for any volume. They also seal like crap because liquid gets drawn out.

A chamber vac is faster, bags are cheaper, you can seal soup if you want and you can get a multitude of different size and thickness bags.

 

[Jmort1754]

What affordable chamber vac ?

 

[Tod osier]

What affordable chamber vac ?

The tried and true is the VacMaster VP215.