Smeared fat while sausage making

TaperPin

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At the butcher shop they wouldn’t use anything other than the coarse plate and use a separate stuffer. Also, a big tub and seasoning shaker spreads spices pretty evenly after the first grind and going through the grinder the second time did the mixing.

Makes my mouth water just talking about this. Lol
 
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SDHNTR

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I have a stuffer. Was just lazy and figured the machine would be faster. I have 20 more pounds of meat and fat coarse ground. I’m gonna mix it by hand and stuff it manually and see if I like those results better.
 

GoatPackr

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Mix the seasoning on the meat before you grind so the grinder mixes it also as it grinds. If you do it after the grind it's easy to get spots without seasoning and others with to much.

Kris
 

NRA4LIFE

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Mix the seasoning on the meat before you grind so the grinder mixes it also as it grinds. If you do it after the grind it's easy to get spots without seasoning and others with to much.

Kris
You don't have a good meat mixer do you? Mine mixes everything as uniform as could imagine.
 
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SDHNTR

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Mix the seasoning on the meat before you grind so the grinder mixes it also as it grinds. If you do it after the grind it's easy to get spots without seasoning and others with to much.

Kris
A lot of seasonings are mixed with water. Kinda hard to do that first.
 

GoatPackr

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You don't have a good meat mixer do you? Mine mixes everything as uniform as could imagine.
I do use a mixer to season before I grind. After the meat is ground it's harder to get it evenly mixed into ground meat. Way faster and easier to put it on the chunks first. Especially if you are not going to grind a second time. It works ok if you do run it a second time and season in between grinds but still not as good as seasoning in the beginning and it getting mixed twice as it grinds.

Kris
 

GoatPackr

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A lot of seasonings are mixed with water. Kinda hard to do that first.
No it's not. I do it all the time mix it and dump in the grind and any liquid left over gets dumped as you add more meat in the grinder. We use a big grinder so adding any liquid left in the mixer isn't hard. Possibly not as easy with a smaller grinder.

Kris
 

jmez

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A lot of seasonings are mixed with water. Kinda hard to do that first.
Still mixes well. Within about 5 mins water mixed with seasoning has turned into a gel and evenly coats the meat. I only grind once, put seasoning on meat before grinding. That's the bottom of meat tub, you can see the consistency.
6ba7b3c6e029d2978a0679d9354dcd83.jpg


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jmez

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Here is what mine looks like after a single grind. The big hole is from meat thermometer.

75fbe109e5a99217c070242a22e08c12.jpg
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JFK

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I primarily make Italian, and other fresh sausage where I like a meat texture versus hotdogs and have a pretty decent process.

Day before making sausage I cut all the meat up into smaller grinder sized chunks. I have a food processing tub where all the meat goes into. Season the meat in the tub, then put the cubed meat into gallon ziplocks where it marinates over night in the fridge. If I had a larger dedicated fridge I’d skip putting it in bags.

Day of making sausage I cube the back fat or suet into roughly 1” pieces and set back in the freezer. Grind the preseasoned meat through a 3/16” plate while tossing in whatever proportion of fat into the mix. Grind into the tub and give it a light hand mixing so it’s less crumbly in texture and begins to bind. If I’m going to add wet ingredients I will do that at this stage as well. I put the meat back into the gallon ziplocks, back into fridge while I break down and clean the grinder, and set up the stuffer. It’s just a small 5lb stuffer so I work in batches grabbing bags of ground out of the fridge and stuffing them.

This system works pretty well and I find that grinding the meat with the seasoning mixes it better than I ever could by hand and doesn’t ruin the texture. It also saves a lot of time.
 
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I add seasonings to meat first then grind once coarse. Mix a little by hand then fine grind. I add any water before the second grind then mix it in by hand if the sausage needs it like summer sausage, snack sticks, smoked polish, chorizo, cooked hot dogs, bologna, and salami. Most smoked/cooked sausages will need water added. I never add it for a fresh sausage. I do a lot of sausage and use two grinders but it commercial and not diy at home. I would still use this method at home though with one grinder and two plates. I really really wish I had two mixer grinders attached together. Made about 300 lbs today from the pigs we processed. Not as much as we normally do but only did 8 pigs and everyone got to have an early start to their weekend.
 
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