Does sharpness of the knife influences bind ?

[cashmkr2001]

I give sausagemaking workshops, bachelorparties, that sort of thing. Great fun, popular and well liked. It does however seem to be a lot more difficult to get a good bind at these workshops than at home. I use partially frozen meat and (jawl)fat, check and control the temperature (which usually stays below 10 degrees C for the final product), and have them rigorously knead until they get a good sticky bind (app. 5 minutes).
Really no differently than I do it at home. However, when frying the sausages made during the workshops I often get massive fat loss. At home: none of that.

A said, the conditions are pretty much the same. One difference, I use handgrinders at the workshops and an electric one at home. I had the (handgrinder) knives and plates sharpened about a year ago, but they are not as sharp as they were before. The knife of the electric grinder is sharp. Could this be an explanation? The meat and fat does come out cleanly, no smear in either the electric or the handgrinders. So it looks fine.

Any thoughts?

[wheels]

I wonder whether it's because you use partially frozen meat:
http://forum.sausagemaking.org/viewtopi ... ozen#33529

Hi Carne

Welcome to the forum, If you have a loose texture with a high fat loss then it is almost certainly down to you not mixing the meats enough to extract the protein & bind in the water & fat.
Try again & mix longer this time if you are mixing by hand you should be able to tell when the mixture starts to tighten, the long you mix the tighter the texture. You asked if temerature could be the culprit yes it can if you have used frozen meats then they will never bind without aids such as soya.
Read the basic sausage recipe to see how to make it, along with the notes about texture.
It does take time to get it right but is well worth the effort, if it was easy Tesco would be selling kits

Regards
Richard (AKA Sausagemaker)

http://forum.sausagemaking.org/viewtopi ... ozen#30590

Hi Dave

Tempered meats are frozen meat defrosted to minus 1 or 2 before mincing.
The reason for this is if you think of the meat fibres laying in a line & then freeze then the when you mince them they would just be chopped at regular intervals.
However if they are tempered then the blade of the mincer allows the meat to bend for use of a better word & therefore can reform with some structure.
A good way to see this in action is if you go & buy some fresh mince & some frozen mince the dry fry them in a pan you will see the frozen mince will be sawdust like in cooking & the fresh meat will clump together.
It is this clumping you need to help with the bind.
As Oddley stated the use of phosphate will help in the bind but this works by moving the PH of the meat to allow water to be easily bound, but again if the meat is frozen there is nothing to bind because you have broken the structure.

Hope this helps

Best regards
Sausagemaker

HTH

Phil

[cashmkr2001]

hm, interesting. This is new to me. I have never read this as a warning in any of my sausagebooks. I think I also do this at home though, using partially frozen meat. But it's definately worth an experiment.

[wheels]

Perhaps I should add that sausagemaker is a professional trade expert who specialises in sausage making.

Phil

[cashmkr2001]

Been google-ing all night and have I contacted two professional butchers/sausagemakers. I will have to make up for lost qualitytime with the wife tomorrow, that's for sure.

Interestingly, they didn't agree on the no-cutting-of-frozen-meat-theory. (Nor did my wife, for that matter). The golden rule, they said: "Grinding below 0 and mixing above 0". However, this only goes for lean meat. Fat should not be ground frozen or partially frozen as it will release oil, which will result in a leaky sausage. I found several Dutch (sorry) documents on sausagetechnology confirming this. Google-translate links are below, they are quite informative. Dullness of the knives can indeed be a catalyst in this.

Very interesting translated sausagetechnology documents:

http://translate.google.com/translate?s ... 13121.html

http://translate.google.com/translate?h ... fouten.pdf