Hi Everybody,
I am having some problems with stuffing my casings, my sausages are edible and the texture is good enough, but apart from the first 8-10 inches of casing the sausages do not look right! The initial part of the casing has good colour and shows minced meat and fats as seperate colours but after that the colour changes to a pale pink and it appears that some emulsification or fat smearing is taking place in the mincer body.
I am using beef brisket 30% fat with no filler, a fairly standard mix of spices, but with the addition of whole mustard seeds and some mustard powder.
I am mincing with a medium plate, and trying to stuff into sheep casings using the small stuffing horn.
My initial sausages didn't have this problem but I was using a much lower percentage of fat 10% and the meat was not at such a low temperature.
In my initial sausages using meat straight from the fridge, I was able to mince and stuff with no problems but the sausages were mealy, on the second batch I added beef kidney fat but this smeared everywhere inside the machine and on stuffing emulsified, sausages were better texture and tasted fine. My third attempt was with meat and fat chilled close to freezing point, minced with no problems but again would not stuff without emulsifiying.
It seems as if the spiced minced meat is too stiff to force through the stuffing tube and is just churning in the machine. Could it be that my mixture is too stiff? Would it help to add water and let the mixture come up to refrigerator temperature before stuffing? I am somewhat concerned about adding water as I cannot recollect seeing this anywhere where there are no fillers added.
Regards,
Richard