Meat / fat ratio question

[Fatdan]

As a beginner, I'm still trying to get familiar with a basic banger recipe and have found many useful tips on this site. I have managed to get hold of some back fat from the local butcher and would like to know the following:

1. What proportion of back fat to 'real' meat should I use ?
2. As I'm using back fat (rather than fatty meat), what type of 'real' meat should I use ? belly, shoulder etc ?

Any guidance much appreciated.

Thanks

[Paul Kribs]

Fatdan

Belly or shoulder is a good choice for making sausages. You need to visually assess how much fat is in the belly or shoulder that you will use, this is known as Visual Lean, and is estimated as a percentage. You may come across ie. VL 70% in a recipe. This would indicate 70% lean meat and obviously 30% fat. BTW, 70% VL is a good starting point which you can adjust accordingly to your personal preference in the next batch. Usually there is more than enough fat in a belly, so I normally mix it with the leaner shoulder, cutting away the harder fat from the shoulder to attain the 70%. Any fat gleaned from preperation, can be frozen for later use when using leaner meat with a lower content, so you could save your back fat until later if you wish. You may find 70% doesn't suit you, in which case adjust it as necessary.

Regards, Paul Kribs

[Oddley]

Paul is basically right. Most commercial shoulders come up at about 80% vl ie 80% meat 20% fat and belly comes up at about 50% vl. the problem is how much of each do you mix together to get a target % ie 25%. In the commercial world they use a calculation called a Persons square.

As I couldn't be bothered working it out by hand every time, I have written a program to do it for me. I have made it available to the forum before, so this seems a good time to make my free program available again.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

What is Sausage Makers Square.

Sausage makers Square is a program that provides the industry standard way of determining the fat content of sausage meat. With pigs being bred for much leaner meat due to public demand, the availability of pork fat is much reduced and the fat is much more expensive. Sausage Makers Square solves this problem, by allowing you to combine fatty meats with lean meat, to get the fat content you require.

What is Meat Calculator.

Meat Calculator, unlike many other Sausage Makers Square programs, allows you to work out automatically, the exact weights of the two meats, you need for your sausage making project. This is all accomplished using the results from Sausage Makers Square, within a simple to understand interface.

[dougal]

As a beginner, I'm still trying to get familiar with a basic banger recipe and have found many useful tips on this site. I have managed to get hold of some back fat from the local butcher and would like to know the following:

1. What proportion of back fat to 'real' meat should I use ?
2. As I'm using back fat ....

Umm. Back fat. Bangers. Mmmmm.

The reason for using hard back fat is usually that you want to keep distinct 'bits' of fat in the product - as in many salamis.
But for "bangers", well, you don't want distinct bits of fat do you?

As others have implied, for bangers, you'd be better to use a mixture of meats, rather than lean meat + straight fat.
Bangers - more fatty meat and water than in most sausages, and some dry bready stuff ("rusk") to hold the fat and water, all minced up pretty finely... but I think the back fat would be better for a different project.

[TJ Buffalo]

That looks like a nice piece of work, Oddley. Thanks for making it available.

[Oddley]

Hi TJ Buffalo, Yes it is a very handy program.

I don't think many people have downloaded it, or they don't understand it's use. As you can see there are no thank you's apart from your's for providing it free to the forum. The same happened the last time I offered it, I didn't get one reply.

So if the software I produce is not really popular there is no point of offering any in the future. So this is the last of it.

[moggy]

Whoa! chill out oddley, you only posted up your link yesterday and I have only seen it today.
I haven't downloaded it, but then I am just a beginner and don't see why it would be so useful. I am not saying it isn't useful, but at this stage in my experience, I don't understand why it would be, how would it save me time/ make better sausages etc, or why it would be so difficult to work out fat content by hand.

[Oddley]

I'm totally chilled, I'm not angry, annoyed or anything else. I was just stating facts. It takes a lot of time to write the help files for programs, it also takes time to upload and compose the post. If the programs are not going to be downloaded or used on the forum then I can use that time to do other things.

As you can see from the link below. It can't be very popular.

http://forum.sausagemaking.org/viewtopi ... ght=square

[jenny_haddow]

Thankyou Oddley, I have the sausage makers icon on my screen. It will be very useful in the future, especially for rusk free sausages where I think the proportional fat content is very important.

I bought some very fatty belly pork that I had to add a lot of lean meat to, which I did by eye, for my recent batch of French style chipolatas. The square would have made short work of it and removed that smidgeon of doubt one has when it's down to your own judgement.

It's a clever piece of kit.

Cheers

Jen

[Oddley]

I don't understand why it would be, how would it save me time/ make better sausages etc, or why it would be so difficult to work out fat content by hand.

I'm sorry I didn't answer your questions.

For example if you have pork shoulder at 80% VL which is 80% lean and 20% fat, but you want your sausages to contain 30% fat. So you want to buy a piece of belly of pork 50% VL because you can't get back fat. how do you work out how much belly of pork to buy.

You have 20% fat from the shoulder so you need 10% more fat say the shoulder is 1000gm that means you need, I don't know how much fat and meat from the belly to bring that up to 30% fat.

The only way I know too work it out is with a Pearsons Square. Below is the way to use a pearsons square.

METHOD FOR PEARSONS SQUARE

Belly of pork 60% fat 40% Meat
Shoulder 20% fat 80% meat
Target 30% fat

To use the Pearson's Square method, first draw a square. Then follow the directions as
outlined. In this example, the percentage of fat was determined, but the proportion of other
stuff can also be calculated.

1. Draw a square, place the desired fat percent (30) in centre.

2. Select meats to use, in this case belly pork with 60 percent fat and shoulder of pork that contains 20 percent fat.
Write fat percentages in upper left corner (60) and lower left corner (20).

3. Subtract diagonally, always subtracting the smaller number from the larger number. 60 - 30 = 30 (write in lower right corner).
30 - 20 = 10 (write in upper right corner). This means that you will mix 10 parts of belly with 30 parts of shoulder
to get a 30 percent fat content. Results can be simplified say to 30 / 10 = 3 parts shoulder to 10 / 10 = 1 part belly


60________30 - 20 = 10 parts

_____30
20________ 60 - 30 = 30 parts


4. To convert this to a percentage basis, add the numbers on the right side (10 + 30 = 40) and calculate.

10
-- x 100 = 25 percent Shoulder Pork
40

30
-- x 100 = 75 percent Belly Pork
40

Then you will have still, by percentages to work out the weight of belly to use. I don't know about you but I just can't be bothered to do these calc's every time I want to make sausages.

[Oddley]

You are welcome jenny.

[DarrinG]

Oddley in your last post you contradicted yourself because

Results can be simplified say to 30 / 10 = 3 parts shoulder to 10 / 10 = 1 part belly


60________30 - 20 = 10 parts

_____30
20________ 60 - 30 = 30 parts


4. To convert this to a percentage basis, add the numbers on the right side (10 + 30 = 40) and calculate.

10
-- x 100 = 25 percent Shoulder Pork
40

30
-- x 100 = 75 percent Belly Pork
40

Your first results were 30 / 10 = 3 parts shoulder to 10 / 10 = 1 part belly

Therefore to figure out percents you should use 30/40*100 = 75% Shoulder & 10/40*100 = 25% Pork Belly

Because if you use 75% Belly & 25% Shoulder you would end up with 50% Fat.

DarrinG

[Oddley]

Thank you for pointing out my typo. I took the example from file I had obviously missed the typo originally. But as you can see below this does not effect the Sausage makers Square. As I have checked it thoroughly first before allowing anybody to use it.

Just goes to show how easy it is to make mistakes, when doing it by hand.

[saucisson]

Wow, what a lovely bit of Software Oddley, very nicely put together. Maths is not my strongest subject so I will find it invaluable. I particularly like the meat calculator so I can buy 697g of belly and then work out how much shoulder or whatever to add.


Dave

[Oddley]

You are welcome Dave, I use it all the time myself.