I worked for 3 years in Walton's Customer Service department, I have probably spoken with a good deal of people visiting this page in one way or another! I am now working on content creation for waltonsinc.com and meatgistics.com.
Im originally from upstate New York and before I worked here I had never made homemade Sausage before. Now I love processing and the satisfaction that comes from eating or serving a well made homemade Snack Stick, Summer Sausage, Bratwurst, etc.
I try to eat healthily and we will do some posts about healthy options here but I am not a fanatic about it, what is the use of eating healthy if you can't occasionally eat 1 or 2 Brats, okay fine 4 or 5!!?
Dylan and I did 75 lb of sausage today. 1 batch of the Salami with some dry red wine added, one of the Pepperoni and 1 of Habanero BBQ, each one was 25 lb. On all of them, we used the Bactoferm TSP-X Starter Culture. We stuffed them into Beef Middles and put them into our eller cabinet. We are going to check tomorrow to make sure we have achieved the needed pH drop and then we buckle in for the long wait!
Guys, just pointing out that I am deleting the @davidwang account. I don’t want to get into other companies using Meatgistics as a way to sell their products to our customers. Sales between you guys of used equipment is 100% fine though!
Hey everyone, I thought I would put together a little post that would sort of encapsulate (citric acid) 2019 for Meatgistics users! It is going to be a collection of some of my favorite posts, I went through and tried to rank them on how many views, comments and votes they got but that quickly got too confusing! So, I looked at those and took them into consideration but they are by no means all I took into account!
Thank you to everyone who contributed to meatgistics this year! Your questions, responses and ultimately your purchasing of Walton’s Inc products is what lets us keep doing what we are doing! So, the countdown begins.
There are going to be more than a few people who made posts worthy of being on this list that I am leaving out (off the top of my head I can think of AdamCA craigrice raider2119 macsinsac lamurscrappy blackbetty61 and Darkfish89, though I am sure I am forgetting more than a few), and I don’t want anyone to feel offended, I am sure I missed things (I am trying to do this in between getting caught up from yesterdays livestream) so, if I missed one that you think should be on here let me know and link the post you think should be on here!
I didnt say I was going to start at 10! hotkarl s post about smoking on the job (smoking sausage) let us all see his awesome set up and even gave a new idea or two on how to finish up your product in water.
PapaSop Posted about Frozen Pizza at 4:10 and by 4:19 Austin had responded, lesson is, if you want a fast response from Austin mention frozen pizza, specifically Totinos brand!
Though it took a few tries, we were finally able to see Dave R gorgeuos ribeyes! Joe Hell and a few others chimed in with there amazing pictures of meat as well!
twilliams got the bow season off to a great start and made everyone start thinking of what they were going to do with their deer this season!
Parksider asked Austin for a map of all meatgistics members, I thought it would one of those things that we tried to figure out for months, but at the end of the day Austin had it figured out and live! For anyone who hasn’t done it yet, go to your profile and re-save your information and that will get you on the map!
JohninPa Wanted everyones opinions and ideas on what he was planning on doing that weekend and wow did he get them! We had a lot of people chime in with ideas and suggestions for him. This post is LOADED with good information for people.
This post was what was behind trying Glycerine instead of extra sugar to make tender beef jerky. And though we haven’t heard much from smcneese recently, this was a good idea!
Joe Hell s thorough breakdown of reverse sear vs sous vide covers almost every detail you can think of between the two ways of doing it!
Yes, yes, I know, technically this wasn’t this year but this is the post that introduced us to Parksider s idea of finishing up your product in water. I’d say more than any other single idea or technique, this changed the way more people do their sausage than anything else!
With 228 Posts and almost 3,000 views Tex_77 post continues to be a “must read first thing Monday morning” for myself, and many many others! It is a great place to showcase what you grilled, smoked, bbq’d or cooked this weekend and to see what creations other people have come up with!
A part of the amazing story that is Joe Hell s weight loss journey, for anyone who hasn’t checked it, and his blog, Better Living Through BBQ With Joe Hell you need to do that right away! Not only will you see some amazing pics of insane meals but you can follow along with his life-changing weight loss journey!
The long wait is over! Actually only partially, we are going to leave them in for a few more days but for the most part they are done! Pepperoni was my favorite, followed by the Salami with wine and then the Habanero BBQ which is growing on me! Then the sticks in the background are Hatch Green Chili Brat that we used 10% more seasoning on to make it work as a snack stick. We did 3 different techniques on those and will have a video on it soon!
Each week, Jon and Austin break out and critique a new beer and different sausage while they discuss everything about meat. Follow along as they talk about their favorite recipes and share some of the best expert tips and tricks for making sausage and jerky. Stay up to date on the latest news and current trends in the meat industry as Jon and Austin explore everything related to meat and more.
Jon is solo today but still drinking! Today he has Bid Idjit from Dugges Brewery and this was a serious beer! To quote an old Monty Python skit this is an excellent hand to hand beer! Filled with lots of flavor it is also extremely high in alcohol!
#1 Add humidity by adding an oversized pan and sponge or dry wick material.
- What we are trying to do here is avoid “the stall” which is when the evaporation energy matches the thermal processing energy
- Adding relative humidity makes it harder for evaporation energy to slow down the cook
- We are making it easier for the water to evaporate as we are increasing the surface area.
- During a short 4 hour period we were able to empty a very large oversized water bowl in our PK 100 Smoker with a dry wick towel.
#2 Use a binder and a meat mixer
- Protein extraction is the key to making good sausage. It prevents the fat from rendering out of the meat during the long smoking process.
- Binders help everything stick together
- Prevents fat out
- Much easier to get protein extraction with a mixer than hand though it can be done by hand as well
- All binders act differently but have similar aims. Carrot Fiber is best used for fresh sausages like bratwurst.
#2A Know your additives
-Seasoning (salt content)
-Sure Cure (botulism spores)
-Sure Gel / Super Bind / Soy Protein Blend
-Encapsulated Citric Acid
-Sodium Phosphate (maybe)
-Sodium Erythorbate (accelerator without the tang)
-Smoked meat Stabilizer
-Cheese
-Water
#3 Pull at 130 and finish sous vide
- Parksider is a well established Meatgistics member and has shared plenty of great tips and information on here, but this is the one that probably has helped more people than any other user tip.
- As I talked about on the podcast vacuum packing is really only necessary if you are using a Sous Vide Circulator that pulls water in and circulates it back out. In that case you run the risk of clogging a filter with fats, oils or even small pieces of casings. Surprisingly, finishing it up without a vacuum bag does not cook any smoke flavor or any flavor out of the meat.
#4 Fat content or raise pH
- For most sausage you want to be between 20-30% fat content, we always prefer pork fat as it is creamy, very light in color and has very little taste.
- Cold Phosphate raises the pH of the meat which lets it bind more effectively to the water, helping more of it stay in the meat during the cooking process.
- Fat effects the flavor by melting in your mouth and coating it, letting you experience the flavor more intensely and longer.
- Too much fat will render almost no matter what
#5 Start your smoker within 20 degrees of products living weight
-Don’t stress proteins
-Prevents case hardening
-Get as close to this as possible, a propped lid/door will bleed heat from your smoker or oven but you have to be able to monitor ambient temperature
So, I am not sure how many Veterans we have as meatgistics members but I wanted to take a second and thank any who have served today for their service. Now, we have Free shipping on orders over $75 right now but that isn’t necessarily for veterans day. So, any veterans looking for anything specific? I might be able to work something out if stock allows! I might also just do a coupon code.
Also, a reminder that Gary Sinise isa righteous dude!
It has been a while since we have done anything in this section and one of the things I liked was giving everyone the stats on how the community is growing and how much Meatgistics has been used. First, that is all from you guys! People aren’t coming here and staying here for me and Austin they might come to find some information but it is you guys who are keeping everyone engaged. The decision to have a community section of meatgistics was the smartest thing we have done!
Stats for the last 7 days:
New Posts 247
New Topics 17
New Users 55
New visitors 3,604 (lots of people just visiting or lurking, they’ll eventually get around to signing up!)
Page Views 121,854
All-time Stats:
Posts 19,700
Topics 2,200
Users 9,900 (we’d be well over 10,000 but I keep deleting any questionable accounts due to spam!)
Hey guys, we found a chefs choice 310 sharpener when we cleaned out the kitchen and I am going to give it away to a meatgistics user. I will leave this up for 5 days so enter to win. You should be able to enter daily for bonus entries. We will be doing a social media post later to let people know about this but the only way to enter is to come to this post. Good luck!
KenfromMI It let me do it this time. Upvotes are just nice ways of telling someone you appreciate what they contributed. Downvotes are very rarely used and are usually based on the Blue vs orange team war that we have going on here. To put it simply I am on @Team-Blue and some guy named Austin is on @Team-Orange we occasionally do something to annoy the other team but it is ALL in the spirit of good fun!
Also, when you go to a profile you will see something called reputation. That is the total # of the upvotes someone has received.
glen that thing is awesome! kyle you don’t need an expensive unit unless you want to do large amounts of water. Honestly you could buy 2 of the weston ones and do the same/more water and still get out cheaper!
Luebke1219 https://meatgistics.waltonsinc.com/topic/617/seasoning-conversion-chart-for-1-lb-and-5-lb-meat-batches 3 tbsp and 1 tsp (1.28 oz) for 1 lb of meat…man that does seem high…I am going to switch from Giggawat on something i was doing later today to Habanero Stick so I can open a bag and test that.
This is a great example of trying to “improve” something with a firmware update and ruining it. Sad because it was an awesome unit. I wonder if it was a security risk or something that forced them to do the update.
Jonstotz1 Quick breakdown of Nitrate-nitrite and smoking. What we call sure cure/pink salts/cure#1 is nothing more than a mix of 6.25 sodium nitrite and the rest is just salt as a bulking agent and pink die to make it easy to identify. What happens when you add nitrate to a product is that it breaks down over time into nitrite, which then breaks down into Nitric Oxide which is actually giving the curing power. We do almost nothing with nitrate, that is for slow curing processes. Sure cure needs to be added and then the product needs to be held overnight to allow the nitrite to break down in nitric oxide and start working on curing the meat. The times it is NOT needed to be held overnight is when we add something like Encapsulated Citric Acid(ECA), Sodium Ereythorbate or Smoked Meat Stabilizer to the meat. This is because those products act as a cure accelerator, meaning that either the nitrate is going to breakdown into nitric oxide quickly (sodium erythorbate) or the lowered pH is going to render the meat safeuntil the cure is activated (ECA).
So, if you don’t add a cure accelerator it must be held overnight, if you do add a cure accelerator go right to the smoker!
Reverse sear on the new Camp Chef, have to be honest here, while I grabbed a new Ultimate Steak and Roast Rub I didn’t remember to put it in my bag, so this is just salt and pepper. Also, I am still figuring this searbox/pellet grill out, so I couldn’t leave it on the sear box as long as I normally would.
Hunter-Steve Yeah I use an Asian market as well for some of the more exotic things.
kyle I fought back against this for a long time because of that but you’re going to keep your water temp at 177 or around there so I don’t know if that makes a difference or what but it REALLY doesn’t reduce either the smoke or seasoning flavor as long as you let it smoke to 130 or so.
nelson11b This will work for polish, summer, snack sticks, really anything and it will cut hours and hours off of your smoke schedule
https://meatgistics.waltonsinc.com/topic/1099/cured-sausage-205-advanced-thermal-processing
Also, this is a good time to point out that finishing up in water will save others this same issue. https://meatgistics.waltonsinc.com/topic/1099/cured-sausage-205-advanced-thermal-processing
M. Saboe 1st, that low watt setting or whatever is pointless in my mind. I always run at full power, I think they put it in there to be able to have it qualify for some power saving thing or something. Only thing I can think of.
2nd seventeen is way too long. 21 outside temp is going to make things harder but still not 10 hour longer than a long smoke. I’m guessing a few things came into play here. Outside temp is one of them but I am guessing there was case hardening somehow. The fact that you set at 175 and it only reached 150 is beyond odd. To the point that I think you might have an issue with the PK100. I can set ours up in 20 ° and get it to 200° with minimal fuss. However, 2 qts is also beyond what I recommend. I tried to go back and pout notes on all How Tos that 1.5 is the top end of what you should use. Let me know if I missed one please!