10 tips to grinding your sausage meat perfectly

welcome everyone to celebrate sausage my name is eric and i hope you're enjoying this series so far you're watching bonus clip number one how to grind your meat perfectly every time stay tuned [Music] okay first of all i'd like to welcome back those of you who have been watching the celebrate sausage 2020 series and i'd like to say hello to those of you who are brand new if you're not sure what celebrate sausage is at the end of this video you're going to find a playlist for celebrate sausage 2020 we've got 31 different episodes 31 different recipes and i hope you get a chance to check it out in today's video we're going to talk about 10 tips on how you can get the perfect grind when making sausage making sausage is not very complicated and it really just comes down to a handful of steps grinding mixing and then in some cases stuffing and then finally cooking and if you can understand each one of those steps you can elevate your sausage game to an entirely different level grinding your meat is the first step when making sausage and for the sake of this series we're going to call it the foundation everything we do after grinding the meat is going to be built upon that foundation and no matter how good your recipe is no matter how good you mix it no matter how good you stuff it if the foundation is weak you're going to have problems at the end you're going to have a dry sausage a sausage that just leaks fat out all over the place and we don't want that so in this video i'm going to share with you 10 tips to get the perfect grind let's get started the first thing you want to do is to make sure that your knife and plates are sharp this is absolutely critical i've seen more sausage ruined because their plates were dull and so let's take a look at my knife right quick we'll do the plates in a minute and just at a glance with the naked eye everything looks good but i can tell you that this knife is incredibly dull it's hard to see with the naked eye so what we're going to do is go under magnification 250 times magnification so that you can see what i'm talking about as i work my way up the knife's blade you can see that the cutting edge which is on the right hand side is severely damaged i've got chips my edge is looking really crazy i don't really have a well-defined scratch pattern as you can see they're kind of all over the place and it's a need for some desperate maintenance i sharpen my knife and plates using a couple wet stones from the sausage maker so what i typically do is i'll put the coarse whetstone on first after it's been soaking for a little while i'll put the retaining ring on and i'll run the machine depending on the severity i may run it for anywhere between 10 to 20 seconds in this particular case i'm going to run it for 20 seconds because it's looking pretty bad as soon as i'm done i'm going to remove the course and i'm going to put on a finer whetstone and i'm going to run it for another 20 seconds at which point our blade will be sharp now you could do this with the plate itself there's just a different whetstone and you do have to be careful because those wet stones are a little on the fragile side but this is what it looks like under magnification after it's been sharpened look at that very well-defined scratch pattern i've got a beautiful edge all those chips are now gone here's our side by side the one on the left was the before as you can see there's the chips and the one on the right is the after that's after it's been sharpened scratch pattern looks great and the edge is very well defined this knife is ready to cut some meat if you want more information on the sharpening stones check out the description box below to determine if your plates are still sharp remove your glove and with your bare hand just rub your finger over those holes you should feel a literal edge over every one of those holes if it feels completely smooth and your finger doesn't catch on each one of those holes then it's either time to sharpen it or replace the plate the cool thing about the plates is that there's two sides so if one side feels smooth just flip it around and use the sharp side so there you go all right on to number two select the right grinding plate now this seems relatively obvious but this is a mistake i see a lot of people make this is a stuffing plate but it can also be used as an ultra coarse grind both of these are coarse plates these are medium plates and this is a fine plate if your ultimate goal is to run your sausage through the fine plate start with a coarse first and do a double grind not only is it easier on your machine but you'll get a better grind if you try to grind your meat through that fine plate especially if it's not partially frozen you end up creating a lot of friction generating a lot of heat potentially smearing that beautiful flavorful fat so knowing the plate that you want to grind on is imperative in this particular case i think i'm going to use a 10 millimeter and a 6 millimeter for my project let's go to number three clean and sanitize all of your equipment this is absolutely critical we're dealing with raw meat sometimes pork beef sometimes chicken and it's important to kill off all unwanted pathogens before we begin sometimes sausage sits out for a day while it's curing sometimes it sits for several months like in the case of salami and we don't want to add any unwanted bacteria so all i do is spray a little iota for which is a great sanitizer on my equipment i let it sit for a couple of minutes and then i dry it off once i'm done with that it's sanitized and time to move on to number four number four is to place all the metal parts that you're going to be using to grind in your freezer for one hour if you ask any professional what's the most important tip they can give you about sausage making there's a decent chance they're going to tell you temperature temperature is everything we generate a lot of friction and a lot of heat when we grind meat so making sure that the parts are cold will help keep the meat cold which in turn will give us a better grind now we're going to put that in the freezer and it's on to number five prepare the meat we want to remove the sinew the silver skin the tendons any unwanted parts before we grind and trust me if you don't remove it now you will have to remove it later from your grinder and that's going to cause all kinds of disturbance in the grind so carefully inspect your meat remove any of those unwanted bits and make sure that you're grinding clean meat or clean fat what ends up happening if you don't clean your meat on the front end all of that silver skin the c new those tendons that gets jammed up into the blade and that ends up affecting the way the knife is cutting the meat so instead of cutting the meat it's actually pushing it through the holes which is going to cause the fat to smear and once your fat smears in the beginning there's absolutely nothing you can do to save your sausage i do admit that this step does take a little time but with a nice sharp fillet knife or a nice sharp chef's knife you can get it done usually with no problem on to number six cutting the meat and the fat there is a special way to cut the meat in the fat and i'm going to show you how i do it depending on the grind that i'm after i may cut my meat into larger strips or smaller chunks so for instance if i'm going to be doing a coarse grind let's say for a salami that i'm making or on dewy sausage then i'm generally going to cut my meat into larger strips so these are a couple steaks from the pork shoulder that i'm going to grind i'm going to prepare these by cutting them right down the middle creating in essence two strips i'm gonna do that for this one as well and this is what my strip is gonna look like but it's a little too long because my meat's gonna be partially frozen so i'm gonna take that and cut it right down the center and this is about the perfect size if i'm gonna be doing a coarse grind for my sausage if i'm gonna be doing a medium grind let's say a six millimeter or a four and a half millimeter then i'm gonna start off the same way but instead of cutting large strips i'm gonna cut off small chunks and basically i'm kind of doing the work of the grinder on the front end this is going to be easier on the motor of your grinder so if you're using a small grinder especially if you're using like a kitchenaid you might even want to go a little bit smaller than that so you get the idea large strips if you're cutting a coarse grind small chunks if you're doing a medium grind to prepare the fat we're going to do it a little differently you see fat and grinders don't get along so good as soon as you chill fat it gets very hard and it really stresses out the motor of your grinder so to prepare the fat and it doesn't matter what fat you're using we're going to cut that into small cubes and that doesn't matter if i'm doing a coarse grind a medium grind or a fine grind with the fat so all i'm going to do is cut it down the middle and then cut it into basically one inch cubes and just like the beef if you happen to be using a small grinder or a kitchenaid grinder you might want to cut this up just a little bit smaller now that our meat is prepared let's go ahead and go to number seven place your meat in your freezer for 30 to 45 minutes this step is absolutely critical you want the temperature of your meat to be in the low 30s notice my trays though are really full it's going to take a long time for that to chill so i'm going to add another tray to the mix pull some out from each one of those trays which will help it chill a lot faster now i know that not a lot of people have this type of room and if you have to put everything into one bin that's okay too just realize it may take an hour to an hour and a half if you do happen to put everything into one bin or one bowl you want to go back and make sure that you mix the meat well about every 15 or so minutes you're going to notice that the meat on top is going to get colder than the meat on the bottom so by mixing the meat you're actually going to help the meat chill more evenly which is going to cut down on the amount of time that you're waiting for the meat to get to temperature what you're looking at is about 50 pounds of meat it's now evenly distributed amongst four trays i'm going to go ahead and place all that into my freezer and let me show you what it looks like once it comes out of the freezer this particular process took about 45 minutes and it's hard to see but the meat and the fat is very firm now it's not frozen it's just one step before frozen and when i insert my thermopin you'll see that i am at 30 degrees 31 degrees which is absolutely perfect it's now time to move on to the next step which is number eight assemble the grinder head and we want to watch out for the washer and the retaining ring as soon as you take all of your metal parts out of your freezer you're not only going to notice that they are incredibly cold but they're going to be incredibly frosty the first thing you want to do is put on your grinder head and go ahead and secure it as soon as you've got it secured you want to put on the auger now depending on the model you have there may be a washer associated with your auger so this is the auger that we're looking at right here in my case there's a washer you want to inspect the washer if for whatever reason it's damaged it looks melted or if it's a little thinner because it's old you're going to want to replace it because that washer is designed to push the auger forward just enough so that the knife and plate match up perfectly i'm going to put a couple of drops of oil onto that washer which is going to minimize the friction and keep me from having to replace it as often if that washer is damaged then the knife in the plate won't meet up perfectly and it's going to mess up the grind now it's time to insert the auger and then we're going to come back with the blade and we want to make sure that the blade's flat side is facing out because that's where the plate is going to go once we have that on it's time to put on the retaining ring the trick with the retaining ring is to simply hand tighten it if it's on too tight then your blade and your plate are going to have unnecessary friction you'll wear those parts out a lot faster and you could possibly get what looks like a gray smear in your meat and that's actual metal shavings so just loosen it a little bit if that's what's happening tip number nine is to trickle the meat into your grinder head and i know this goes against popular opinion because every grinder came with a stomper but contrary to what you may think the stomper should not be used during the grinding process the grinder should do all of the work for you and it should happen very naturally matter of fact the stomper should only be used in the event that you need a little bit of help but it should not be used as the standard method of grinding the grinder should pull the meat through and the head should stay mainly clear as you can see what i'm doing here i'm trickling the median i'm waiting till the head clears up and then i'm just continuing this method of grinding your mead is going to produce the absolute cleanest grind especially if your knife is sharp your metal parts are chilled and your meat is partially frozen and that brings us to number 10 observe the meat as it's coming out of your grinder while you're grinding your meat it should extrude like spaghetti if it looks like it's being smeared out turn the unit off remove the retaining ring and check your blade there's a decent chance that your blade is clogged up with c new or any of that unwanted stuff remove all of that reassemble your grinder head and continue to grind this is what our fat looks like as we grind it on a three millimeter plate and notice the spaghetti-like consistency each strain is uniform it doesn't look like it's being smeared it's being ground perfectly this is also pork being ground on a three millimeter plate this is a second grind and it has the exact same consistency and when i grab a little bit of it you can see that it's loose and that's an indication that it was properly chilled before grinding a little bonus tip if you want to get that last bit of meat out of your grinder you can always take a piece of bread if it's stale it's even better or if you want your sausage to be gluten free you can use crushed ice or in my case i've got nugget ice if you don't have crushed ice i wouldn't suggest sticking whole ice into your grinder because that's a little too aggressive and hard on the machine so i'm going to stick my nugget ice into my grinder and as you can see right here it's just going to push all that meat out there's my ice particles i'm just going to wipe that off and that's going to fall right into my bin and this is what our meat looks like if i give it one quick temperature check you could see that our temperature didn't raise a whole lot after grinding because we kept everything very cold and that's exactly what we're looking for and there you have it that's how you properly grind sausage meat if you can incorporate these 10 practices every time you make sausage you'll get the perfect grind every time i want to thank the sausage maker for sponsoring this video they are literally a one-stop shop for sausage making you can find a link to their website in the description box below and they've got an entire selection of grinders accessories plates knives everything you need if you have any questions about grinding your meat leave them in the comments section below and i'll be sure to answer them in bonus clip number two we're going to be talking about mixing your meat so you're going to want to stick around for that enjoy the rest of the series and i'll see you soon bye-bye [Music] [Music] you

Channel: 2 Guys & A Cooler

Views: 85,468

Keywords: Celebrate Sausage, How to make sausage, sausage maker, easy sausage recipes, pork sausage, german sausages, cured meats, smoked sausages, How to grind your meat

Id: uF4B1ZK0h0A

Length: 14min 49sec (889 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 02 2020