Ring Bologna-What went wrong?
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I recently made a ten pound batch of venison ring bologna using the Waltons Ring Bologna Unit seasoning. I used 6 pounds of venison and four pounds of ground pork and the recipe as found here: https://meatgistics.waltonsinc.com/topic/179/how-to-make-homemade-ring-bologna-recipe.
The flavor and consistency of the bologna was awesome. However, I ended up with a jelly like substance (not fat) that accumulated between the meat and casing. There was so much of it that I actually had to remove the bologna from the casing and wipe off the goo.
Does anyone know what happened here and how I can avoid this in the future? I’ve made snack sticks using venison and pork and have never before had this problem.
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bocephus Team Orange Power User Canning Masterbuilt Regular Contributors Veteran New Mexico Sous Vide Gardeningreplied to HuckL on last edited by
HuckL If you had good protein extraction, maybe temp cycle was too hot.
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agreed, if you are CERTAIN that you mixed it long enough there is a good chance you brought the temp up too quickly
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HuckL in my opinion it is a form of fat out. Think of this, if you have ever cooked a chuck roast in the crock pot and after it cools there will be a jelly substance on top. This is the fat that renders out of the meat during cooking. When reheated it will turn to liquid again. In summer sausage this can occur with a few different scenarios like others have pointed out. The only difference is the fat gets caught between the casing and the meat since it is tied at both ends with nowhere to go. The temperature of the cook/smoke schedule was increased too rapidly, the starting temperature was too high, the meat got too warm during processing, poor protein extraction or improper lean to fat ratio. You want no more than 25% fat. Which would be 7.5lbs lean meat and 2.5lbs fat. Now you said ground pork not ground fat, the question is what lean to fat ratio did your ground pork have? Im assuming 80/20 no more than 70/30. I have used a 50/50 mix of venison and pork trim of 70/30 which would make a finished product of 85/15 lean to fat ratio and turned out fantastic so I don’t believe your issue is that.
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twilliams I believe the ground pork that I mixed in was no more than 80/20, probably less. I did follow the temperature instructions very closely and used a digital thermometer to monitor the temp in the smoker. I found that the built in smoker thermometer is not accurate. Maybe I need to stick with using ground beef/beef fat in the future.
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HuckL said in Ring Bologna-What went wrong?:
Dr_Pain I used a 20 pound capacity hand crank mixer.
Than that is DEFINITELY not the issue. Thanks for the clarification. I remember one of my experiment gone wrong.
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HuckL I know it doesn’t look like fat but it probably is fat, it just looks sort of like jelly? twilliams is correct, it is fat out, a process where the fat is cooked out of the product and then congeals in voids and around the casing. The other thing I can think it could be is if you used Super Bind that can sometimes cause this
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HuckL just for reference i would not use beef fat over pork fat or pork trim. Only thing i use beef fat for is making peanut butter and seed suet for the birds.
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twilliams said in Ring Bologna-What went wrong?:
Only thing i use beef fat for is making peanut butter.
This is how I read the sentence the first time LOL!!! I feel like such an idiot
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My thoughts too. Why would you use beef fat for that? Lol
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I had this same thing happen on the last polish sausage I made. I smoked them to 135 and then put them in vac bags and sous vide at 175 to finish. When I pulled them out of the vac bags I had the same thing. I had to strip the casings and use my hand to remove a lot of jelly from the sausage, then use a paper towel to dry them off. My guess was my water was to hot to start with and they fat out. Next time I will start the water at 140 and slowly step it up. Once I got them cleaned up, the product was great.
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processhead Power User Regular Contributors Smoker Build Expert Bowl Choppers Nebraska Veteran Team Camo
If it was a jelly like substance and not greasy, then it was probably just that, gelatin.
Meat trim containing connective tissue contains natural gelatin in the form of collagen. The heat of processing can extract the gelatin, although normally it will be dispersed evenly through the meat emulsion during grinding and mixing.Much like with fat-out, I think this is more likely to happen if thermal processes overshoot the target temperature
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processhead said in Ring Bologna-What went wrong?:
If it was a jelly like substance and not greasy, then it was probably just that, gelatin.
Meat trim containing connective tissue contains natural gelatin in the form of collagen. The heat of processing can extract the gelatin, although normally it will be dispersed evenly through the meat emulsion during grinding and mixing.Much like with fat-out, I think this is more likely to happen if thermal processes overshoot the target temperature
I do like that explanation. I believe though that the melting point of collagen may be higher than fat. The recommendation in grilling/smoking is to bring meats to 200-205F in order to break the collagen bonds in brisket/pork butts. If the meat used in the bologna had some gelatin in it then it would definitely “fat out” if it did not bind to something
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twilliams Power User PK100 Regular Contributors Team Greyreplied to Dr_Pain on last edited by twilliams
Dr_Pain lol…i feel like that alot.
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processhead It was definitely more like gelatin than fat.
