meat processing from a blindness perspective

gerygaub

Jon, I tried to answer your questions about the hot dogs. This page isn’t totally user friendly for a blind person that uses speech and braill to access computers. So to recap;

I used about a pint or so of water, approximately 1.5 to 1.8 ounces carrot fiber, a bit less than half of the seasoning pack, and cellulos casing.
I stuffed the casings and tried to twist. The twists came undone when I cut the hot dogs to the length I wanted.
I followed the reccomended smoking schedule.
I got the internal temp up to 136 but it didn’t go higher. Could be my thermometer. I am going to try a blue tooth thermometer next time if I can get it to work with voice over on the iphone.
When the temp wouldn’t rise I eventually removed the hot dogs from the smoker. WHen I went to place them on a pan, the meat came out of the casing. The texture was dry and crumbly.
in conclusion I have a few questions.
Why did the temp not rise or did it and my thermometer not pick it up?
Why did the casing not stay swisted and closed?
Since the casing didn’t stay closed could this be the reason the product was dry?
Should I use a different casing like collagen?

I’d really like to find a good thermometer that works with blue tooth and voice over on an iphone but don’t have the money to keep buying them to try them out.

Sorry for the long post it’s really different for a person who has no sight because I can’t be sure that the thermometer was working properly, I can’t tell you what the product looked like. Thanks for patience and understanding and trying to assist.

Jonathon

gerygaub I’m working on getting answers on why the product was crumbly, I don’t think it had anything to do with the casings not staying twisted. When I have used Cellulose casings in the past I actually tied between each link, it took a while longer but it really helped everything stay where it was an gave me a nice skinless product in the end. I will have more of a response shortly.

Jonathon

gerygaub We are checking into a few other things but from looking at your process the most likely culprits are not enough protein extraction during the mixing process which caused it to “fat out”, meaning the fat all rendered out of the product during the smoking process. The other possibility is what you said before, that your thermometer was not working and that it got much hotter than it should have. Other than those two things your process looks correct.

Also being at 80-20 is okay but might want to push closer to 70-30.

You didn’t use any encapsulated citric acid did you? That’s the only other thing I can think of that would cause that.

Jonathon

I had a few other people look over your process and the consensus was that is sounds like it was either a mixing problem or the thermometer you were using failed and it ended up getting way over cooked. So try a new thermometer and try to make sure you get your product really sticky and tacky to ensure it has a good bind. If you try it again and have similar issues let us know!