Sous vide questions

[armyguy]

For those of you finishing your sausage Sous Vide, I have a few questions.

If someone was considering opening a little business selling sausage(both fresh and smoked), is finishing them sous vide allowed on the commercial side? If the sous vide machine and container was NSF and capable of recording HACCP? The Sammic Smartvide with 14.8 gallon tank has both along with a temp probe. It’s made for restaurants so I don’t see why not.

That brings me to question #2. How many pounds of sausage can you guys fit into “insert size here” cooler?

I’m curious how many pounds I could do in a 14.8 gallon bath?

Thanks in advance!

[Dave in AZ]

armyguy
First, I’m excited to see you working towards this, and hope for your success! I’m interested in your journey, and hope it pans out, very exciting!

I’m not commercial, but I do read the USFDA FSIS a lot and did read their HACCP examples and case studies to help small businesses comply. Short answer, SV finish would absolutely be easier to do, record, justify, and comply. There are already many haccp for sausage in water. Fast, controlled, easily documented, no questions about humidity or hot spots, show 10 or 20 datapoints that x minutes of your sausage in 170f water results in a time-temp lethality treament internal temp… done. Now just show your process checks water temp, then has a timer that you start always and run long enough for each batch. Then store the treated sausage in water hot enough, > 130f, to stay germ free before serving. Simplest compliance I could think of.

Recommend you just google and download the :

FSIS Cooking Guideline for
Meat and Poultry Products
(Revised Appendix A)
December, 2021

The entire purpose of this doc is to answer questions exactly like yours:

. This document
is intended only to provide clarity to industry regarding existing requirements under the
regulations. Under the regulations, meat and poultry establishments may choose to
implement different procedures than those outlined in this guideline, but they would
need to validate and support how those procedures are effective.
This guideline is focused on small and very small plants in support of the Small
Business Administration’s initiative to provide small businesses with compliance
assistance under the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act (SBREFA).
However, all meat and poultry establishments may apply the recommendations in this
guideline. It is important that small and very small establishments have access to a full
range of scientific and technical support, and the assistance needed to establish safe
and effective Hazards Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) systems. Although
large plants can benefit from the information, focusing the guideline on the needs of
small and very small establishments provides them with assistance that may be
otherwise unavailable to them.
Purpose of this Guideline
This guideline contains information to assist meat and poultry establishments producing
products that undergo cooking in complying with the HACCP regulatory requirements in
9 CFR 417. This guideline includes information on:
• Biological hazards during cooking.
• Regulatory requirements associated with the safe production of cooked ready-to-
eat (RTE) products.
• Options establishments can use to achieve lethality of Salmonella and other
pathogens.
Processes that do not have validated research available (referred to as “scientific
gaps”) and options establishments can use until research is available.
• Resources for alternative support.
• Recommendations for evaluating cooking deviations.
Establishments can always seek guidance from State university extension service
specialists and HACCP Coordinators on developing programs and plans not provided in
this guideline to comply with HACCP regulatory requirements.

[Dave in AZ]

armyguy said in Sous vide questions:

That brings me to question #2. How many pounds of sausage can you guys fit into “insert size here” cooler?
I’m curious how many pounds I could do in a 14.8 gallon bath?

Uhm… just do a test or two? Cut top off a gallon milk jug, stuff as much brats in there with water like 50% so it has thermal mass to cook, measure brats, extrapolate.

Or just calculate. Weigh a package of brats, stuff them in a measuring cup to see their volume, extrapolate. But meat is just slightly denser than water to slightly lighter, depending on fat (animals barely float…), so you could just assume meat/sausage is same density thus volume as water, close enough since you are going to keep like 50% of the cooler volume filled with water for sous vide.

Here is a thread w recent pics
https://meatgistics.waltons.com/post/106874
You can see 5kg brats, i.e. approx 5 L sausage, fit into a 12L container that had 7 L water in it. So, stuffed jam full, I’d say 5kg in 12 L, or for the metric-challenged, 11 lbs in 3.1 gal. So in your 14.8 gal, maaaaybe 50 lbs, but you’d need to ensure water circulation. So I’d lean towards 40 lbs.

[Dave in AZ]

Dave in AZ said in Sous vide questions:

First, I’m excited to see you working towards this, and hope for your success! I’m interested in your journey, and hope it pans out, very exciting!

As I said above, want to make sure you know I’m happy to type info I know, and wish you the very best in this possible endeavor!!

[cdavis]

armyguy I also want to wish you luck on this journey. Keep us posted.

[dawg]

Dave in AZ
WOW! You are like an encyclopedia. Thanks for all the knowledge you bring to this community!

[dawg]

armyguy
Best of luck to you in this adventure!

[andy1960]

armyguy that’s how they make Earl Campbell hot links. It’s smoke to 125* then packaged then put in 175* water for 45 minutes. Then cooled in ice water for 45 minutes. Then boxed up.

[roths]

There is a lot of lockers plants that finish their products in a water bath. As long as appendix an and appendix b are met. As for second question, meat is about around 8lbs per gallon like water. I am assuming 14.8 gallons water tank would do about 110lbs.

[armyguy]

Thanks guys! It’s still a ways out. Just trying to acquire what I need in advance so I can hopefully do this for a reasonable amount when I do. The water bath method seems like it would save a whole lot of time. Hard to know until I get my hands on the new smoker.

[Gary Papermaster]

I am just getting set up to do sous vide finish of snack sticks and I am looking for some guidance. I have a 40 pound mixer so I generally make 20 pound batches. My plan is to smoke at 120 degrees for 1-½ hour, open vent, no smoke, no humidity then 130 degrees for 1 hour ¼ vent, with smoke and with ±50% humidity then 150 degrees closed vent with smoke and with 50% humidity until internal temp reaches 130 degrees. Remove from smoker and cut and vacuum pack into the largest vac bags I can get into my chamber vac and then sous vide at 150 degrees for 1-½ hour. After sous vide, I will go into the ice bath for 15 minutes to chill. Then they need to stay at room temp to bloom. Question 1: Do I remove them from the vac bags to bloom? Question 2: Is it possible to sous vide a 20 pound batch at one time and what sort of container should I use? I have an 1100 watt sous vide cooker so I can handle quite a bit of water. Question 3: I would appreciate opinions about sous vide with or without vac packaging. Please comment on my smoking schedule if you think it might be improved on. I am just making this up based on the “Jonathans” I have watched at Meatgistics University.

[Dave in AZ]

Gary Papermaster said in Sous vide questions:

Question 1: Do I remove them from the vac bags to bloom? Question 2: Is it possible to sous vide a 20 pound batch at one time and what sort of container should I use? I have an 1100 watt sous vide cooker so I can handle quite a bit of water. Question 3: I would appreciate opinions about sous vide with or without vac packaging. Please comment on my smoking schedule if you think it might be improved on. I am just making this up based on the “Jonathans” I have watched at Meatgistics University.

1. Yes, they need to dry after, blooming is drying and some color changes to casings.
2. 20 lbs is near 2.5 gal of meat. You need about 50% water in SV container to have some thermal mass and get good water circulation so uniform temps. So a 5 gal or 20 qt cooler. 20 and 24qt are common sizes, I’d get a 24 qt to have more leeway.
3. I’ve done both bagged and not. So long as meat is partly cooked when it goes into water, you don’t get much juice runoff, so the SV wand is easy to clean. Some smoke and juice do get washed off, you can taste and smell it in water, but it’s not too much. Sticks still taste good and are not waterlogged. It is much faster and easier without bagging. However, out of an excess of caution and because I don’t make them often enough for it to be onerous, I stick them in 2 gal ziplocks usually. No need to vacpack, very easy to ziplock and suck air out with a straw, then burp bag as it goes underwater.
4. Smoke schedule sounds good. I personally wouldn’t go 120 for 2 hours… the no smoke part is just there to dry sticks because smoke doesn’t adhere well to wet sticks. So if they are dry in 30 min, you can start adding smoke. I think of that phase as “adding smoke flavor”, not cooking, so any time spent in smoker without smoke is wasted to me. I live in Phx with almost zero humidity often, so my sticks are dry right out of fridge, and NEVER get a condensate sweat on them. So everything written about 30min to an hour bringing up to temp and drying before smoke, just doesn’t really apply to my location often. But I would think 1 hr without smoke to dry at 120 should be enough for most places, then I’d add smoke.

Lastly, I do like lower lethality treatment internal temps like 140 to 150, complying with FDA time/temp tables. However, if my sticks contain wild game, venison usually, I do 160f internal for a higher safety level as per game meat guidelines. I can’t find that in the appendix A, but Marianski recommends 160f IT on all the wild game to ensure trichinosis lethality.

[Dave in AZ]

armyguy this may be useful too, it is their guide to completing initial HACCP validation. Things like doing enough cooks with your equipment and process to validate, showing you and employees always keep the required data like meat out of fridge time, smoke start time and temp, smoker off time and temp, into water time and water temp, out of water time and water temp, internal meat temp, etc. Basically the data to prove to an inspector that you ARE following your haccp EVERY TIME, and that you WILL catch it if you make a mistake so a product salestop and recall can be done if needed.

https://www.fsis.usda.gov/sites/default/files/import/HACCP_Systems_Validation.pdf

[Gary Papermaster]

Gary Papermaster
Hey, Dave in AZ, thanks for the post, very helpful. I did indeed try this out today and this is what happened. 120 for 1-½ hour to dry turned out to be too long. Nothing negative happened but the sticks got to an I.T. of 120 degrees during that cycle because of the long period. Then when I added smoke and went to 130 degrees I got to the final I.T. too soon and did not get as much smoke as I initially intended. Next time I do sticks I think I will start at 110 degrees for an hour, 120 for an hour and add smoke at that point, then go to 130 for an hour followed by 140 to internal temp of 130, and finish off in sous vide. I think my original schedule would work for 2.9" dia summer sausage, which I think I will try next week. Because Minnesota is much colder and much more humid, we need a longer dry time. Again, sincere thanks for your helpful post.

[Gary Papermaster]

Dave in AZ, I have another question for you or anyone else who has an opinion on the question. I am planning on making H Summer sausage and stuffing into a 3" fibrous casing. My proposed smoke schedule is:
120 degrees 1 hour to dry, open vent, no smoke.
120 degrees for 1 hour, ¼ vent, add smoke, add 50% humidity.
130 degrees 1 hour, closed vent, add smoke, add 50% humidity.
150 degrees with smoke, closed vent and 50% humidity until internal temp reaches 135 degrees.
Finish in sous vide.
Finally, here is the question; for a 3" diameter casing, how much time and at what temperature should I finish the sausage?

[Gary Papermaster]

I have looked at the Baldwin chart table 5.1 Pasteurization times for meat, http://www.douglasbaldwin.com/sous-vide.html but this is based on a starting temperature of 41 degrees F, so with the sausage already at 135 degrees how long and at what temp will give me the best result and the safest outcome?

[Dave in AZ]

Gary Papermaster that is a good link to Dr Balwin’s work, thx.
I haven’t cooked 3" stuff after smoking, and taken a lot of measurements, not enough to help. Really you can look at those lethality tables, and decide what final temp you want. You’re balancing the fact heat transfer is proportional to the temperature differential… so 135f SS plopped into 170f water will reach 155 much faster, than if you used 157f water.

But without a constant read thermometer plugged in, you won’t know when it actually reaches temp in the center, so can’t take advantage of that speed. In fact, not having to worry about the timing and just letting it sit “long enough to be sure”, without worring about overtemp and overcooking, is one huge advantage of SV. I mostly do this… set water to 150, come back an hour or so later, take temp, yep it’s done. Might have been done in 20 min though.

So using 170 to 175f water is great for speed and has little risk if you’re making well-extracted emulsified stuff that will bind fat without issue, like hot dogs. The big factor that drives you to lower but slower temps, is MELTING. If you have a lot of fat, or weakly bound fat like in a brat, it will melt and render out at higher temps. If you have cheese, especially normal stuff, it will melt out. So those two items are what drive me, sometimes, to using 145 to 150 in the pasteurization tables. I make a lot of Pork Roll with defined chunks of fat, so I cook that to 145. How mixed/extracted/emulsified is your SS? Did you mix with fat so it’s blended in, or add fat separately at end to retain particle definition? Cheese, and if so what kind? Etc.

You just have to make a call on temperature and timing, and then just poke a probe in enough times to know when done. Keep records, next time you can just go that long plus 10 min, test temperature one time, and be done.

I just want to throw out one more thought. If your smoker easily holds those low temps, accurately, then IMO MOST of the reason to SV finish is gone. You can more easily just leave in smoker at 160 to 170f and finish them. The most compelling reason for SV finish is your smoker won’t hold accurate low temps, so the external temp swings high like 190 or more, or smoker hot spots, or smoker is running 100% to overcome cold weather and can’t be trusted…and you risk fat out. If you need good controlled finishing temp, then SV. But if your smoker is already holding those low temps well, and SS internal temp is rising nicely, you COULD just finish there. In that scenario, SV would just be used to avoid the stall and maybe reduce cooktime by 2 or 3 hours.

Sorry just generalized opinion there, hope it helps.

[armyguy]

Gary Papermaster

Just curious what smoker you are using. You say add 50% humidity above so I’m wondering if you have humidity controls on your smoker?

[Gary Papermaster]

I have a highly modified Sausagemaker Country smoker with an advertised capacity of 30 pounds. I added a circulation fan to the roof of the electric smoker and a 1200 watt Auber PID controller. It holds temperature very well. My problem is with 20 pounds pf sausage the smoker is really full. For example the longest snack stick I can hang is 20 inches (40" folded over the bar). The meat mixer I have is 44 pound capacity and it connects to my #22 grinder so I don’t have any issues with protein extraction. The 44 pound mixer is not great if you make small batches so I generally run 20-25 pounds and the mixer is perfect. The smoker itself is about 14" X 16" inside and it has 5 shelves. That keeps the meat high enough above the electric element but it does not heat perfectly uniformly so I get hotter spots and those areas get done sooner. I do rotate the shelves from top to bottom and also rotate 180 degrees around and that definitely helps. Humidity is a calculated guess. The heating element is dead center on the bottom of the unit so I have about 4-½ inches on both sides of the floor. I put 4 small bread loaf pans (2 on either side) with water and I stand up 4 large car wash cellulose sponges soaked with water. A recent “Jonathan” I watched showed how he added 3 large sponges and got close to 50% humidity. So, no humidity control but a reasonable assumption.

Dave, you have helped me a LOT. I now have a really good idea of where to start and I will fake it until I get it figured out. By the way, the Auber PID is a major upgrade. You can program up to 6 steps using time and internal temperature.

[Dave in AZ]

Gary Papermaster thx Gary, and it sounds like a great setup!