What are Additives? Common Additives - Seasoning & Additives 105
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What are Additives? Common Additives
What are Additives?
Additives are any ingredients added to your product that serve a function other than taste. The reasons for adding them can be moisture retention and yield enhancement, cure acceleration, color enhancement, and meat binding, just to name a few. Familiarity with these products can help you make a better product and might ease some of your concerns when reading ingredient labels on store-bought packages.
Moisture Retaining Additives
Additives with moisture-retaining properties include Cold Phosphate, Corn Syrup Solids, Dairy Blend, and Sodium Tripoly Phosphate. These products are designed to allow the meat to bond more effectively with the water so that it stays in the product during the cooking process. This will give you a finished product with more moisture and is especially important in products with lower fat content. These products also act as yield enhancers as the more water that is bound up in the product, the more volume and weight it will have. For the beginner who wants to use one of these products, I would recommend Cold Phosphate, just be sure to check the ingredients on the seasoning you are using first to ensure that it does not already contain phosphates, as adding too much phosphate can give your product a soapy flavor.
Cure Accelerator
Cure accelerators interact with the cure in a way that speeds up its conversion from Nitrite to nitric oxide gas and allows you to go directly from stuffing to the smokehouse. When these are used you do not need to hold your product overnight to allow the cure time to work. Cure Accelerator from Excalibur and Sodium Erythorbate are cure accelerators that have minimal if any, effect on taste. Encapsulated Citric Acid acts as both a cure accelerator and a pH reducer; it is what gives meat snacks that nice tang. Smoked Meat Stabilizer should be used mostly with wild game and should not be used in a cover pickle, as it will gas out rapidly and create a dangerous cloud of gas; it should not be used in products that you are adding water to assist in mixing. Mix it in when making sausage or snack sticks, and it will kill bacteria faster than they can reproduce. For the beginner, I would recommend encapsulated citric acid.
Liquid Smokes
Liquid Smokes are popular color enhancers that are sprayed on during the smoking process to give the meat a nice smoked appearance. Two common types of this are C-10 and Supreme Smoke, and they are often used with Hams, Bacons, or any other smoked whole muscle meat. Pn-9 Liquid smoke is another type that has a neutral pH but really should only be used in a smokehouse that can atomize it for spraying. Cures also have a coloring factor, but we will get into that in later videos.
Meat Binders
Meat Binders like Soy Protein Blend and Sure Gel contain some protein which will make protein extraction more efficient as more of it will be available. The Soy Protein blend has a grain or cereal-like appearance and will look like oats if you soak it in water, but it will dissolve into your product so it will not leave any noticeably different consistency. Both of these have allergens though, so you need to be somewhat careful with that. Carrot Fiber is a binder that can hold 26 times its weight in water, is allergen-free, inexpensive, and imparts very little if any, taste into your cooked product. Any of these products will improve the texture of your finished product.
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cannon-bob You don’t ever really “need” a binder but we would recommend using one. Whether you are making a skinless product or not I would still use one as it helps the texture and prevents it from drying out too much. But if you want to make it without it that should be fine too, it just might not have the best texture/consistency.
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How much garlic power should be use in a 25 lbs mix for ring sausage. I’m thing about 1oz. Is this a good starting point, don’t want to put to much in it. want a garlic taste but don’t want to over do it.
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RayStripling If you are wanting to use Ring Bologna and increase the garlic flavor then adding 1 oz is probably a good starting point. That seasoning is 1.5 lb per 25 lb batch so adding 1 oz is adding 1/24th of that which is decent when wanting to increase specific flavors.
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Thanks Jonathon. Just one more question. Is that 1.5 lbs of garlic power or 1.5 oz. per 25 lb batch?
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AdamCA Team Blue Regular Contributors Green Mountain Grill Masterbuiltreplied to RayStripling on last edited by
RayStripling I believe he was saying if you are using the Ring Bologna seasoning, which is 1.5 lbs of seasoning and adding 1 oz of Garlic powder that would be a good place to start. Not adding 1.5 lbs of garlic powder.
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Thanks, I understand it now. Got it.
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Has anyone every made skin sausage from the skin of a hog and if so, can you tell me how to do it.
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RayStripling I searched through all my considerable sausage class booklets for some reference of this and couldn’t find it. I also searched through a bunch of commercial formulations and found nothing. Can you give me more to go on? Are you talking about breaking it down to something like gelatin and then using that?
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Yes the skin is boil to a gelatin form and nix with a sausage mix to make what they call skin sausage. I remember very little on how they did it, but hope i remember enough to give it a go. Maybe next year’ for i’m down to my last 30 lbs venison.
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RayStripling I’ve used it on both Linguica and Chorizo. It’s boild and ground with the meat base. It melts away when cooked and gives a silky mouthfeel.
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Buffalo77 I don’t know for sure but I am going to say almost certainly not. A quick google search showed me that fruit pectin is derived from fruit and is a thickening agent. Sure Gel could perform similarly but it is milk based and designed to aid in protein extraction during the mixing process of cured sausage.
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