Mixing question 2

[angel4us]

I recently had a 26 lb batch of summer sausage end up with brown spots here and there? Could this be from cure not evenly mixed ??? Or from encapsulated citric acid not fully mixed in??? I’m thinking eca wasn’t mixed in good enough because cure was put in initially with spices and binder and I mixed by hand till I got good protein extraction because it was very sticky ???

[Jonathon]

angel4us Yes, those brown spots are areas where the cure was not mixed in with. The other possibility is that something you added interacted with the cure and causes it to turn the meat brown/green around it. As good as you mixed it with your hands this will sometimes happen when hand mixing (can even happen with machine mixing) as the cure didn’t get every little bit of meat. Personally, I don’t think it causes too much of an issue as long as everything was cooked to 160° and is kept refrigerated.