225. P R 0 C t S S I N G OF E R Y A N D S E M I D R Y SAUSAGES W I L L I A M J. SHANNON M E A T I N D U S T R YC O N S U L T A N T OMAHA. I NEBRASKA When we consider t h e t o t a l s u b j e c t of sausage o r d r y sausage and semidry sausage we have, of course, t o go back t o Europe where sausages of t h i s type primarily developed. And as you know, when you go i n t o I t a l y you have a hot climate and t h e r e we have sausages which were p r i m a r i l y of t h e d r y category. They were made i n o r d e r t o preserve t h e food and of course t h e basis o f these was r a t h e r elementarylow moisture, high s a l t and i n many cases a reduction i n ph t o the p o i n t where product would keep without move north through Europe you go i n t o Switzerany r e f r i g e r a t i o n. A s y ~ u land and you f i n d d i f f e r e n t types of sausages being made. Here again i t s i n t e r e s t i n g t h a t we do have a t y p i c a l dry sausage and i n some cases t h i s sausage i s made by d o i n g it high i n t h e Alps which i s q u i t e i n t e r e s t i n g and w a s the method of preserving foo3 i n t h a t p a r t i c u l a r s t r i p of country. A s we go i n t o Germany we f i n d the sumner sausages and a s you know, they were made i n the winter with the thought i n mind t h a t they would keep f a i r l y w e l l and would be cansumed diiring the sumer period. We c a l l these summer sausages, t h u r i n g e r, etc. These sausages keep p r i m a r i l y because of the reduction i n ph of the meat mass, and a f a i r l y high s a l t content. When we consider t h e raw materials t h a t a r e a v a i l a b l e t o us i n sausage making we can go t o p r a c t i c a l l y any source of l e a n meat and t h e f a t i s u s u a l l y t h a t of pork. A s you know, i n %he New York C i t y area we had a l i t t l e trouble with people bringing 3 o r s e meat i n and l a b e l i n g it as b u l l meat. We had people i n New York Laking sal4sageout o f t h i s meat 60 t h e l i m i t s as f a r as red meat or l e a n meats a r e concerned a r e q u i t e wide. You can make it o u t of horse meat, donkey meat i f you vieh t o and almost anything e l s e I suppose i f it i s a v a i l a b l e. Cur government, of course, helps u s s t a y i n l i n e and we have a good supply of beef and a good supply of pork. We don t have t h e problems t h a t s3me of the a t h e r people have. I thought it might be i n t e r e s t i n g t o t e l l you how we make dry sausage. I t h i n k by t a l k i n g t o you i n t h i s way I can give you some of t h e problems t h a t w i l l help you understand where we a r e. I n the f i r s t place, t h e r e i s very l i t t l e technical information a v a i l a b l e t o u s. I n t h e semidry sausage, where o u r products keep Zecause of pe we have had some good work performed by the American Keat I n s t i t u t e Foundation i n t h e development o f a s t a r t e r c u l t u r e which we mix i n with the trimmings t o give us an e a r l y beginning of the c o r r e c t type of b a c t e r i a, and t h e c o r r e c t drop i n ph. Not everyone uses the s t a r t e r c u l t u r e i n t h e i r sausage making. Ma,ny of o u r p l a n t s s t i l l r e l y on t h e normal presence o f the d e s i r a b l e b a c t e r i a i n meat. One p o i n t t h a t I s t r e s s with sausage makers around the world i s r e a l simple and t h a t i s t h a t you cannot make good sausage out of meat t h a t i s e i t h e r o l d or h a s a high b a c t e r i a l load o r has a d e f i n i t e chemical age a f t e r slaughtering. In t a l k i n g i n Europe, and t h i s i s an i n t e r e s t i n g l i t t l e s i d e l i n e t h a t shows you how things happen, I am working i n Germany, Switzerland and I t a l y. I am I r i s h and here I a m i n the United S t a t e s t a l k i n g sausage
226. making t o t h e people t h a t s t a r t e d it a l l. That i s because we a r e a l i t t l e f u r t h e r ahead i n t e c h n i c a l problems. I n t a l k i n g i n Germany, f o r example, with the sausage makers t h e r e, they t e l l u s that i f you a r e going t o make good dry sausage t h e meat should be t h a t of a sow t h a t has had a t l e a s t seven l i t t e r s of p i g s. I n o t h e r words, they want t h e o l d e r meat, t h e more mature meat f o r t h e manufacture of sausage. So we have t o keep i n mind t h a t t h e b a c t e r i a l l o a d must be very low i n t h e beginning r a w materia1,the chemic a l age from t h e standpoint of possible r a n c i d i t y must a l s o be controlled. In t h e making o f sausage we p r e f e r t o use the c u t t e r method. The c u t t e r i s a piece o f equipment of varying capacity. The bowl r o t a t e s and a t t h e same time t h e bowl r o t a t e s we have very sharp knives t h a t r o t a t e which a r e f i t t e d very t i g h t l y t o t h e bowl t o give us a very sharp c u t t i n g of t h e meat. Now t h e important thing i n drying sausage i s t h a t t h e pieces of meat be reduced t o d i s c r e t e p a r t i c l e s i z e without t h e smearing of t h e f a t across the l e a n. So i n our c u t t i n g operations we control t h e temperature so t h a t o u r meat mass i s about 26 t o 28 degrees. W e a r e using German c u t t e r s and of course c u t t e r s t h a t a r e made i n t h i s country. The German c u t t e r s do a very e x c e l l e n t job. We run them u s u a l l y with three knives i n stead of t h e l a r g e number t h a t we use i n t h e emulsion type product and our chopping cycle i s controlled r i g i d l y by e i t h e r a revolution counting o r by time. And again the important thing i s t h e reduction of t h e meat t o the d e s i r e d s i z e without the smearing of f a t. And t h e seasoning, by t h e way, i s normally put in a t t h e very l a s t p a r t of t h e chopping cycle. This i s i n d i r e c t opposition t o t h e manner i n which we make emulsion type sausage. We do not want t o have any e x t r a c t i o n of t h e actomyosin from t h e l e a n meat i n the manufacture of t h e dry sausage. We want t o minimize what we would c a l l t h e c h a r a c t e r i s t i c bind o f an emulsion type sausage. A f t e r t h e meat has been removed from t h e c u t t e r we p r e f e r today, and t h i s i s i n c o n t r a s t with t h e way many people a r e doing it, w e p r e f e r now t o s t u f f the meat d i r e c t l y i n t o the s u i t a b l e n a t u r a l o r animal casing o r i n the new s y n t h e t i c casings t h a t a r e being used. We a r e using a casing i n Germany, f o r example, which has a high amount of s i l k f i b e r i n it which seems t o give us b e t t e r drying. The type o f s t u f f e r used should be one t h a t tends t o minimize t h e smearing of t h e f a t over t h e l e a n. We a r e using the V made s t u f f e r which i s a s t u f f e r which employs a semivacuum type p r i n c i p l e t h a t works q u i t e well. The p i s t o n type s t u f f e r s t h a t we have i n the p l a n t s a r e a l s o very good. The important thing again i s t h e temperature of t h e meat which has t o be q u i t e cold, down t o 26 t o 28 degrees. You can s t i l l f i n d sausage makers today, who w i l l take t h i s mass of meat and spread it i n t o pans t o a depth of about 4 inches and they age t h e meat i n aging pans. Now we a r e going away from t h i s because we a r e finding too much o f a b a c t e r i o l o g i c a l contamination when we go through t h i s procedure. We p r e f e r, t h e r e f o r e, t o s t u f f i n t o s u i t a b l e casings. This depends on diamet e r, market and a l l t h e r e s t o f i t. Then t h e product i s moved i n t o the f i r s t s t a g e of fermentation. W e have a very e x c e l l e n t sausage smokehouse which comes from John Kraus. One of t h e c l i e n t s i n New York has a smokehouse and he i s s e l l i n g them i n t h i s country. It i s a very e x c e l l e n t piece o f equipment. They have e x c e l l e n t r e f r i g e r a t i o n ; t h e r e l a t i v e humidity can be controlled very, very accurately as can t h e temperature. In making sausage on t h i s p a r t i c u l a r type of equipment, we s e t t h e temperature a t 68 degrees F. with a r e l a t i v e humidity of 95 percent.
227. We hold the sausage with about five air changes per minute and we hold the sausage at this very high humidity and the temperature is 68' for a period of 24 hodrs. At the end of 24 hours we begin a light cold smoke and we continue to hold the sausage at 68 relative humidity, quite high, for a period of approximately 6 days. This is a procedure when not using the starter culture. After the sausage has been in the aging room or green room a color will develop. We usually cut the sausage and see how the color has held up. If the color is good, looks bright, etc., our chemical reactions are going along; the ph is dropping and the color development due to the reaction of the nitrite with the opyhemoglobin is progressing quite satisfactorily. The sausage is then moved to the drying room or the drying area and we hold the drying room very closely to 53 to 55' F. with a relative humidity of 80 to 82 percent. The sausage is left in this drying chamber for a period of three days to several weeks if necessary, depending upon the type of sausage that we are making. This will give us a characteristic dry type sausage. If we take it out in three days we can have the semidry, like thuringer and summer sausage. One of the critical points that we have in the United States which is different from in Europe is the problem with trichina. Our pork is not free from the trichina parasite and therefore, our processors have to take this into consideration. We recommend in the smaller operations that we use certified pork which has been held under refrigeration for a prescribed number of days at a prescribed temperature to kill the Farasites. We prefer this method to following the longer drying cycle or to use the heating up to over 137'. In the case of thuringer in summer sausage, which are semidry sausages, we have many places where we do not use certified pork and we do bring the temperature up to 142' F. in the finished product. Just a quick discussion cf how we make some of these products. When we go into Europe and look for quality sausage we find that the No. 1 product, the best product manufactured in Europe, is primarily pure pork. The No. 2 dry sausages are pork and beef. When we come to the United States, we have a variety of sausages depending upon where you are. In Pennsylvania you are dealing with the characteristic pure beef type sausage that is handled in a similar xanner. You get out in the Northwest and you find someone who wants to hunt deer and the next thing you know he is making some dry sausage by mixidg in some pork butts and things like this and cold smoking it, allowing it to stand for a number of days with high salt concentration. We have had some trouble with the home sausage makers where they have decided to make their own sausages because they apparently are not aware of the need for killing the trichina parasite. We have had some trouble in Wisconsin as well as other parts of the United States with home made sausage. Now I could stand here and talk to you for quite some time about the variety of sausages we are making. Eut I would prefer not to do that and would like to leave it more or less this way that the field of dry sausage is an interesting one; it's one in which there is little information available. You can read the technical journals and you will find very little information. The people here in the United States, and we have people here in the audience whose companies do make good dry sausage, usually feel that their methods and procedures are highly secret and they are not made available. I get accused of simplifying sausage raking because I tell you the manufacture of dry sausage is a simple procedure, and it is. All you have to do is control ycur bacteriologic picture, control the air
228. movement, the r e l a t i v e humidity, t h e temperature i n t h e product and you have no t r o u b l e. And, o f course, I wish it were t h a t simple. We go t o t h e west coast and i n t o San Francisco, t h e one c i t y i n t h e United S t a t e s where t h e consumption of dry sausage i s very high. We f i n d another p e c u l i a r t h i n g o u t t h e r e is t h a t you must have a mold growth on t h e o u t s i d e of the dry sausage o r you c a n ' t s e l l i t. This mold t h a t develops i s a p e c u l i a r mold; i t ' s very white and gives t h e sausage a p e c u l i a r appearance; b u t t h i s i s necessary on t h e w e s t c o a s t. If you move t o Europe, f o r example, you w i l l f i n d a v a r i e t y of sausages depending upon t h e a r e a you are i n. Seasoning i s very bland; i n most cases much blander a c t u a l l y than we have i n t h e United S t a t e s. D r y sausage i s coming back i n t h i s country; we are making more of it every y e a r. It was replaced here f o r a while with t h e emphasis on rapid turnover and automation. People a r e going back once more f i n d i n g o u t t h a t dry sausage i s a wonderful thing t o e a t. So you can go t o New York and Chicago and many of our c i t i e s ; you w i l l f i n d t h e delicatessens a r e s t a r t i n g up again and we a r e handling r e a l good dry sausage and r e a l good semidry sausage. It i s q u i t e a t r e a t t o have these products when you have been consuming weiners and bologna t h a t we overemulsified and oversimplified and overautomated t o t h e point where it i s hardly possible t o recognize them from t h e o r i g i n a l meat with which we s t a r t e d. I heard it might be a l r i g h t t o have discussions and questions a t t h i s time. NEIL WEBB: I would l i k e t o open t h i s very i n t e r e s t i n g discussion f o r questions a t t h i s time. I have one o r two, b u t I would l i k e t o open it f o r you f i r s t. Anyone have any questions? G. H. WELLINGTON, Cornell: Dr. Shannon, j u s t thinking very g e n e r a l l y now, we o f t e n say t h a t t h e r e i s l i t t l e s c i e n t i f i c information a v a i l a b l e on these processes i n sausage making and p a r t i c u l a r l y i n d r y sausages, I a m wondering, s t i l l i n general terms, i f you would want t o express your opinion as t o which d i r e c t i o n we would be most productive in d i r e c t i n g our research on dry sausages. WILLIAM SHANNON: I would say t h a t one place where w e i n t h i s country a r e d e f i c i e n t i s t h e understanding of t h e chemi s t r y t h a t i s going on; t h e changes in ph that we a r e running i n t o, and t h e influence of the ph in t h e animal t h a t i s being used t o manufacture sausage. In the company I am working with i n Germany, f o r example, we measure t h e ph of every hog. Every s i n g l e hog comes by and they check t h e ph of t h e ham and separate o u t t h e animals with the lower ph a s being t h e most i d e a l f o r t h e manufacture of dry sausage o r t h e manufacture of Westphalian ham. Now t h e important thing i n good drying, as you people know, i s b a s i c a l l y t h i s, t h a t as t h e ph drops i n t h e drying cycle, you a r e beginning t o approach the i s o e l e c t r i c point of p r o t e i n which i s down around 5.4 o r 5.5. A t that point t h e sausage meat
229. gives up its moisture most readily and in a good drying operation you have to dry from the inside outward. It's in this area of the chemistry of drying that there is little information available to us. We have some people doing work studying the ph of meat. I was fascinated in Germany to realize the emphasis which they are placing on ph of the various meats used in sausage making and we set up a research project on just this last January, which we are going to run for a period of one year and the influence of breed of hog and ph of meat on the finished Westphalian ham as well as the quality of the dry sausage we are getting. So this is an area which I think could be very productive. The other one would be from the mechanical engineering standpoint and that is a better understanding of the air movement, relative humidity and temperature control in our smokehouse. The greatest development we have had in our total meat processing industry in the last five years has been improved smokehouses that have been brought out, where we have air changes now as high as 15 times a minute with tremendous air velocity and very, very high heat capacities. This area, of course, is quite interesting to us. NEIL WEBB: Are there any other questions? DR. BRATZLER, Michigan State: Do the Germans object to the pork with the low ph and soft watery pork? WILLIAM SHANNON: The hogs that we are using in Germany are not the characteristic watery soft pork that we find in certain areas of Denmark. The low ph seems to give us the best product. Where we have, take ham for example, that fail to dry properly for some reason, the ph has stayed high. In other words, the ph is around 6, for example, in the original meat. We have a cut off point of 6. In other words, anything over 6 we will not put into Westphalian hams or dry sausage and this apparently is in line with some work being done in Germany. But of the watery pork, I can say I have not run into very much in Germany or in Switzerland. NEIL WEBB: Any other questions? Yes Fred. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Dry sausage, in my opinion, is the most difficult thing to make and that is why it is so secret. After 16 months of work I don't think we would tell anybody how we make it because there was a lot of money involved and I think Bill knows you can't do it overnight. It is easy to say air change and humidity but there seems to be a lot of things and nobody knows why they work. Finally you just hit it like that but it might take you years to hit it that way. WILLIAM SHANNON: I could add to that, because I remember starting out about 20 years ago and decided to make thuringer. Now thuringer is really easy to make. There's nothing to it, believe me; but the only trouble was that we couldn't do it. So we finally ended up buying an old plant in Chicago that was in the Union Stock Yard area known as the Double 0 Sausage
230. Plant. We went down there to find out how to make thuringer. I don't know whether it was imagination or whether we cross seeded and got the right culture going by accident. But there is a lot, too, to the dry sausage operation and the people who are making it a success wouldn't believe me. Now I will tell you what they are doing. The reason for that is frequently that they are not quite sure themselves. NEIL WEBB: Anyone else have a question? I think in the interest of time I would like to turn this over to Bob at this point. ROBERT SAFFLE: Thank you, Dr. Shannon for this very fine session. (Applause) Thank you Neil and Bill. Our fourth area is entitled Adjustments, Weights, and Ratios in Bta Analyses. This certainly has some bearing on the committee on processing, it perhaps has more bearing on carcass evaluation, however. As we worked out the time schedule we felt that this was the best slot to put this particular subject in. So without additional information we will ask Charles Henderson, Professor of Animal Science with a specialization in animal breeding and population genetics, to present this information, We have Ralph Boulware from Louisiana State University to lead the discussion. #############