Sausage classification
Classification Examples
Cooked-smoked Frankfurters, Bologna, Mortadella, Knackwurst, Berliner
Loaves and Luncheon meats Chopped ham, Olive Loaf, Pickle and Pimento Loaf, Head cheese, Dutch loaf.
Fresh or fresh and smoked Fresh pork sausage, smoked pork sausage, Italian pork sausage, Bratwurst, Kielbasa, Mettwurst
Cooked-gelled sausage Liver sausage, Cooked salami, Beer salami, Braunschweiger
Dry or semi-dry fermented Dry: Pepperoni, SalamiSemi-dry: Cervelat, Thuringer
Canned Vienna sausage, Liverwurst
Sausage production includes preparation of emulsion, stuffing the emulsion into casings, linking, cooking/smoking, chilling, packing, storage and marketing. Sausage stuffier is used to fill the emulsion into casings. Salted casings should be soaked in water for desalting before use. Uniform stuffing is required for quality sausages. Filled casing is twisted to obtain sausage links of desired length. Modern sausage fillers complete filling and linking of suitable weights.
Smoking and cooking of sausages could be done in a single operation or separately. Smoke imparts flavour and increases keeping quality. Hard wood saw dusts are considered to give the best smoke composition. Smoking for 1 hr at 56 ° 60°C and 45 min. at 70°C followed by smoking at 80°to 85°C until the internal temperature of the product reaches the desired level (75°C) is practised. Sausages can be cooked by submerging them in hot water or in a steam jacketed round bottomed kettle. Cooking is done for 20to 25 min. at 80°C to attain desired internal temperature (75°C). Cooked sausages are cooled by spraying cold water (16°C) and placed for chilling at 1° 4 °C. Links are cut and packed in desirable weight and stored chilled at 4°C or frozen at 18°C. Fresh (raw) sausages have limited shelf life of 5 days at 4°C and about 4 months at 18°C. Cooked and smoked sausages have better shelf life of 30 days at 4°C and more than 6 months at -18°C.
Fresh pork sausage: Manufacture of fresh pork sausage is a relatively simple procedure in which muscle and fat are blended with a spice formulation and coarsely ground. Fresh chilled pork trimmings from fabrication and boning operations are commonly used. The ground pork is stuffed into small diameter artificial cellulose or collagen casings, dipped in liquid smoke and sold as fresh pork sausage links. Fresh pork sausage mixture can be run through a patty-forming machine to make patties.
Fresh pork sausage from hot pork: The use of hot (pre-rigor) pork in fresh pork sausage is also widely followed in industry. The meat harvested immediately after evisceration is utilized for emulsion making. Total time required from slaughter to packing takes 80 min. Pre-rigor pork muscle has the ability to act as an oxygen scavenger, removing all of the residual oxygen from inside the package after closure and such product has a shelf-life of 21 to 35 days if properly refrigerated.
English pork sausages: Typical formulation for English sausage consists of minced pork hog meat 12 kg, pork (lean: fat 70:30) 30 kg, semi-lean pork belly (lean: fat 50:50) 5 kg, pork back fat 30 kg, water 17 kg, rusk 11 kg, skimmed-milk powder 2.5 kg, seasoning mix (including salt) 2.37 kg, polyphosphate 0.25 kg, Sodium metabisulphite 650 mg/kg as SO2 113 g and colour red 2G 550 mg. After forming, sausages may be passed through a cooler, in which they are exposed to chilled air.
This has the effect of cooling the product and also drying surplus water from the surface of sausages filled in natural casings. Fresh sausage is a labile product which even under the best conditions of chiller holding has a total life of not more than 10 days. Freshly made sausages should have a total viable bacterial count not exceeding 1 x 106 organisms per gram and preferably less than one- half of this. Under normal conditions of frying or grilling, sausages should not lose more than 10% of their weight as water or fat and a loss exceeding 20 % is not acceptable.
Frankfurters: Frankfurter is a specialty skinless sausage, fabricated originally from pork, but now usually containing both pork and beef. Compared with the English sausage, the meat content is high, usually being about 80 %. A low percentage of cereal and /or protein additive, seasoning and about 10 % of water are the other major ingredients. Relatively cheap cuts of pork and beef are used in the making of frankfurters and curing is carried out during processing. Curing aids such as ascorbic acid and glucono-delta lactone are added to the meat. The lengths of linked sausages are transferred to a smokehouse in which, they are subjected to a drying, smoking, cooking and water cooling cycle. Smokehouse temperature is held at 38°-40°C and relative humidity less than 85 % and then temperature raised to 75°C with smoke being applied and held until internal temperature of sausage has reached a minimum of 68°C. The sausages are then cooled by showering with water before the casing is removed and packed.
Burgers/patties: They are fresh comminuted meat products; usually have a meat content of about 80 %. Too high lean meat content will give burgers a rubbery texture and 15to 20% of fat should be present in the meat to give the desired succulence and texture. Processing consists of mincing the meat and mixing with other ingredients and forming the batter into patties. The most common way is to stamp out each patty with block and die in a suitable patty forming machine. Alternatively, about 80 g of emulsion shaped into a ball, is moulded in a round mould (80 mm diameter and 17 mm height) and the raw patty is dropped on to a perforated oven tray. Patties are cooked to an internal temperature of 75°C in a pre-heated oven at 180°C for 25 min. Patties are turned over after 10 minutes of cooking. Cooked patties are packed and stored refrigerated or frozen. Patties could also be prepared by deep fat frying the raw patties instead of broiling in oven.
Pork pie: A typical pork pie recipe as follows: Pork 56 %, pork fat 27 %, dries filler 5.4 %, seasoning 2.3 %, nitrite 0.3 % and water 9 %. The meat batter may be prepared by mincing and mixing, or by bowl chopping as in sausages. The raw batter is metered mechanically into the pastry case before the lid is applied and baked in oven to reach internal temperature of 80°C for pies with cured meat fillings and 90°C for pies with uncured meat fillings. The correct ratio of lean: fat is about 2:1. Most pork pies are jellied after baking by injecting a gelatin solution of 150to 160 bloom strength in about 6 % aqueous solution into the pie through the lid. The object of jellying is to disperse the solution through the meat mixture and fill up any gaps caused by shrinkage of the meat filling. Pork pies are cooled rapidly in chilled air, but jellied whilst the filling is still warm. The chilling process is completed to a temperature of 10°C.
Salami: It is a dry fermented sausage. The final product is sold when the moisture content is lower than 35% and the moisture: protein ratio is below 2.3:1 (1.9: 1 for hard salami and 1.6: 1 for pepperoni). Controlled fermentation is encouraged to give the final product a characteristic acidic and tangy flavour. Modern rapid manufacturing scheme makes use of a starter culture of microbes to enhance curing and fermentation. A typical starter culture would contain a blend of live bacteria- Lactobacillus plantarum, and pediococcus cervisiae to produce lactic acid and Micrococcus aurantiacus to convert nitrate to nitrite. Some manufacturers use a procedure called 'back slopping'- setting aside a small quantity of one day's production of a fermented sausage for use in batches to be produced during the next day's production, as a means for inoculating succeeding batches of product.
Processing steps involves grinding all meat ingredients through a 5 mm plate and placing 20 % of the meat ingredients in the bowl chopper with half of the ice and then chopping for 1 min. Later, the seasoning-curing mixture (except cracked black pepper), starter culture and the remainder of the ice are added and then chopped for 1 to 3 minutes. Then all of the remaining ingredients (meat and black pepper) are added over the chopped meat and chopped for 1 to 3 revolutions of the chopper bowl. Then, the product is ground through a 5 mm plate. The ground product is stuffed into fibrous casings and store at 29°C in the greening room for 16 hr. The stuffed product is smoked heavily for 32 hr at 37°to 38°C and store in a 12°C cooler for 10 to 30 days (semi- dry), 30to 60 days (medium dry), or 60 to 90 days (dry).
Nuggets: Forming meat blocks and cutting them of different sizes and shapes is the simple and low cost technology for production of nuggets without expensive meat forming machine. Meat blocks could be made by filling the meat batter/emulsion into the square moulds (15 cm ×10 cm ×4 cm) and cooking of emulsion filled moulds without any pressure in drum/cooker with adequate space for steam circulation. Cooking for about 45 minutes is enough to achieve an internal temperature of block to 85°C. Cooked meat blocks are chilled at refrigerated temperature (4°C) and cut into nuggets of desired size and shape. Nuggets have shelf life of 15 days at 4°C and up to 3 months at 18°C. Nuggets could be battered and breaded for adding variety. Nuggets have high convenience and good appeal and attractive besides being nutritious.
Slices: Meat slices are produced from the meat blocks prepared for nuggets. The blocks are sliced using meat slicer or by hand knife to desirable thickness usually 5 mm. Slices could be fried and used as snacks or for sandwich preparations. Emulsion filled in cloth bags or moulds of cylindrical shape is cooked similar to meat blocks.
Kebabs: These are the indigenous products with high acceptability as a snack food. Seek kebabs are prepared by moulding emulsion on to a skewer (iron rod) to form a cigar -shaped kebab. The skewer is placed on a red hot char broiler and cooked by char broiling to an internal temperature of 75°C. The skewers are frequently turned to avoid excessive browning. After proper cooking, skewers are removed from char broiler and the kebabs withdrawn from them by sliding over. The unique flavour of char broiled kebabs is due to combustion of fat and meat juices that drips on the red hot charcoal. Skewers with raw kebabs are also cooked in preheated oven at 180°C for about 12 min. to an internal temperature of 75°C. Oven roasting is more suitable for large scale commercial production of kebabs, but acceptability is better with char broiling.
Meat balls or kofta: Emulsion is formed into round balls of 20 30 g and lightly fried to a golden brown or steam cooked at 100°C for 20 min. Meat balls are also broiled at 160°C for 45 min. Fried balls have good acceptability. The meat balls are cooked in gravy to prepare meat balls or kofta curry.
Meat croquettes: Chicken emulsion in small lumps of about 8 10 grams is dropped in preheated oil and deep fat fried till golden brown fried appearance is observed. Variety of croquettes could also be prepared by mixing grated onions / cauliflower/spinach at 10 to 12 % in the emulsion and deep fat fried in suitable size lumps.
Meat samosa: Meat (chicken/mutton) samosa is prepared similar to vegetable samosa except that the stuffing is meat emulsion with added fried onions and grated green coriander.