Welcome, everyone, to Wednesday Nite at the Lab.
I'm Tom Zinnen. I work here at the UW
Biotechnology Center. I also work for UW Extension
Cooperative Extension, and on behalf of those folks and our
other partners, Wisconsin Public
Association, and the Science Television, the Wisconsin Alumni
thanks for coming to Wednesday Alliance here at UW Madison,
We do this every Wednesday Nite at the Lab.
Tonight it's my pleasure to be night, 50 times a year.
Sindelar. He's an assistant professor and
Extension meat specialist in the
here at UW Madison. DeHe received a bachelor ofes
science in animal science with a
University of Nebraska Lincoln meats emphasis from the
Then he got a master of science in animal science and meat
science from Michigan State University in 2002, and he got
his PhD in meat science at Iowa State University in 2006.
In 2007, Jeff joined the
UW Madison. DIn this capacity, he providesat
assistance to meat processors in
development, problem solving, and regulatory compliance.
He also coordinates the meat
programs, and he provides involvement and support to youth
in meat science related activities.
Jeff also conducts research on
characteristics of processed quality and sensory
functionality in meat products, and intervention strategies to
control pathogenic bacteria in
But the reason we're all here is meat products.
about the thrill of the grill, because he's going to talk to us
bratwurst and other sausage. the arts and sciences of making
and go shopping to get another And now I have to go and leave
can all have plenty afterward. three or four dozen brats so we
data; tonight we do. We don't often get to eat the
Please join me in welcoming Jeff to Wednesday Nite at
the Lab.
Thank you very much, Tom. Good evening, everyone.
First of all, I'd like to thank Tom for the invitation to come
out and speak at the Wednesday
This is such a tremendously neat Nite at the Lab.
and excited to be here this activity, anevening.ally honored
This evening's activity or this evening's program, we can kind
of call it an activity because
participation, some crowd participation involved.e
And Tom has already mentioned about after the program, but
during the program we're
little product sampling as well. actually going to be doing a
arms. I'm not going to require that
you participate in the sampling,
Wisconsinite, you probably want bto heavily considere
participating.
Science and Art of Sausage This evening's topic is The
speaking specifically about bratwurst and summer sausage.
Two products which are so very, very important to this state,
have a tremendous amount of history tied to the heritage of
this state, and will for many,
hopefully centuries to come maintain being an important
thread in the culture and society of this great state.
So, the first product that we're
sausage, and my thought was gperhaps we could talk aboutr
chemical, physical, sensory,
variety of different properties food of these products.ic, a
But then after giving this a
perhaps we should talk a little bit about science, a little bit
about history, and a little bit about what makes these products
so unique.
utilized and so forth. How they're made, how they're
format through this evening's program, and the first of the
two products that we're going to
Summer sausage is considered one talk about is summer sausage.
semi-dry sausage, and these two of tcategories of products and
represents one of the oldest
If we think about the history, forms of meat preservation.
was manufactured for rewind the clock, summer sausage
times of refrigeration, and in preservation purposes, before
By definition, summer sausage was manufactured in the cooler
months, the fall and winter months, so that it could be
consumed in the summer during warmer months when foods were
more commonly spoiled.
of these products, dry and A little more about the history
sausages, which I've got a semi-dry sausages and summer
example of a semi-dry sausage, couple examples here, are an
difference is. and I'll explain what the
developed mainly in Europe, again, as I mentioned, because
of the climate. And it hasn't been until the
last hundred years or so that we've really started to
understand a lot about the
Around 1900 the microbial basis for fermentation was discovered.
Most of these products, as we'll
Some are acidulated, and we'll learn, are fermented.
Around 1940 the first patent for talk about what that is.
In 1958 and the early 1950s stastarter cultures wereued.
commercialized. Similar types of starter
cultures that are used for
industries. What is so special about this
slide is that the first starter cultures that were invented and
commercialized were accomplished
Bob Deibel on this campus at the by a gentleman by the name of
Traditional dry and semi-dry University of Wisconsin.
types of sausages in that they sausages differ from all other
First and foremost, that require microbial fermentation.
preservation purposes. microbial fermentation was for
some preservation purposes. That's why sometimes we can buy
these products and not
we apply fermentation, microbial refrigerate them, but more often
characteristic flavor as well as fermentation, for the
Around the 1900s, before we started really learning about
the science of starter cultures and fermentation, the meat
industry employed a practice
And, essentially, it was meat known inoculation.ping.
We made a batch of sausage, we
occurred because of the natural hmicro flora that was on theit
meat, and we took a portion of
it to the next batch. thatSo we were essentiallydded
inoculating batch to batch to batch.
This gave us many problems in the industry, as you
can imagine.
of problems. Inconsistencies and other types
starter cultures used for Andmicrobial fermentation wasof
extremely important in the
see today. success of the products that we
of you in this audience are very Traditionally, and I'm sure many
can remember the day, but weltraditionally many dry andly
semi-dry sausages, even summer
However, due to food safety concerns and the emergence of a
variety of some very dangerous
dry and semi-dry sausages are pcooked, and that's to destroyl
those pathogenic bacteria and resolve in safe products.
Dry versus semi, and I mentioned
Just to give you a little bit of this in my very first slide.
So a dry sausage is one that has a difference or a comparison.
acidification, resulting in a pH had bacterial fermentation or
more about that in a bit, and has roughly 25% to 50% of itso
moisture removed. So we start with a hundred
pounds of sausage, we result in between 50 and 75 pounds of
finished product. We remove moisture, dry that
product.
salami, those are examples of Pepperondry sausages.i, Genoa
Semi-dry sausages, which summer sausage fall into that category,
are also fermented either by
They also have a pH of 5.3 or less, and they have less
moisture removed. Typically, 15% moisture loss.
So we start with a hundred
about 85 pounds of finished pounds summer sausage. up with
So when you go to a grocery store and you look at the price
tag, you can kind of make sense of why it may be a little more
expensive.
buying a more expensive product, You're buying less water, you're
higher amount of protein. There are standards of identity.
So when we call a product summer
standards of identity that are sausage, we must meet specific
USDA. esAnd for example, for summerhe
sausage and any summer sausage
not require refrigeration, we thahave to achieve a moisturees
protein ratio, or MPR, of less
So we analyze this sausage for than 3.1 to 1.
analyze it for the amount of the amount of protein, we
set it to one, and that gives us moisture, we divide the two, we
to 1. a mThis is for you guys, for3.1
consumers, so that if you're in Wisconsin or California or
Massachusetts, if you buy a product that's labeled summer
sausage it's going to have the
organoleptic properties that you eating qualities, the
here in Wisconsin. would expect of a summer sausage
5.0. And the pH also has to be below
types or styles of summer Now, there sausage.w different
There are those that are pH reduced, and that can be
accomplished by either
starter culture or bacterial fermentation using a lactic acid
using an actual organic acid. And there are also products that
are non-pH reduced. And we're going to sample a
product that is non-pH reduced
affects the flavor. There's actually a lot of areas,
there's certain regions in the
reduced summer sausage over fermented or acidified summer
sausage that we would find in Wisconsin.
As crazy as it may seem, there
like Wisconsin summer sausage. are people in the US that do not
Not because of the flavor but because of the tang, that
sourness which is what
So, many of you might be asking what is exactly in summer
sausage?
And we're going to walk through those steps real briefly.
Tom told me I had three hours.
But if you've ever wondered Iwhat's in summer sausage, thee.
very easiest thing to do is pick
label because USDA requires that up the product and read the
everything that's in a product the meat industry puts
There's a couple nuances to that, and I'll explain that.
This is a formulation that we use at the UW meat lab.
And we have a state inspected meat processing facility here on
campus just a couple blocks down
We manufacture a variety of different products, one of those
being summer sausage of which we're going to be sampling here
in a few minutes. But this is a formulation that
we use. Exact verbatim out of our
recipe. We have 80/20 beef trim which is
80% lean, 20% fat.
generated from cutting steaks And and roasts and so forth. are
Sometimes we actually use steaks
the sausages are so popular that and roasts if we have to because
generate enough trimmings. the meat industry often doesn't
Dextrose. I'll kind of go through here.
Black pepper. That gives you the heat in the
back of you throat. Whole mustard seed,
characteristic of summer
More for aesthetic value rather than flavor.
Looks nice in a product.
we love garlic powder. Garlic powder, and in Wisconsin
summers. It's very easy to find garlic
Ground ginger. Nutmeg.
Curing salt, which is a combination of sodium nitrite
and salt. Lactic acid starter culture.
And a little bit of distilled water.
We're allowed to add a little bit of water so that we can
distribute the ingredients
So you can kind of see the during the mixing.
Very, very simple. breakdown.
in a grocery store you often Now, when you pick up a product
those spices, all those individual spices, and that is
one of the nuances of labeling. They can call those spices or
flavorings and lump them all
The reason that that's allowed together.
all the meat plants and I'm itrying to sell this product, Io
would give away my secrets. So it's a way to allow some
competition, allow some confidentiality to meat
processors' formulations and
Raw materials that are used, in Wisconsin we eat a lot of
all-beef summer sausage.
Very few other places in the Very, very unique to this state.
sausage so commonly consumed. But we also use raw materials
such as pork, sometimes poultry,
mountain lion summer sausage elk, bison, ostrich, I've seen
on. befoIt's very common to seen and
combinations of those ingredients.
Typically, we target around 15% to 25% fat content in that
product.
components of those raw materials that we utilize forl
manufacturing summer sausage. The main portion is the protein
portion.
classifications or three main types of proteins that we
utilize for manufacturing sausages and, in this case,
summer sausage. One classification are the
sarcoplasmic proteins which attribute to about 30%-35% of
all the proteins in meat. Those are responsible for the
color that you see in meat, whether it's a bright red or
maybe brown if it's getting a little bit old.
That occurs because of oxygen and oxidation of the pigment.
Or the cured meat color that we see in summer sausage and ham
and bacon and so forth. Myofibrillar proteins which
comprise about 50% of the proteins in raw materials.
Those proteins are very important for texture, give you
the bite and the mouth feel.
form gels. They're salt soluble so they
actually forming a gel. Stromal proteins are the third
classification. Approximately 10% to 15% of the
total protein.
typically not a good thing for And stromal protein are
high in connective tissue and collagen, and those provide bad
eating experiences. Sometimes you get a little bit
of gristle in your teeth, that
Specifically, myofibrillar actually is a stromal protein.
because those are what give summer sausage the texture thatt
it has. They are salt soluble so that
2.25% salt that we add, referring back to that
formulation, that salt
In essence what it's doing, when solubilizes the proteins.
proteins, and in a raw native state proteins are like closed
fists, that salt opens those
When that is accomplished there are binding sites which are
inside those fists which are
other, stick together, and form then allowea gel.ind to each
If the fists are like this and
myofibrillar proteins are not solubilized, we basically result
in ground beef or hamburger where it's very easy to break
apart.
focus and utilize the Somyofibrillar proteins thatwe
exist, which is one of the very,
salt, there is a variety of very imporothers.nctions of
We focus on myosin and actin. Those are the contractile
proteins. So they are the ones that are
responsible for muscle
And here is an example of actin and myosin, myosin being the
thin filaments with these tails or these heads.
And, again, when we focus on
So opening them up, allowing those it affects the texture.
gives us texture. pThat can affect water holding,
capacity. So how much water or moisture
the products hold.
have binding sites on the inside Again, when we open them up we
times, form strong gels. and, as I mentioned a couple of
which we all are accustomed to It gives us the finished texture
The freshness of the raw with summer sausage.
manufacture of semi-dry sausages, specifically summer
sausages, is absolutely critical
products because the success of manufacturing summer sausage,
the success of fermentation is
dominance of the micro flora dependent on the type and the
bacteria is present. that's on the meat, what
raw material, so we've got a And if we think back from the
materials generated from summer sausage here, we used raw
and so forth, we received those trimmings and whole muscles from
carcasses.
live animals. WeAfter animals are harvested,om
they, essentially, try to degrade.
They want to decompose and go back to the Earth where they
came from.
salt, and cooking is a way of slowing that decomposition down.
So when we harvest animals, we
from the environment, from have a lot of bacteria present
tools, and the bacteria that's people, from facilities, from
harvested are typically the presenteric forms, thel is
gram-negatives such as E. coli, not necessarily pathogenic
E. coli but just generic
various coliforms, we also have contamination from humans and
environment as I alluded to.
that makes milk sour in your Spoilage bacteria, that bacteria
ugly colors. refrigerator or vegetables turn
The salting and the drying Same exact bacteria.
and salted products favors process, so manufacturing dried
staphylococci yeast, over some lactic acid bacteria,
So, the preservation of drying of those gram-negative ones.
of summer sausage, or salting, part of semi-dry sausages, part
important to control and change the micro flora that's on the
raw materials.
and uncontrollable in almost all That micro flora being inherent
It is impossible to keep regards.
that that meat leaves the scarcass to the time is it pute
into a product and it ends up on
During the process of fermentation, we have a
phenomenon known as microbial flora inversion.
And this process is extremely important because it shifts the
dominance from gram-negative, the coliforms, the E. colis,
the salmonellas, to gram-positive bacteria.
So it suppresses the
allows the gram-positives to gram-negative bacteria and
This is caused by fermentation, and it's really important to
understand what level and what
the raw materials that we're type of microbial flora are on
We can control the micro flora using to make summer sausage.
suppresses the gram-negatives, in some regards by adding salt,
grow, and by controlling the allows the gram-positives to
Fermentation happens to be fermentation.
And we always have to address pathogenic strains because, as I
mentioned, most E. colis are
non-pathogenic; however, there gram-negative or are
varieties. are a couple pathogenic
of fermentation which is So, this leads into the concept
summer sausage the absolutely critical for giving
Fermentation, or actually I'll characteristics that it has.
now, we'll differentiate between call it acidifying for right
Acidifying is lowering the pH of the two.
It can be accomplished in two different ways.
One is through fermentation which uses starter cultures or
lactic acid bacteria. The other is by direct addition
of organic acids. The purpose or the reason that
we ferment, either using starter
reduce the pH in meat products. So the pH of raw materials of
meat is roughly 5.5 to 5.8, and we need to reduce that to 5.0 or
less. In doing so, we generate a whole
lot of functionality. We have water binding our losses
or we can control water binding our losses.
We generate flavors.
We can improve color and we can Weresult in stable color overes.
shelf life of a product.
shelf life. So how long will it last in ae
grocery store?
refrigerator before it starts Hogetting moldy or slimy orur
smelly? And it's very important for food
safety. The first ingredients or the
first way of acidifying is using
I've got a little demonstration encapsulahere.cidulants.
If I could ask a couple of my assistants to help me with this.
The first approach in reducing
And there are three main types the pH is using an organic acid.
industry: citric, lactic, or that are used in the meat
Gentlemen, hold on one moment. glucono delta lactone.
in these capsules it's The properties of this is that
acid, coated with hydrogenated approximately 75% acid, citric
The mode of action is that after vegetable oil.
sausage and it's stuffed and we heat treat it or we cook it, the
vegetable coating on the outside
releases the acid. of these capsules melts and
acidification, pH drops So weinstantly.irect
I have a couple samples that
A little fun exercise. we'll pass around.
you don't like to, but feel free You don't have to participate if
So we have some encapsulated to do so if you'd like.
from the meat lab. citric acid that we brought over
like to participate to see how If you are interested and you'd
granules in your hands. Gentlemen, please pass itw
around. And once you sprinkle a few
granules, you only need five or 10 or so, stick it in your mouth
and let it sit on your tongue and see if you can taste
anything. And then bit through them, and
then see if you can taste anything.
Again, it's a safe ingredient.
the meat lab, but if you prefer not to participate, that's fine.
So the reason this is used and
is because if we add acid at the the reason that's encapsulated
manufacturing, we will denature beginproteins.roduct
Acid denatures proteins.
chorizo? Everyone familiar with fresh
What's a very common >> Yeah.
You put it in the pan, you fry characteristic of fresh chorizo?
Does it stick together or does it, and what happens?
It sticks together. it >> Really?t?
[LAUGHTER]
breaks apart? Does any>> Crumbles.izo that
Crumbles. Why does it crumble?
Have you looked on the
What makes chorizo different ingredient statement?
What ingredient is different? What's different about it?
You usually see acetic acid or
Vinegar is an acid. It denatures the proteins.
Once you fry it, it breaks
We encapsulate it for summer apart.
control when that acidification, sausage because we want to
So the proteins will actually when that dset up.tion occurs.
It will start to coagulate and
Then the vegetable coating will formelt.el.
We'll have acid.
We'll have pH drop. It won't huVoila. proteins.
And we have a product that we'll
this way. saThe way that summer sausageed
manufactured in Wisconsin is
And, again, on the labels you twill see every product that'ss.
been fermented with the lactic
It says it on the labels. They are living bacteria.
They're temperature sensitive,
to as good bugs. so they are what we would refer
rates and to a certain extent depending on several factors.
One is the meat condition.
spoilage bacteria or other micro Are they being out-competed by
them in the form of sugar, and flora, how much food we give
So we can control by fermenting in proper zones or proper
temperatures where bacteria like
They like to eat sugar or sweetener and produce acid.
And, of course, we can always stop them from growing by
increasing the temperature and
Some starter cultures, meat starter cultures, and there are
a variety, some starter cultures
than acid. actually produce more flavor
sausage, but if you're eating a Genoa or a sobrasada or a hard
salami sometimes you'll notice
flavors and aromas. Those are typically from other
types of lactic acid bacteria that have the ability to break
down proteins and amino acids,
acids, and dissimulate break down fats and the fatty
And during that process, which carbohydrates.
result in some very, very unique, very desirable fermented
flavors and aromas. The food effects on
fermentation, so we control how the fermentation operates by
giving those bugs, the good bugs, food.
And the more that we give them, the more they'll eat, the lower
the final pH will be. Again, the pH of muscle, raw
meat, is 5.5 to 5.8.
dextrose, we can result in a If we add approximately .37%
The more dextrose, dextrose is a pH of around 5.2.
consumable by starter cultural simple sugar very readily
them, the lower the pH will go. bThere's also a time effect fore
fermentation. So I apologize, this doesn't
show very well, but on the X
fermentation: 0, 4, 8, 12, 16, axis you have hours of
On the Y axis you have pH. and 20.
the very top here. Again, we're starting at 6.0 on
time, if there's no food, no As we ferment, we give it enough
represents the red line, nothing dextrose or sugar, which
The pH does not change. If we give the good bugs, the
lactic acid bacteria, food, the yellow line shows that over time
the pH will drop. That is a product of the
bacteria eating sugar and out the back end coming lactic acid.
So it's consuming, digesting, and breaking down dextrose, a
simple carbohydrate, and
The more acid that accumulates, resthe lower the pH will go.id.
This is important for summer
and semi-dry sausage, because it sausage, as well as other dry
capacity. So the isoelectric point of
meat, that's the pH or the point
of negative and positive where there are an equal number
are tightly squeezed, such as in charges, where proteins actually
picture. this picture, the very top
together, representing the Proteins are very, very close
As we move closer to the isoelectric point.
is around 5.8, so it's around isoelectric phere. so, again, pH
The proteins want to hold to
water. water, and meat is 70% to 75%
water. So it wants to hold on to that
approach the isoelectric point, about 5.2, the proteins want to
give up that water. They want to let it go.
And that's how we can drive moisture out of semi-dry
sausages and we can achieve 15%,
We could not accomplish that 25%, 50% moisture loss.
important scientific principle. And this kind of depicts, as we
have different charges, we have more binding, more ability for
the water molecules to grab on
When we add salt, salt has a to those negative charges.
it actually shifts that whole chlisoelectric point curve.ge,
So instead of the 5.2, which I
graph, when we add salt, it shifts it to about 4.9, 4.8.
From a manufacturing standpoint,
approaches that we use. One is using what is called a
silent cutter or a chopper. And this picture depicts what
that looks like.
turns in circles, and it has It's basically a big bowl, it
that chop and dice and cut. sAn old practice that is almost
becoming extinct. Today we typically utilize
grinder systems.
manufacturing procedure for Here's asummer sausage.s flow or
We would start with the initial grinder, mix in our ingredients,
do a funnel grind, stuff, ferment, and thermal process.
During the manufacturing, controlling our raw materials is
very important. So we use temperature to insure
that we do not abuse the fat
In doing so, we're able to that's in our sausages.
little white pieces that you result in the fat particles, the
making sure that the temperature see, we accomplish that by
fats. isnMixing time is critical.se
So some of the science, a little
We control temperatures throughout the entire process.
Mixing is done for a relatively short period of time.
We want to solubilize some of those proteins but not too much.
We add our different ingredients
process. at different steps in the
end of the mixing process. We typically add salt toward the
solubilize proteins. So the mechanical action helps
We can control how much proteins Salt does that as well.
what point in time and how much areexposure salt has to those at
proteins. And after we've done all those
things, we will run that product
Again, the controlling through a final grind.
typically one-eighth particle size or three-sixteenths of an
inch particle size. And if there's any non-meat
ingredients, such as cheese or
craisins, dried fruits and so forth, those are added at that
time. After grinding, mixing and
grinding, we stuff the casing or
And sausage casings, and I have a variety of these here and I'll
leave them up here and you're welcome to come up and look at
these, but there are a variety
available for summer sausage and of different sausage casings
The most common one is a fibrous other dry and semi-dry sausages.
This is a mahogany colored casing.
Made from tree and plant fibers. fiber.
Actually, it's paper that you Verycan tear.rong.
If I soak this in water, the
very, very, very strong. fiber is absorbed and becomes
sizes. They come in various colors and
Here's a clear casing. So here's a colored casing.
Or, actually, this is a beer Here's a baseball bat.
There's a baseball bat that's a little bit longer.
Here's a football.
A Wisconsin company makes these. Here's cleats.
cleats. AA stuffed version of thate
football with the cleats. You pay for this, of course.
A pig with ears.
Here's a little rabbit for Here's some cloth casings.
Another little bunny for Easter. Easter.
Christmas. Perhaps a stocking for
You know, I manufactured some Anproduct several years ago in.
these casings, and it had about 25 or 30 on a smokehouse truck.
It was a little scary when I
all staring back at me. opened up t[LAUGHTER]d they were
But nonetheless, there are a
casings and sizes and so forth. When we cook sausage, so we've
got everything stuffed and we're
a fairly sophisticated cooking ready to go and cook, we follow
The first part is fermentation. This can take 12 hours,
sometimes shorter, sometimes
We utilize dry bulb and wet bulb longer.
relative humidity. which the two together give us a
a temperature where the Abacterial starter culture like
to grow, around 100-105 degrees.
pH to around 4.6, 4.7, 4.8, we Then, after we have reduced the
The first part is surface move intopreparation. process.
So we have a lot of moisture
We want to dry some of that moisture out and prepare the
surface for smoke.
We then cook, continue cooking We then apply smoke.
So we make sure there's no until we reach a lethality.
And then we start the cooling pathogenithe process.urviving.
We're actually showering the
And the finished product, hopefully, we've resulted in
products that have a very uniform appearance.
Typically, summer sausage needs to have a very desirable,
attractive, mahogany external appearance.
Should have a very pleasant,
flavor of course, and a curedsemi-dry-like texture.sant
That crumbly, slightly rubbery, slightly brittle, slightly mushy
texture.
spend a couple minutes sampling a few different products to kind
of reinforce what we've talked
And, again, you are welcome to about.
If you don't, feel free, you participate.
Seth and Bill are passing around surely don't have to.
you'd like to participate, and some toothpicks, grab one if
Instead of plates, we'll just pass out napkins, and then we'll
pass out the samples. The first sample that we will
pass around is a cervelat, which
I purchased it this afternoon. is this product right here.
cervelat. OscaOkay, I just lied.sage
This is the product that we're
[LAUGHTER] going to sample.
similar to a summer sausage with A beef cow salami which is very
It's not fermented and it's not one macidified.ence.
So this product should have a very unique flavor.
As these samples are being
they're being passed around, passed around, go ahead, as
Notice the texture. You'll notice that's it's a
little bit moister than you'd typically expect for a summer
sausage.
It has a little bit of water. So it has a different standard
of identity, but notice the flavor and see if you can pick
up a tang or any acid while you're sampling that product.
Yes?
Yes. >> Question right here.
>> Is [INAUDIBLE]hing...
Sure. So the question was, is there
any way that you can not use
of N-nitrosamines which have nitrites because of the concern
have not been classified as carcinogens in humans but in rat
studies they were about 30 years
The question is, I'll answer ago or so.
Phase one is sort of. You can find some products that
are uncured, and the way to distinguished an uncured product
is to notice the product would
It would be brown like cooked hamburger or a steak or a roast.
The second way that I'll answer that, maybe I'll answer a third
way, the second way that I'll answer that is that I would
actually highly support the use of nitrites.
And as far as that goes,
Nitrates and nitrites have been an on and off controversy for
decades.
the potential formation of And they've been centered around
Nitrites are in about every vegetable that we consume.
They're in our saliva, our
through L-arginine and some bodies aother routes.ate them
So you're dietary contribution
summer sausage is actually very, of nitrites from cured meats or
95% of the nitrites that you very low.
meats. consume do not come from cured
and the conversion of nitrate Tfrom vegetables to nitrites.s
Okay, so the first sample is
Anyone pick up any acid or being passed around.
No. fermen>> No.avors?
Let's pass the second one around
So a very bland sausage. as well.
going to be passing around is a The secsmall diameter.t we're
It's an encapsulated product. It's a Hillshire Farms product.
This is the only product I could
Madison that did not use lactic fiacid starter culture.of
And the reason that I was able
went to a grocery store in accomplish this is because I
company. Madison that is not a Wisconsin
company. It's Hy-Vee which is an Iowa
encapsulated citric acid or does But this product does not use an
It uses encapsulated citric not acid, what we tasted andia.
sampled.
as well? Seth, could I join the sampling
It seems fair that the >> Mm-hmm.
a sample of summer sausage, I presenter would think.le to get
[LAUGHTER]
N-nitrosamines and so forth. So back to question about
N-nitrosamines is that unless you are heating a product to at
least 300 degrees Fahrenheit, you will not form
N-nitrosamines. To form them, you must,
essentially, pan fry meat products.
And the product that's most associated with the concern of
N-nitrosamines would be bacon.
regulations for how much nitrite And there are very strict USDA
than other cured meats, and some is added, it's actually less
that there's, essentially, no othnitrites left after thesure
manufacturing.
nitrite? >> You can't cure without
nitrites. >Actually, I misspoke.t
You cannot cure without nitrites.
Curing is use of nitrites.
passed around, any comments or Okay, as this product is being
Better. >> Better for sure.
Anyone pick up a tang or a
Yeah. >> Like acid or sour?
Sour. >> And what I should also note
is that this is a beef and pork product.
So this is not an all-beef. Okay, let's sample the third one
which is the meat lab summer
formulation that I showed you. sausage which was the
Salt, dextrose, black pepper, whole mustard seed, garlic
powder, nutmeg, ground ginger,
That's good. and lactic acid starter culture.
Dryer. >> More sour?
Dryer. It seems a little dryer.
[LAUGHTER] Can I have a sample, please.
time I did that it would have One resonated to the next.irst
Definitely a different texture, different manufacturers,
different raw materials which add to the great variety of
summer sausage that we have.
Anyone pick up any different Bill.
How about towards the very end? More building in the aftertaste.
So the first sample was a cow salami, had nothing in it other
than spices and salt and sugar. The second sample had
encapsulated citric acid. The third sample had a lactic
acid starter culture. Okay, we'll maybe continue,
we'll just circulate those
we will continue on with samples until they're gone, but
And I know that we need to stay on track..
So, bratwurst, the other
So what is bratwurst? WiWhat's it all about?.
The name bratwurst or these products were derived from the
old high German language
Brat, the first part of bratwurst, means frying.
Wurst means sausage, of course. We all know what wurst means.
We all live in Wisconsin. So when you eat a bratwurst, you
are essentially eating a frying sausage.
So next time you're at your friends or neighbors say could I
get a frying sausage, please. I don't want a bratwurst; I want
a frying sausage. Bratwurst, outside the US, is
considered a style of preparation.
It's the type of a product. In the US, bratwurst is a
classification of fresh sausage.
sausage. So a bratwurst is a frying
and buy a bratwurst in Germany. YoYou buy a type of bratwurstre
which is a type of frying sausage.
And how bratwurst is classified outside the US, specifically in
Europe and Germany, is highly regulated.
A little bit of some origins on bratwurst, and it kind of
depends on where you were or
Germany. where you're looking at in
And this is just kind of a There's different regions.
an idea. subset, an example, to give you
there's a type of bratwurst that So, in the Thuringer region
In the Franconia region, which were manufactured or invented.
kind of north of Bavaria. And then the Bavarian region,
and we've all heard of Bavarian bratwurst, Bavarian style
products. And there's dozens of styles or
varieties of bratwurst. Many of them, if not all of
them, are related to a specific town or a region or a recipe,
and that's how they are differentiated.
So a bratwurst is a frying
A Nuremberg is a bratwurst sausage.
Germany. originating in Nuremberg,
Germany, of course. A couple different styles, a
little more discussion on this. So a Thuringer style and the
recipes and formulations are
There are so many different permutations.
But a Thuringer style typically includes stemless marjoram and
it has a lot of herbs and spices.
So it's more of an herbier
bratwurst. frying sausage, an herbier
a cooked bratwurst, and they're generally white because they'res
not cured.
find Weisswurst. Sometimes in Wisconsin we'll
Munich sausage, again, invented And Win the Munich area. of a
Weisswurst typically contains veal.
Sometimes it's all veal.
which is why it's so white. Typically a finer ground sausage
and cooked. And there's a picture of it on
the bottom. Has lemon and parsley as
characteristic ingredients and
cooking is what gives it that is steawhite color.and the
Question? >> I like the summer sausage
that's called Thuringer style summer sausage.
Yep.
that it has the spices too? >> Does th>> Correct. same idea
Thuringer style summer sausage
mustard flavoring. in the US typically has more
it's typically a little bit And it'coarser ground.ner and
There can be some variations. Like Thuringer bratwurst should
have more marjoram and a few
And you could find that spice as things.
sausage. well in Thuringer style summer
different permutations. Nuremberg style are small
diameter from the Franconia region.
Again, includes stemless
And the typical spices are salt, marjoram.
cardamom, lemon juice, or lemon pepper, macepowder.r, all spice,
And the bottom right picture is a Bavarian bratwurst, and I know
it's hard to read it but it says
This product was actually found down the street at Trader Joe's.
And you really can't see the
product of Germany. pThere are only four sausage,
companies in Germany that are allowed to make this product and
put Nuremberg on the label. There's actually, like, 150, but
there are four that can sell and
Four like Oscar Mayers or Johnsonvilles.
So that product is imported from
It is a fantastic product. Nuremberg, Germany.
breakfast sausage link. Great, great product on the
grill.
with the right beverage, not Typically served on a hard roll
[LAUGHTER] water.
Bavarian style typically has It is absolutely to die for.
in the creaminess. some non-fat dry milk which aids
different texture. It gives it a little bit
Braunschweiger. Fresh onion, white pepper,
nutmeg, and lemon juice are the two spices that should stand out
in those products.
a bratwurst? So, the question then, what's in
lab. A recipe right from the meat
Water, we can add a little bit Pork trim, 80/20.
So for every hundred pounds of water, 3%.
of water which is allowed by the sausage, we can add three pounds
It's so that we can mix the ingredients.
Salt, of course.
Black pepper. Sage..
Ginger. Coriander.
Nutmeg. Cardamom.
All very characteristic bratwurst seasonings.
And you have can different
variations, different amounts of renditions of this, different
flavor and aroma of a finished each which all can impact the
And that's where a lot of the art comes in to bratwurst
manufacturing.
right balance of those different The companies that can find that
layers and complexity of spices inand how you have synergistiche
effects from including different
really, really good products. A lot of bratwurst, especially
in Wisconsin, are made using
And to understand pre-rigor pork pre-rigor pork meat.
little bit about muscle meat webiochemistry.rstand a
And we'll look at the conversion
When the animal is harvested and of muscle to meat.
rolled it into a cooler and it the carcass is hot and we've
biochemical standpoint that carcass goes into rigor mortis,
which is known as the stiffening
Rigor mortis occurs when ATP is depleted, the energy source, the
thick and the thin filaments. The proteins lock such as in
that right picture up there.
tenderness because you have a Tlot more protein that you have
to chew through.
you also see a pH reduction because of the buildup of lactic
acid. If we look at glycolysis in
living muscle, we have glucose
glycogen coming from the liver coming from the blood stream,
Goes through the citric acid used to generate ATP.
Generates CO2 and water and a whole bunch more ATP.
Produces a little bit of lactic acid.
That's broken down and utilized in the muscle and taken out,
taken away. When that animal is no longer
alive, no longer with us, at the
pathway changes. very beginning of rigor, that
there so it's still being broken Blood stream glucose is still
Glycogen from the liver and what's ever present in the
muscle cell is still there. It's still being broken down.
ATP is still being generated a
But we're then generating a whole bunch of pyruvate and a
whole bunch of lactic acid. Lactic acid does not have the
ability to be taken away so it
pH of a live animal is around bui7.0.up.
pH of meat is around 5.5, 5.8 because of glycolysis and
because of the buildup of lactic
anaerobic state. acid from pyruvate in an
fast or slow, and the final pH The rate and pH decline, how
quality and the water holding hacapacity of raw materials.he
So in a perfect world and a perfect situation we want to see
a pH, and on the X axis we have hours post-mortem.
So zero would be at the time of exsanguination, time of death.
pH on this axis.
If we see a nice slow pH Again, 7.0, pH of living tissue.
that normal. decline, we consider
decline, it affects meat quality If we see variations in that pH
These pictures are not the significantly.
On the left is PSE, pale, soft, greatestexudative.logize.
Very light colored pork.
Very tough and dry pork. Very watery pork.
rapid pH decline. IA lot of acid, lactic acid, is
produced very quickly.
Denatures. Acid does what to protein?
If we go to the other extreme, Destroys the functionality.
white line, we see very limited we go to tpH decline.ich is the
The meat looks like this which
A high ultimate pH. is High pH, a lot of negativey.
charges.
of water binding. AThat water is being held very,t
very, very tightly. When the light reflects when you
look at that piece of meat, the light is being absorbed.
It's like wearing a black shirt.
very, very dark. That's what makes that meat
of water on the surface because the proteins are, essentially,
squeezing the moisture out, light is refracting.
It's like wearing a white shirt.
It is what pre-rigor processing So, wis based upon.tant?
So, immediately after harvest,
carcasses, within minutes, while now we're talking pork
104-105 degrees, we bone the the carcass is still hot,
We remove the lean and the fat. While it's still hot we run it
through a grinder.
mixer. Then we transfer that meat to a
chilling medium, typically CO2, dry ice can be utilized, but
something that has a lot of chilling capacity, and we reduce
the temperature of that meat
time. wiNinety minutes, oftentimesf
faster than that, to a
slows and in essence stops. temperaQuestion, sir?colysis
[INAUDIBLE] >> CO2 does not provide any
acidification.
it dissipates carbonic acid, but CO2 produces carbon dioxide and
utilizing. no, not the amount that we're
Very good question. After that product is chilled,
so we've stopped glycolysis and we've stopped the build up of
lactic acid, we then add our
grind, and in the meat industry we use a lot of bone collection
systems to make sure there's not
could end up in the finished cartilage or hard bones that
We stuff that product. product.
lot of natural casings such as Typically in Wisconsin we use a
We also utilize some collagen casings which are generated from
the collagen from the skin layer
This whole process from the time or the flesh of beef hides.
the time that that sausage is made, the time that we get to
this point, is typically less than 45 minutes.
Very, very, very, very fast.
around 102.5, live animal Atemperature of hogs, swine, to
less than 40 degrees. This is what results.
On the left we have post-rigor
using the pre-rigor process. pork, pork that was not done
glycolysis, acid was produced, So it was allowed to go through
because it's inherent, it's some proteinevitable.n occurred
On the right side is a picture
generated from pre-rigor of raw materials that were
Much redder, much darker, higher trimmings.
capacity. Here's an example of a fresh
sausage made using post-rigor trim.
So normal trimmings that have gone through rigor, been chilled
normally. And, again, these pictures
aren't that great.
differences? Can you guys tell some
The picture of a post-rigor Hopebratwurst.can.
Much darker red.
Pre-rigor. >> Pre-rigor.
It's getting late in the night Thank you.
bratwurst, you know? and I'm getting hungry for a
Another side by side picture of regular, post-trim or
post-rigor, and on the right a
And I've got some examples of some products.
A post-rigor versus a pre-rigor.
grocery stores. WNow you know exactly how those
products were made and why
So I'll just pass those around. >> Is that part of the labeling?
It is not part of the labeling because there is no
chemical change, it's not a process which changes the
muscle, fat, any compositional
So the final product then is a components.
appeal, bright cherry red meat product that has great consumer
Improved water holding capacity because we have a very high pH
and those proteins are holding
there's a lot of negative charges in those muscle cells,
in those tissues, and it should result in overall higher
quality, a very enjoyable eating
I thank you very much for your experience.
It's been an absolute pleasure time.
Are there any questions? visiting with you this evening.
[APPLAUSE]