Wisconsin Public Television University Place  The History and Science of Meat  Jeff Sindelar  10/16/13 UP933  cc >> Welcome, everyone, to Wednesday Nite at the Lab. I'm Tom Zinnen. I work here at the UW Madison Biotechnology Center. I also work for UW Extension Cooperative Extension, and on behalf of those folks and our other co-organizers, Wisconsin Public Television, the Wisconsin Alumni Association, and the UW Madison Science Alliance, thanks for coming to Wednesday Nite at the Lab. We do this every Wednesday night, 50 times a year, and it's another opportunity for you to share in the discovery here at your public land-grant research university. Tonight, it's my pleasure to introduce to you Jeff Sindelar. He's a professor in the Department of Animal Sciences, and he's also a meat specialist, a state meat specialist with UW Extension Cooperative Extension. One of the great things about what Jeff is going to be telling us about is specialty meats, and one of the other things that I hope he tells us a little bit about is the new building for the Meat and Muscle Lab that will be going up soon and will finish sometime by 2017. And I hope he'll think about what that means for the state of Wisconsin because every dairy operation is also a beef operation. And the potential for artisanal and specialty meats is a great opportunity for entrepreneurship in Wisconsin, and I think that new building on campus will continue to help make the campus a more welcoming place and an even better space for doing innovation and entrepreneurship, especially in agriculture and particularly in meats. 

Jeff got his bachelor's of science from the University of Nebraska in Lincoln in 1999. He got his master's at Michigan State in 2002 and his PhD at Iowa State in meat science in 2006. His research interests include quality and sensory characteristics of processed meats, non-meat ingredient functionality in meat products, and investigating intervention strategies to control pathogenic bacteria in meat products. His Extension works includes providing assistance to meat processors in the area of product development, problem solving, and regulatory compliance, serving as a liaison between academia, government, and the meat industry, coordination of meat science workshops and training programs. In other words, how do I sign up? And providing involvement and support to youth meat science related activities, which is an area of interest to a lot of us who want to infuse some more science into the 4-H field, particularly now that 4-H has a science, technology, engineering, and math initiative. So tonight we get to hear about the discovery, history, and science of meat. Please join me in welcoming Jeff Sindelar back to Wednesday Nite at the Lab. [APPLAUSE]  >> Good evening, everyone. It's great to be back at Wednesday Nite at the Lab. I, first and foremost, need to thank Tom for inviting me and giving me an opportunity to talk about a topic that I find near and dear to my heart, both personally and professionally. 

I hope that by the end of this evening, or after this presentation, perhaps you might find it near and dear to your heart in some way, shape, or form. But, regardless, we're going to try to have fun. We're going to try to learn a couple things about meat science, meat products, meat processing, and the history of it all. And I can promise you one thing: before the night is over you'll all have an opportunity to sample and evaluate a number of different meat products. So, shall we begin? Great. So, my goal this evening is not really to get into a whole ton of science. We're going to delve into science a little bit here and there. My goal this evening is to take you on a journey. So I want you to think about the presentation now and as we go through the presentation with that in mind. Because we're going to talk about discovering the history and the science of meat products. 

And many of us, I think it's safe to say that all of us take our food for granted. It's certainly no question that meat and poultry products are included in that food. We have numerous types of meat and poultry products, many more than our earlier generations, our ancestors did, and even though we have so many different meat products, very high quality and very safe meat products, we continue to develop more. We see more in grocery stores. We see the demand and the interest and the drive to create these products and do so in a very safe and high quality manner. So for the next 45 minutes or so don't think about all the products that you buy on your daily or weekly run to the grocery store, think about the products from a historical standpoint, and hopefully together we can make a connection about the products that are in front of us, the products that we're going to sample a bit later on, the products that really created what the meat industry is today, and hopefully by the end of this talk we can tie those back to the first products that were ever created, the first meat products, per se, known to man. So, without further ado, I think this comment is very, very safe to say. The meat industry is steeped in tradition and has roots dating back to ancient history. The meat industry has been around for a long, long, long time. A real long time. 

>> Public slaughterhouses date back to Roman times. In 300 BC, animals were butchered in open air at the Forum in Rome. On special occasions, wealthy Romans sometimes ate such exotic meat as giraffe and tiny mice stuffed with pine nuts. The more unusual the food, the more the guests of the host were impressed. In the Middle Ages, butchers were restricted to certain neighborhoods in which to ply their trade. This was due to the large amount of animal waste and blood. They were usually dumped into the middle of the street that served as an open sewer. >> So, here's a real short little clip that was taken from a Discovery Channel video, and this documentary was talking about the history and the current meat industry. The documentary was called The Butcher, and it kind of sets the stage and puts this vision in our minds about ancient times, ancient Romans. In fact, that's probably not the beginning of time for the meat industry because there's some excerpts from the book The Odyssey where Homer, the poet, mentioned the production of blood sausage and other types of meat products. 

So the meat industry has been around for an awful long time, dating back to the 11th, 12th century BC and maybe even earlier beyond. So there are records for many, many decades, many, many centuries regarding the meat industry. If we think about that in context, the early meat industry was focused on the utilization of fresh meats. We harvest animals. Those animals are composed of biological materials. The natural tendency of those materials is for them to degrade, decompose, and go back to the Earth. Meat processing, meat preservation, the early meat industry all dealt with those same issues that we currently deal with today. They just did it in a different light. And it was a way to preserve perishable foods. So there are some very, very ancient preservation methods which, interestingly, are still very commonly used today. 

Drying, many different examples of drying fresh meats. Centuries ago. Here's some examples of some fresh pieces of meat that are hanging on some lines. I can promise you this practice is done in certain countries around the world still today. In the US, it's probably not quite so common. We have other technologies, and we'll talk about those. Here's a great picture of an Indian tribe drying meats. The product biltong, has everyone heard of that product? Dried meats. There's even a few companies that will use pictures similar to this to kind of describe the ancient roots of that. So drying was a very primitive but very effective way to preserve meats, specifically fresh meats during that time. 

Smoking was another very ancient preservation method. So, it is clear, and we can talk science about this topic for an hour, I suspect you're probably not interested in that, but smoking, if you do it long enough and in the right way, it alone can be a very effective preservation method. There are many compounds and microbials and antioxidants in smoke that can very effectively preserve meat. You just need to do it for an awful long time to really see some significant benefits. So here's a couple pictures of just a very simple smokehouse. Gosh, this is very similar to what barbeque smokehouses and barbeque pits look like today, isn't it? Anyone barbeque in this audience? Do you not have a fire box and an indirect heat source that transfers the smoke into the vesicle where you're slowly barbequing or smoking meat? These concepts have been around for a very long time. Oh, boy. Salting, we're all very familiar with this process. Perhaps when we think about ancient meat industry or meat industry history it's probably one of the first things we think about is salting. Still today we utilize this technology. 

Salting is very effective and either packed in barrels or loosely salted, very effective method for preservation. Oh, gosh. So let's move into a little bit about, a little more into current times. And we can talk about the term the meat packing industry. So, the meat industry by no means is a simple and straightforward industry. There's a lot of different ways that we describe ourselves. There's a lot of different words that we use. Believe it or not, the meat industry has its own vocabulary. There are words that we use in the meat industry that no one else uses anywhere. Like evisceration, exsanguination, exudative, these were all words that were developed specifically to describe meat industry phenomenons. 

So, the meat industry is sometimes referred to as the meat packing industry, and today we kind of associate that with meat packing plants, plants that slaughter animals and generate whole-muscle cuts, steaks and roasts and chops and so forth, but the meat packing industry, looking back historically, really was to define the way that animals were slaughtered and the meat was handled and processed. So the meat was packed with salt in barrels centuries ago, before today's great invention of refrigeration. Meat packing. And this process, this technology, salting, stimulated the formation of large meat packing plants, the growth of the industry. Don't worry, before too long we'll get into current days-age technology and so forth, but work with me for a while. We're kind of still back in the older generations. An interesting story which many of you have probably heard or read about. There's a gentleman by the name of Sam Wilson. He owned a meat packing company called ES Wilson Company in Troy, New York, in 1800 or in the 1800 circa range, time. He was a meat supplier to the military in the War of 1812, or one of the meat suppliers. 

So he supplied packed meats, salted meat in barrels to the military before the time of refrigeration. On those barrels it was stamped US because at that time you had to put on the barrels where the meat was coming from and where it was going to. So the stamp was ES/US. Mr. Wilson was also lovingly referred to or known in his areas as Uncle Sam. So as media and discussions and people and conversation and conversations took place, eventually US to many people, United States, was kind of put together with Uncle Sam, and that is really where the term Uncle Sam in relation to describing the US government was established. So up to this point we've been talking about the fresh meat industry. Let's talk about the processed meats industry. So let's talk a little about processed meats history. And in order for us to do this, effectively, we have to think about what processed meats are. And this is, in some conversations, kind of a million dollar question, maybe a loaded question. 

What is a processed meat? You could expand that and say, what's a processed food? But a processed meat by a textbook definition is a product where a physical, chemical, or organoleptic transformation of the fresh meat, the unprocessed version, occurred which results in a definable property. So the texture has changed, the flavor has changed, or perhaps the taste has changed, or all three or maybe some other changes. So this begs the question, when we're thinking about the history of processed meats, were these products created by accident, were they created by intention, or were they created by necessity? So, if we think about the preservation methods, the salting, the drying, the smoking, all methods that we typically see in some way, shape, or form in today's processed meats, were they put into fresh meats to develop processed meats by accident? Did we happen to realize that if we salt a meat it's a processed product? Or did we happen to notice that we needed to salt a product to create a safe product to extend the shelf life of that product, hence it became a processed product. So, that's a great question to ponder. But let's talk a little bit more about what defines a processed meat product. Meat processing, of course, is the obvious answer. But what exactly is meat processing? How do you take a fresh piece of meat and transform it so that the texture, flavor, aroma, or any other organoleptic property is different than the original form? So, there's some very common technologies that have been used centuries ago, very common technologies that are used today. One of those is particle reduction. Any time that you take a big piece of meat and you reduce the size of that one muscle or bundle of muscles into smaller pieces, that's a form of processing. We could arguably say that ground beef is a processed meat product. 

The original form is not what you buy in a package. The original form was whole cuts of meat or perhaps smaller trimmings that were generated from making steaks and roasts and so forth from those cuts. Addition of salt, spices, and other ingredients all create a processed product, take a fresh product to a processed product. Curing or salting, smoking, cooking, drying, or any other change in physical or organoleptic properties all are definitions of meat processing. >> What does that word mean? >> Organoleptic, what does it mean? >> Your senses. Your sight, your smell, your touch. Great question. So, let's talk about some of the advancements, really important advancements that took us out of the Ice Age, for lack of a better word, to current meat industry and the convenience that we have today. And there are a couple really, really important advancements. One of those, both of them are related to preservation. 

One of those is related to the discovery of meat curing. And meat curing was first discovered by an ingredient called saltpetre, spelled P-E-T-R-E or P-E-T-E-R, which is potassium nitrate. Here's a picture when you could buy, you can still buy saltpetre today but here's an old picture in an old cardboard container of saltpetre. It says certified quality saltpetre granular. And this was product was produced out in Denver, Colorado. This ingredient resulted in meat products with improved quality and safety. This ingredient allowed for more palatable products. So, we're still pre-refrigeration. And we're still extending the shelf life of those products, taking perishable foods and keeping them safe and keeping them from spoiling very quickly. So, if you don't mind eating 10% or 12% salt in a piece of meat, no problems. 

But no one in this room, I suspect, even the little bit older generation in this room probably wouldn't be able to tolerate 10% or 12% salt. I suspect you could probably handle 5% or 6% salt pretty easily, maybe even a 7% or 8% in this room. But this ingredient allowed us to reduce the amount of salt to make a product more palatable and enhance the safety of that product by controlling bacteria, especially pathogenic bacteria. And this discovery was by accident. It dated back to the 10th century with the ancient Romans and probably before then. But at that time it was an ingredient that worked. They didn't know why it worked, what it was. It just made a product that was higher quality and, as time would pass, safer and having a longer shelf life. This is the modern version of that ingredient which is a sodium nitrite. So, potassium nitrate is an inner compound. 

It must first be converted to this ingredient, potassium nitrite or sodium nitrite in this case. In those times it was discovered occurred by the conversion of nitrate to nitrite by natural microflora, bacteria that was on the meat, spoilage bacteria. And when that occurred, it resulted in curing, meat curing, which was absolutely significant in the meat industry. The other change in addition to curing was the advent of refrigeration. And although today it's just a modern, it's not even a convenience, it's really an expectation, this technology has allowed us to have all the different products that we have today in the marketplace. Without refrigeration, we would have far, far fewer meat and poultry products to choose from. Of course, we would have a whole lot fewer other products as well. But it alone has had a greater impact than probably any other technology just in allowing the industry to grow. So, how did refrigeration and the advent of sodium nitrite and curing, how did it effect processed meats? We're clearly now in the processed meats side of thing. One, we've touched on an improved shelf life. 

So without refrigeration, we can make products that last a very, very long time. Here's an example of one of those. Prosciutto, high in salt, this stuff will last years, and it will do so because of the salt that's in this product. But we typically don't want to be eating summer sausage that has the same amount of salt as a prosciutto, or we may not be wanting to eat hotdogs that have the same amount of salt as prosciutto. So, we must do something, and refrigeration is the answer. So, we can get improved shelf life. Rather than days before products spoil, we can get weeks and, in some cases, months. Improved palatability. By reducing the salt, using salt as an example here a lot, we can make products that are much more enjoyable. You don't have to run right away to a water fountain after you get done eating a meat product. 

There's a few that still give you that need. Improved safety, absolutely. It goes without saying. Improved retail costs. Sometimes we, as consumers, don't think about this a whole lot. If products don't have to be thrown away or discarded because they have a longer shelf life, the cost, overall, of products goes down. And improved variety for consumers. Because of refrigeration, because of longer shelf life, because we can transport products from across a country and around the world, we now can get products, and this is a bad example because this is made in Italy, but we can get products from other countries very, very readily. So we do need to talk about the scientific component of meat processing. And there's a whole ton of science that goes into quality, safety, shelf life, palatability, organoleptic traits. 

I'll quit using that word. But there are some very fundamental concepts, very fundamental scientific concepts about meat processing which are very, very important and we utilize to allow the products that we have in the marketplace today. One is a concept called protein solubilization and extraction. So, we have ground beef. We cook that ground beef. We eat that ground beef. Perhaps we make hamburgers. It crumbles. It has loose texture. Typically no salt or maybe just a few shakes with a salt shaker. 

We take that ground beef, we add 2% or 3% salt, some other spices to make it not ground beef. We do some mixing, some mechanical action. We allow the salt to act on the protein, the meat batter becomes sticky because of extraction and solubilization of the proteins, and we result in a product that has a very unique texture. And we're going to sample this product here in a couple minutes. A second very important scientific concept is pH. The meat industry, on a daily basis, controls and utilizes the adjustment of pH of a meat system. So, as living animals and humans, the pH of us is about neutral. We're around 7.0 pH. After animals are slaughtered, that pH declines, and some biochemical changes occur during this process. And for those of you that were in the summer sausage and bratwurst Wednesday Nite at the Lab I did about a year and a half ago, we talked about that very extensively. 

But we can control the pH and utilize the pH for a number of reasons. We can improve the texture of a sausage or a meat product. We can improve the safety of a meat product. We can change many, many things. And there's also a whole myriad of biological and biochemical changes that we scientifically research and understand. Those that are specifically related to very important meat biochemistry and meat chemistry concepts. Whether it be the rancidity of fat, lipid oxidation, change in color, change in protein, lipolysis, protein degradation, a number of different phenomenons that are all centered around the basic sciences, especially biochemistry as well as chemistry. So let's go back to this thought about defining processed meats because it think it's really, really important to kind of think about a little more. Here are two very, very generalized ways of categorizing and defining processed meats. Earlier I mentioned meat processing is defined as taking a whole muscle, perhaps a native product muscle or group of products, and doing something to it. 

Whether you're grinding it or adding salt or a spice. Whether you're cooking it or drying it. For today's discussion, we're going to define processed meats as cured, whole muscle meats or sausages, and this by no means encompasses all of processed meats. Processed meats are sometimes really, really difficult to define because there's so many different variations and there's so many different names of products and there's so many instances where if you do something to a product, change it slightly, it makes a completely different product. So, unfortunately, consumers kind of get the brunt of that because you don't necessarily have a meat product labeling book, which you can get access to if you'd like to. So you're kind of at the helm of what's on the label. Today we're going to try to learn a little bit more about that so you guys can have some tools to understand. So, defining processed meats. Cured, whole muscle meats, these are typically whole muscle or larger muscle pieces that contain salt and sometimes sodium nitrate. The other category is sausages, and these are products that typically have significant particle reduction. 

So they're ground. Big pieces or small pieces, muscles are ground into smaller pieces. And they utilize meat trimmings that are generated from the fabrication of whole muscle cuts. Going back a couple centuries from this point. Meat trimmings were generated from carcasses. So you take a side of beef, you take the round off and the chuck off and the rib off and you end up, when you're removing those cuts from the bones, you end up with some meat trimmings. Those small meat trimmings, what do you do? Of course you don't discard them, you don't throw them away. You utilize them in some other type of form. Sausages happen to be an excellent form to utilize those trimmings in. Most sausages are cured with salt and sodium nitrate. 

So let's talk first about sausages. And if we define sausages, we can use the Romans context is they called it salsus, which means salted or preserved. Surprise, surprise. And this word comes from the Latin root where the term sausage is generated from. There's a whole host of sausages, and there's a lot of different kinds of sausages because of many, many reasons. Some of those are the availability of ingredients. So, different parts of the country, different parts of the world have different ingredients. So sometimes sausages have been defined because of that. Think of like --, places in the world where peppers and picantes and things of that are very, very commonplace. Stuff that I don't really see too often when I'm driving to my home outside of Madison. 

Parts of the country or the world where there's different climate and storage conditions. Summer sausage really has no historical home. Summer sausage is really a definition of how the product is stored. The idea for summer sausage is that you would make it in the winter when it was cold before refrigeration and make it so that it would not spoil during the hotter months, during the summer. Hence, you could eat it during the summer, hence it's called summer sausage. Isn't that kind of a quirky, silly way to define or brand a product? Is summer sausage important to the state? Oh, heaven forbid, yes. Absolutely. I can think of a couple different ways to bring down the empire of the state of Wisconsin. Banning the sale of summer sausage would certainly be one that would move up to the top of the list. Cultural uniqueness and discovering ingredients such as saltpetre and, today's version, sodium nitrite. 

All of ways to define some of these different products. There's also ways to define products based on where their roots are from, where they came from. So, we sometimes use the word frankfurters. Most times in the US we call them hotdogs, but they're also known as frankfurters. And frankfurters got the name because they were invented in Frankfurt, Germany. Wieners, another name for hotdogs, although these are technically a little bit different. And there some purists that would tell me they're a whole lot different. Wieners were invented in Vienna, Austria. Genoa salami was invented in Genoa, Italy. Bologna was invented in Bologna, Italy. 

Braunschweiger, another great German product, also important to this economy, to this state, Braunschweig, Germany. And Lebanon bologna, has anyone ever had Lebanon bologna before? It is one of the very few products that we as a country in the US can have a claim to fame. Lebanon bologna was invented in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania. It's very similar to a summer sausage. In fact, if you go out to Lancaster or surrounding areas and you say give me summer sausage, they would give you Lebanon bologna. Very similar to this product, although it's typically a lot heavier smoked. It's even more acidic than this product, and sometimes they add a bunch of sugar. They make a sweet version of this where they add, everybody ready for this, for every 100 pounds of meat they'll add up to 20 pounds of sugar. So it's a very, very, very sweet product. I'm far more in favor of the Wisconsin style summer sausage. 

So, sausages today, now we're kind of getting into today's era. Again you can define this a number of ways. But there are technically four basic types. We have fresh sausages, dry and semi-dry sausages, liver sausages, and cooked or scalded sausages. And scalded sausages are typically water-cooked, sausages that are cooked in water. From those four basic types, there are thousands of varieties. Think about this. Close to 200 countries in the world. If each country has an average of five different sausages, that's a thousand right there. And in the US we have far more than five different types. 

So from those four different sausages, how do we get to thousands of different varieties? Well, it comes down to the formulation. So, what the spice is, what the ingredients are, and how much. Whether we're talking about a frankfurter or a Vienna sausage or a wiener. The meat technology employed whether we are making a very finely ground and emulsified product like a frankfurter or making a -- or an aspic such as a head cheese or a --. Or a whole muscle product such as a bacon. A lot of different technologies. We can define sausage by the casings that we utilize, what we put the meat batter into. So here's an example of what you would typical consider a traditional frankfurter or wiener, this is actually labeled wiener, because this is stuffed into a natural casing, which is a very, very expensive casing today. Centuries ago this is what you used because this is what there was, and it was a way to utilize the small intestines from sheep. Today, the meat industry pays a premium because these products have a very unique snap, bite, and texture because of the casings that are utilize. 

And other products, like this, chorizo, this is stuffed into a fibrous casing. So it's generated from plant and tree fibers that are made into a cylinder shape and then sausages is stuffed inside. So, casing type, ingredients added. If we add cheese or vegetables or rice or barley or oats or etc, etc, etc, those all create different products and the ethnic or the region specificity. So, sausages in China are very different than sausages here. Although, there's more and more US types sausages going that direction. Sausages from Mexico or Cajun sausages from the southeast part of the country, they all have their own little twist, their own little category, their own little change in the typical sausage. Most of today's meat products have clear ties to history, and this is what I want to really try to explain the rest of this evening. So let's go back to those categories, and let's talk about the ties from ancient times. Times of pre-refrigeration preservation methods, salting, drying, smoking. 

Fresh sausages are a huge category today. Here's a whole variety of different fresh sausages. I've got a couple here, and we'll be sampling one of these in a moment. But fresh sausage, the most common one that we deal with in the great state of Wisconsin is bratwurst, which as we learned about a year and a half ago is actually a frying sausage. It's not necessarily a type of sausage. Bratwurst is actually a definition that means frying sausage. And then we see breakfast sausages and chorizo and all these different fresh sausages that must be cooked before they're consumed. We see these products in refrigeration. We see these products frozen. And this is a huge category. 

These products represent very simple processing technologies. Grinding, adding salt at lower levels than what would have been needed years ago because of refrigeration as well as freezing, and the addition of spices. Dry and semi-dry sausages. Examples include summer sausage, snack sticks, Genoa salami, pepperoni. These products are dried, have salt, and have a change in pH, both for flavor as well as preservation. So if I grab my trusty UW Meat Lab beef summer sausage and if I cut this open, or actually I just handle it here a little bit, I notice very quickly that it's a firm product because it's a dried product. When I bite it, when I eat this product, I taste some salt for preservation. I also notice some acid or some tang, which is a result of adjusting the pH, changing the pH. All of those techniques are very, very refined versions of the ancient preservation methods of drying and salting and changing the components of the product so that it can last a long time. Liver sausages, a lot of different varieties of these. 

Perhaps the most common ones that we're familiar with are Braunschweiger or liver pate, which are all liver sausages. They all contain some component of liver. Cooked and scalded sausages, the largest category of sausages because there are so many different types of sausages that fit under this category. Frankfurters, smoked sausages, cooked bratwurst. How many of us consume or buy cooked bratwurst? Let me back up. That was a bad question. How many of you consume fresh bratwurst? How many go to the grocery store or supermarket and buy fresh bratwurst and grill them? Gosh, I was hoping it was going to be 100%. I was expecting it was going to be 100%. So, now, again, how many of you buy precooked or cooked bratwurst? Why do you do it? Convenience. Why can you do it? Because we have refrigeration. 

Many of those are cured with nitrite for safety. Most all of them are vacuum packaged to extend shelf life as well as, in some cases, provide safety. But they offer convenience that centuries ago we didn't need. And there's many examples of that throughout the marketplace. Specialty cooked sausages and meat products, there's a large example of a whole variety of different types of products that includes things like blood sausages such as ring liver, kishka, blood pudding, blood and tongue, aspics, head cheese, jellied loaves, loaves in general, and even liver cheese. I have a couple examples of these products here. And these are great examples of products that were created well before today's modern conveniences. These products were created, most of these products, many of these products were created as a way to utilize animals that were slaughtered. The whole concept of nothing goes to waste. So, here's an example of a kishka. 

Here's two examples of a kishka. Here's a kishka. Ingredient statement. First ingredient: cooked buckwheat groats. So that's the number one ingredient, the most of it. Pork, pork snouts, pork skins, pork liver, onion salt, spices, sodium nitrite. Great product. Here's the same product but with blood and a very small amount of blood. Typically less than 10%, typically around 5% or 6%. Cured and whole muscle meat products. 

So, again, this is a very vast category. It includes a variety of different types of products that can be both categorized and defined in a number of different ways. Some whole muscle cuts are only one muscle. Some are many smaller muscles. So, here's a ham steak taken off of a cured whole ham. This is a whole muscle product but it's many muscles. You can see all the different muscles. Here's a ham, a boneless ham that we make at the meat lab. Same type of product but the muscles are smaller. So we take these muscles, make them a little bit smaller, mix them, add salt, extract protein, stuff them into a casing, and we have a very uniform and consistent product with smaller muscle pieces. 

Some are cured. So some of these whole muscle products are cured. Some are eaten hot. Some are high in salt, and some are low in salt. Some are heavily spiced. Some are smoked, etc, etc. Let's talk about some categories of cured and whole muscle products. One category is hams. And hams can be a very, very confusing category because there's so many different types. I just showed you two different types of hams. 

A whole muscle ham that has a ham leg bone. So there's one example. Here's a boneless ham. Very high quality ham that actually has two muscles. And if you look very closely, you can see there's a little seam where the two muscles come together. We talked about this ham, which we sometimes call it chunked and formed ham, small chunks. So we take these big pieces, put them into smaller pieces. Here's another example of that. Here's a chopped ham. We take these pieces, make them even smaller, stuff them into a casing. 

And for each of these products, and there's more, they all have different texture, they all have a little bit different flavor, some are saltier than others, and they all have a different price point as well. Typically, the larger the muscles, the less further processing that's taken place, the more expensive. And if you think about just a chopped ham versus a two-piece muscle ham and think about the price difference, it kind of makes sense. There's also a product called country ham. And this is one of the products that is most closely tied back to ancient preservation methods. These products are made, this one is made in Missouri. The southeast part of the country and the Midwest makes a lot of these products. They're very high in salt. Sometimes people will buy these, take them home, soak them in water to get a little bit of the salt out, and then they'll cook them. Sometimes people eat them raw, or eat them the way that they are I should say, as a finished product, but another example of a different type of ham. 

Bacon, pancetta, dried beef, roast beef, turkey breast, and even enhanced products like marinated poultry or marinated pork tenderloins all are different examples of more whole muscle cuts. So, what I would like to do is go through and talk about some different specific products and do a little bit of product sampling. I have a few folks here that are going to help me out with this. You are not by any means expected or required to participate, so feel free to not participate if you prefer not to. We're going to pass around a cup. This is called an expectorant cup. [LAUGHTER] What is that so I don't have to say it? >> Spit. >> It's a spit cup. So, sometimes when we evaluate products, to get the essence and have the best evaluation possible, we don't want to consume everything. We want to only consume what we need to. 

But you're welcome to consume what you would like to. We're also passing out napkins, some small plates, and a toothpick or two. Again, sample as you would like to. By no means sample if you do not want to. If there's certain samples that you prefer not to sample, feel free not to as well. At the end of this evening's program, we'll entertain a bunch of questions and discussions if you have questions about a certain sample or a certain product. We have a question here already. >> I'm wondering if, you didn't mention aging. I know they don't do it anymore, but it was done quite commonly and I think it's still done. >> Sure. 

The question was about aging of meat. I can tell you that meat is aged every day. And aging typically refers to or is tied to fresh meats. So, in meat along with protein and fat and water and some other minerals and nutrients there's also enzymes. If we allow certain enzymes to function over time, they will slowly break down collagen or connective tissue and other bonds within a whole muscle. And the effect is that that product is aged or it's called aged. But, essentially, it typically has a tenderizing effect. If you go to a white cloth restaurant and pay $60 for a 30-day dry aged steak, you'll understand what I'm talking about. But, actually, all meat is aged because after animals are slaughtered those carcasses hang in coolers, sometimes for a couple days, sometimes for up to a week or even two weeks before they are fabricated. So aging does take place. 

In fact, aging also takes place while the meat is in transportation and while the meat is in grocery stores, although not quite as much as it does if you control some other things. Yeah.  >> What's the difference between nitrates and nitrites? >> The question is, what's the difference between nitrates and nitrites? So, nitrates, which I referred to as a definition like saltpetre, that was nitrates. They are inert compounds. They are present in nearly every vegetable known to man because of the nitrogen cycle and the accumulation of nutrients, uptake of nutrients. Nitrites are the active version of nitrates. So when nitrates are converted to nitrites, curing takes place. If only nitrates with an A are utilized, no curing takes place. There's actually a little bit of nitrate is actually found in some toothpastes, some sensitive gum toothpastes, because of its ability to help with that. Okay, so the first product that's being passed around is an example of a fresh sausage. 

So, let's talk about what a fresh sausage is. It's generally lower in salt. So, as we go through this activity, think about your daily consumption or perhaps think about your normal consumption of pork sausage. Think about all the pork sausage that you've consumed, and then you can kind of relate it to some of my comments. Bear in mind that there are dozens of different types of pork sausages. So they all are a little bit different, either in saltiness or flavor or texture. So these comments are pretty general, but they kind of give you the idea of what a fresh sausage is. So it's typically a product that's a little bit lower in salt. Generally 1.5%-2% salt. Closer to 1.5%. 

They typically have a crumbly texture, and that's by design. They have a fair amount of fat. They can have between 35% and 50% fat. They can have a little bit of water. Up to 3% water is allowed by the federal government, and that's to actually allow the proper mixing of spices and ingredients. And most breakfast sausages, pork sausage, fresh sausage, browns very nicely because one of the ingredients is usually dextrose or some type of simple sugar than can participate in a browning reaction and gives you a very nice caramelized flavor and aroma and so forth. So, when you, can I get a sample, gentlemen? [LAUGHTER] Would it kill a guy? They do this to me all the time. Whenever they do sampling, they always forget to give this guy a sample. [LAUGHTER] It seems really unfair. So, typically, what I have to do is get all the leftovers, which is fine, but oftentimes they are cold. 

Okay, so when you consume it, natural casing so you get a little bit of a snap. You'll notice right away that's it's a little bit crumbly. You start eating it, and it breaks up very, very quickly. That's because it's low in salt. That's because the product was developed and designed so it would be more crumbly. Would you want a breakfast sausage like this to eat like a hotdog where there's a lot of texture and a lot of work to bit it? Think about. It's early in the morning. You had a late night. You want a good flavor product. You're not interested in all the work and all the chewing and all that kind of stuff. 

You'll also notice this product has a fair amount of sage flavor. There's two primary pork sausages in the US. Kind of the southern style, which this is what this would be, and then the east coast style which typically has a little bit more pepper and sometimes is a little bit saltier. So, a great product. The next product that we'll talk about, or product in a product category, is have some discussion about a semi-dry sausage. So, pepperoni, let me back up. Summer sausage is a classic example. Snack sticks is a classic example of a semi-dry sausage. It generally has about a medium salt level. In this finished product, probably about 3% to 3.5% salt. 

So, a fair amount of salt, right? But far less than 200 years ago when meat products had 10% or 12% salt. We've done a pretty good job of reducing salt levels as well as sodium content. When you consume it, you should find a firm or firmer and maybe some of you might even classify it as a rubber texture. And that is because of the salt. More salt, more protein extraction, firms up the texture. It's also because of the tanginess that you might sense. So, this product has a lactic acid starter culture, so it has bacteria that when added consume sugars, dextrose, any type of sweetener. They produce lactic acid. That lactic acid accumulates. We call this fermentation. 

Same concept as fermenting beer and cheese and other types of goods, perishable goods. When that lactic acid accumulates, the pH goes down. When that pH goes down, we get more of a tangy, acidic flavor. Wisconsin is very unique in its summer sausage. Most states, most other states do not care for Wisconsin type of summer sausage because it's very tangy, very acidic. But part of the texture that... Could I get a sample? [LAUGHTER] >> You have a stick. >> Great point. I have a stick. I was really expecting after the whole first time around that I was going to get it. 

Thank you, Bill. I appreciate it. But part of the texture is because not only the salt but also the reduction of the pH. >> Could you explain why this tradition developed in Wisconsin. Was it based on immigrant groups that came? >> Sure. So the question is, how did this product as well as other processed meets evolve in Wisconsin? It's a number of things. A primary reason is because we have an extremely outstanding meat industry in this state that has very good roots in meat processing. We've had many immigrants from Europe and others parts of the world that immigrated here decades ago and set up butcher shops and know how to make these products, as well as some of these other products. Braunschweiger and liver sausage is a very common product in Wisconsin. Not so much in a lot of other states. 

We probably consume more summer sausage than any other state in the country. If that data was out there, it would probably would say that. And we certainly make more summer sausage than any other state in the country. So, this product, because we reduce the pH, we're getting somewhere. We're going the right direction. Because we reduced the pH, we can understand the biochemical properties of what happens. It allows us to remove moisture much more quickly. So this product, if we make 100 pounds of summer sausage, we'll end up with 85 pounds of finished product. We'll lose about 15 percent moisture. So that's also partly why it's a drier, firmer texture. 

Dry sausage, the next category, and the product being passed around is a Genoa salami. And you might notice visually that it's even firmer and even more rubbery. And it also is higher in fat. Don't mistake those white pieces. That's not cheese; that's fat. And I think this would be a good time to reiterate, or actually just iterate the first time that fat is very important for sausages. It gives it flavor. The reason that that breakfast sausage was, in my mind, delightful, very juicy, very flavorful, not only was it because of the spices but more importantly it was because of the fat that was in that product. If you remove all the fat and all the spices and all the salt, you're going to be eating ground pork or ground beef, which has a very meaty flavor but it's far, far less complex than a fresh breakfast sausage or a summer sausage. So, dry sausage, a higher salt content. 

Typically 4% to 6% salt. Or 5% to 6% salt is not that common. It's more firm, more rubbery because of the higher salt content. It also has a pH reduction, and it's also a drier product. So it typically has around 30%, sometimes a little bit more, sometimes a little bit less water removed. A hundred pounds of meat starting, finished product in this form 70 pounds. What's also very unique about dry sausages, this is what separates them from a semi-dry sausage, is some of them have a tangy, acidic flavor, some of them have very unique aromas and flavors. Anybody pick up a difference in flavor? Pick up something you either liked or didn't like? Yeah. That is fermentation at its best. That is an example of using starter cultures that have a specific function for creating flavors and aroma. 

So they're breaking down the fat, breaking down the protein and creating these very unique flavor compounds from this. Good stuff. Liver sausage is the next category. Liver sausage generally has a medium to medium-low salt level. So around that 2%-2.5%. You'll start sensing a pattern that to make products that have good texture and, to a certain extent, flavor, we kind of have to have a certain amount of salt. And that 2%-2.5% salt is really important. I should also mention that 10 years ago the salt content was higher, on average, in processed meats. Twenty years ago, the salt content was even higher. And today, and it's difficult for me because I don't have enough wisdom to be able to compare what products were like, but I'm pretty confident that most of you that have a little more age or wisdom than I can remember how much salt your products were 20-30 years ago. 

And you probably have even forgotten how much saltier they are. If we could go back in time and make a product that was made 30 years ago, which you probably enjoyed back then, you would probably almost spit it out today because we've become accustom to the levels of salt that we consume. What do we have here? Okay. Did we do liver sausage? >> Yeah. It's going around. >> Oh, my gosh, I'm not even paying attention. So, liver sausage, here's an example of a Braunschweiger. It generally has a firm, soft, or creamy texture. Has some fat. Has a little bit of water. 

Sometimes it doesn't. By definition has to have at least 30% livers, generally pork livers are used. Can be emulsified or ground. This is an example of emulsified product where we're taking fat and water, which typically do not like each other, we're using the protein in the meats as our binder. Similar concept to mayonnaise with water, oil, and an egg or lecithin to make the emulsion complete or make it work. And that's how we make this very, very excellent product. >> I've got a question. >> Mm-hmm. >> I used to eat liver sausage all the time about 10 or 20 years ago. I got the idea or somebody told me that it was bad for you. 

Is that just me or have other people heard that? >> Liver sausage I would say is not bad for you by any means. It's very high in iron. It has no more salt or fat than many other products. And, in fact, I would say if you were wanting nutrients, protein and nutrients from any meat product, liver sausage would be a good one to put on your list. It does have some fat, and it does have a little bit of salt. And it can be sliceable or spreadable. The reason that we sampled this product is because it's a very unique product in that it's stuffed into a natural casing. A very expensive vestibule to hold very expensive raw materials. Livers are cheap. Some of the trimmings that are used are a little less expensive. 

So the reason that these are utilized, very expensive casings, is because the casings themselves can impart a very unique flavor, and in some cases aroma, to a sausage. So next time you go out and buy some liver sausage, buy one that has a natural casing and buy one that has a regular casing and then do a little side by side taste comparison. >> Are all these products made in Wisconsin, including the Genoa salami? >> Many of them are. Usinger's is over in Milwaukee. The breakfast sausage is made by Jones Dairy Farm down in Fort Atkinson. The Genoa salami we made at the meat lab for a short course. The summer sausage we made at the meat lab. Many of these products are made here, and we'll have some Oscar Mayer product, which I think is in Madison. Is that right? Yeah. They're right here in Madison. 

So, the next category, scalded or cooked sausage. So, a huge category. We've got a couple being passed around. One is a frankfurter. It generally has a low to medium salt level. Again, around that 2% salt. It can have a soft or a firm texture. It depends on what's in it. All-beef hotdogs, such as this one, typically have a little bit firmer texture. If you buy a poultry hotdog, it typically has a little bit softer texture. 

They can have small to large particle sizes. They can have 15% to 25% fat, or you can buy low-fat versions that have less. Typically they have a little bit more water, especially the ones that are emulsified. And they have a variety of different flavors and can have different ingredients as well. The other cooked product being passed around is a great product. This is another Wisconsin company, Klement's over in Milwaukee. This is called --, and it's is an aspic or a terrine, which basically means that it's food particles, in this case meat and a few vegetables, that are suspended in gelatin. Traditionally, this was made without adding any gelatin. You took parts of a carcass that were high in collagen, like hog heads, you boiled them in water, you have tongue and cheek meats, snouts, you ground them, added some spices, captured some of the liquid that had a lot of the collagen in it, added it back, put it into some type of vestibule, perhaps a mold, put it in the cooler where it cooled, voila. Today, we don't have enough heads, it's too expensive to do that process, so we add a little bit of JELL-O or gelatin to make the product. 

It typically has vinegar or more vinegar as well as some other vegetables. Where head cheese, its friendly cousin or sister, doesn't have either of those or has less vinegar. Ham can be high to low in salt. It can have very small to very large particles, as we discussed earlier. Generally it's very lean. If you see, if ham has fat in it, you typically visually can see it. It can have a lot of water added. Up to 35% water. Or it can have a lot of water removed. Country ham by law has to have 18% water removal. 

So if you have 100 pounds of ham, it has to yield 88 pounds of finished product. And it can be served hot or cold. So the ham being passed around first is a ham made at the meat lab. That's this version. And you'll notice that it would be considered a decent ham. Not something that you would spend $15 a pound for, not something you would spend $2 a pound for. It has good bite because it has some particle reduction but not very small particle reduction. The second ham that's being passed around is called prosciutto, and it is, as I mentioned earlier, similar to a country ham, kind of the same classification, actually the same category. The closest thing we have to ancient preservation methods, in my mind. High salt. 

Product takes a minimum of six months, oftentimes a year and a half and up to three years to dry. So it's a high-salt, very, very dry product. Very expensive product because of all that.  Bacon is another huge category, and the sample that we're passing around is a Patrick Cudahy fully cooked bacon. Patrick Cudahy is in Cudahy, Wisconsin. So, many people look at these products and they say, wow, this is really expensive to buy this precooked bacon. Precooked bacon is expensive because it loses a lot of moisture, and it has to. So during the cooking process, this product has to lose 60% moisture. So if you had one pound of raw bacon, you would have to cook it so there would only be .4 pounds left to call it precooked bacon. So you're paying for the product that's not there. 

It typically has a medium salt level. Sometimes people think that bacon is very high in salt. In fact, it's not that high in salt. It's just the perception. It typically has a firm texture, can have a fair amount of fat, between 30% and 50%, and for all bacon, all the water that's added during processing to do the curing, it all has to come back out. And there's very stringent curing regulations regarding nitrite as well as other ingredients. The next product being passed around is called corned beef. This is an example of a whole muscle cured product. So typically made from beef rounds. This was made at the meat lab. 

Generally a low to medium salt level. So typically the salt is there just for flavor. A firm texture because it's a whole muscle. Very little fat. It can have water added, typically it has water removed which is why it's also a bit firmer. And corned beef received its name from the corning process. So the corning process really was defined by using coarse granular salt known as corns, salt corns. Today's corned beef typically has very unique ingredients because it's a beef product and you need a lot of flavor or it can have a lot of flavor. So you see things like allspice, cloves, mustard seeds, and it's very, very similar to a pastrami. Turkey breast is the last product that we're going to talk about. 

Turkey breast is a really unique product because it's not that old of a product, but it is, today, one of the most popular products. There are tons of different varieties. We see it on menus everywhere. Turkey breast is a low to medium salt product. So typically around 1.5% to 2% salt. Again, we're at very low levels so that we can still maintain texture. It generally has a soft to a medium texture. That's primarily because of the poultry muscle itself. Typically very lean. Generally 10% to 20% water added. 

Sometimes it's cured, and when it's cured it's usually so that it can have a longer shelf life and it can be a safer product. And turkey breast has a very delicate flavor profile. So by itself, turkey breast is pretty bland. But when you add it to another, put it on a sandwich or put it in a wrap, put it in some type of food dish, it can take on a lot of flavors and it does a very, very great job of that. This concludes my discussion about the history and science of meat products. I thank you for your time and attention. [APPLAUSE]