Frankfurter Flop!

[Kevin A]

Okay so monday morning I get up bright & early as it was expected to be a toasty warm day (100+°). Got all the things lined up for frank production: grinder, mixer, stuffer, spices and about 10 lbs of pork & beef:



I'm using 80/20 mix in this: 80% beef, 20% pork and doing only a 5-pound load. the leftover meat I'll save for another adventure.
I used the frankfurter recipe from the Kutas book. Option is to use coriander instead of mace, and nonfat dry milk for SPC. I opted to use the mace & the nonfat dry milk.

Spices ready:


Ground the meat through the finest plate I have (4.5mm). I'd like to get a 3mm someday but I've no luck in finding one that fits the Cabela grinders.


Added the spices & did a quick mix in the kirby mixer...


Now here's where things started getting squirrelly. Loving wife tells me that my son & I both have an eye appointment in about an hour (8:00am!).
I decide to quickly emulsify the meat load in the food processor—3 separate 1.75lb loads, adding ice water as I go. Finish it all on full-speed in about 6-8 minutes. uh oh.....I may have over-done the emulsifying a bit in my haste AND probably added TOO MUCH water to the mix as well. The meat paste looks a bit too thin. When I emulsified meat before (when I made bockwursts), the meat paste looked 'good', whereas this latest batch looks a bit too loose....

Undaunted, I plow ahead with the stuffing using 24mm sheep casings, rapidly firing the kirby cannon as quickly as I can, trying to minimize blow-outs. Wound up with about 30 fairly-uniform, if not a bit 'soft' beef franks...


Off to the eye appointment. Franks have to wait. In the fridge they go. I get back about 2 hours later and ready to do some smoking.
I've got the franks hanging from 4 dowels in my NEW smoker and load up a line of hickory dust into the Amazin smoker (http://www.amazenproducts.com/. I figure 90 minutes of good smoke, but first thing I want to do is dry out the franks in the smoker (no smoke yet) @ 135° for about an hour. So I've got the franks drying & I get a call from a neighbor. His car died & he asked if I could I pick him up at his work in about 2 hours. Sure, I said. Now I'm in a pinch for time. I failed to take any pictures of this process. NO photos. My apologies!  After about 30 minutes, I light the AMZN & start the smoking process—and yes, in hindsight, too soon for the smoke. After almost 90 minutes, I gotta leave soon to pick up the neighbor, I check the frank....not much color at all. Crud.
I pull 'em & lightly poach them until the IT reaches approximately 152°, pluck em & let 'em 'bloom.'

When I return from being a good neighbor, I find my franks havent really 'bloomed' at all—they look pretty sick actually.
I try one and am greatly disappointed. The flavor isnt bad BUT the texture is mushy (awful!) and the skins tough.

The grim results:



I'll make these again another day. Disappointed? Sure—but some key 'learning' moments for me.

• Watch how long you emulsify— these were waaay overprocessed. Sticky meat paste became meat goop.
• Watch water content. I added 1 cup per the recipe, but probably added 8-12 ounces during the emulsification process. Bad idea.
• Stuff the casings 'tighter'—soggy casings filled lightly with soggy meat goop = tough casings
• Make sure links are dry before applying smoke— I knew that. I chose to cheat. didnt work.  ;D
• Choose a day when there are no distractions nor calls for help....

—Kevin

[jiggerjams]

Excellent post. Thanks for sharing your learning experience.

[pikeman_95]

Kevin

I am sorry for your hard work. I think if you just grind your meat through your fine plate you would be happy with the results. You could probably grind it twice but I don't think I would worry about emulsifying the meat. Measure your grinding plate diameter and I will check with a couple of places here and see if I can find a good fine grinding plate for you.

Kirby

[Kevin A]

Kevin

I am sorry for your hard work. I think if you just grind your meat through your fine plate you would be happy with the results. You could probably grind it twice but I don't think I would worry about emulsifying the meat. Measure your grinding plate diameter and I will check with a couple of places here and see if I can find a good fine grinding plate for you.

Kirby

Thanks, Kirby. In hindsight, I don't doubt a double-grind through a finer plate would do the job just fine. Quicker & less cleanup too.

I did get an email confirmation from two places: LEM & Meatprocessingproducts.com.
Both said the 3mm plate they sell will fit the Cabela. Its actually an LEM plate that LEM sells a few dollars cheaper than the other vendor.
So it looks like I'll be placing an order for a SS 3mm plate soon!

—Kevin

[iceman]

Great post Kevin. Sorry it didn't turn out but you provided good information for everyone else.
I just got done with a total failure on trying to make ground venison bacon. I didn't get any pictures but between interuptions and just total brain farts I do believe I did EVERYTHING wrong. 12.5 pounds of rubberized meat goo went into the trash  >:( I think I actually created "Meat Cake".  :D
Anyhow, thanks for the post.
Pat

[beefmann]

good job, send me some

[ghost9mm]

Really sorry about the flop Kevin, but the learning curve won't be so steep the next go around..lol..