Self Check-Up
1. Stuffing casings right out of the grinder is poor practice, yet innumerable people believe it is proper practice. If you must process sausage in this manner, please grind the sausage into a container placed inside a bowl of _______.
2. Before stuffing sausage casings, they must be rinsed inside and out to remove _________.
3. After you soak lamb or hog casings, they may be placed on the nozzle of your ________ _______ then flushed with water to remove the salt inside them.
4. Natural casings are made from the submucosa collagen layers inside the intestines of sheep, hogs, and cattle. Flushed, cleaned, turned inside out and scraped with knives, they are finally salted and shipped in a______ ______ ______.
5._________ and __________make casing more porous and tend to soften them.
6. Hog casings (upper intestines) are sold in 91-meter lengths cut into "______".
7. "Shorts" are bundles of hanks that are one to two meters _________.
8. The average diameter of a hank is about 35 millimeters and may be used for numerous sausages including ______ and ______.
9. "Chitterlings" are ______ ______.
10. Chitterlings are curly and sold in ______ ______ lengths.
11. A hog "bung" is the extreme end of the intestine and may vary from 55 to 90 millimeters. They are usually sold ____________.
12. The three most used beef casings are _________, ________, and ________.
True Or False:
13. T F Beef middles are sold in "sets" of 9 and measure 18 meters in length (30 feet).
14. T F You may "special order" beef middles in sets of 3 which only measure 3 meters in length.
15. T F If you are making mortadella, a good casing choice is beef bladder although it actually comes from a sheep.
16. T F Beef bladders are oval-shaped.
17. T F Never attempt to lubricate the stuffer tube with butter or any other lubricant other than water, as this will affect the cooking-smoking of the skin later on.
18. T F Livestock simply cannot produce enough casings to wrap all the luncheon meats and sausages we devour annually, so today, about 30% of the sausage sold in your local market is stuffed into synthetic casings.
19. T F Casings having a coating of protein inside, shrink along with the meat as it dries.
20. T F Fibrous casings have the added strength of silky asbestos fibers running lengthwise through them, giving them added strength.
21. T T A "blooey" is five pounds of meat stuffed into a three-pound bag.
22. T F A collagen casing is a synthetic casing.
23. T F Collagen casings must be soaked before use.
24. T F Collagen casings are fully digestible, not erratic in size, do not need to be cleaned, flushed, or even pre-soaked, and remains fairly strong for stuffing, yet is most tender to the tooth. It is shipped inside sanitary containers ready to be stuffed onto the horn without additional washing, soaking, or handling. The only single drawback with using collagen casings is they cannot be twisted into links and have to be tied with string.
25. T F Natural casings on fresh sausage may be tough if the product is cooked at too high a temperature for too short a period of time. They may also be tough if they`re not soaked long enough before being stuffed.
26. T F If smoke will not penetrate casings, they have not dried properly.
27. T F The "primary bind" refers to how much soy protein concentrate you add to the mixture.
28. T F The proper development of actin, myosin, and other proteins is critical for good texture in the finished product. It is achieved by proper mixing. However, the texture may become rubbery if the meat is over-mixed.
29. T F Cure #1 (Prague Powder) in the United States, is colored pink and contains 6.25% sodium nitrite (NaNO2), and 93.75% sodium chloride (salt). Merely two level teaspoons of it will cure 10 lbs. of sausage.
30. T F Cure #2 is used in dry-cured sausages and whole-muscle meats where curing time allows the nitrate to gradually break down into nitrite. Cure #2 in the United States, contains one-ounce (6.25%) sodium nitrite (NaNO2), with .64 ounce (4%) sodium nitrate (NaNO3), and 89.75 sodium chloride in 1 lb. of salt.
31. T F Sodium nitrite cures meat almost immediately. However, in other applications such as whole muscle curing, sodium nitrate must be reduced to nitrite and further to nitric oxide in order to cure meat. In other words, nitrite is simply too fast and a prescribed amount of nitrate must be added to "break down over time". This insures a constant reservoir of sodium nitrite in the mixture.
32. T F Potassium Nitrate is "saltpeter" and is no longer used in curing sausages in the United States although it is acceptable in many countries.
33. T F Nitrate in itself is not successful in producing the curing reaction. Sodium nitrate must be reduced by lactic acid bacteria (micrococcaceae species), or other natural means, to be effective.
34. F F If you are out of Cure #1, then just add half again as much Cure #2.
35. T F The formula for Cure #1 contains only nitrite while the formula for Cure #2 contains both nitrite and nitrate.
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Answers: 1. ice 2. packing salt 3. Kitchen tap 4. saturated salt solution 5. moisture and heat. 6. Hanks 7. long 8. (name any two): various cooked sausages, pepperoni, Italian sausage, Kielbasa, Kishka, or larger franks. 9. Hog middles 10. One-meter 11. Individually 12. "bung caps", "beef rounds", and `beef middles". 13.T 14.F 15.F 16.T 17.F 18.F (80%) 19.T 20.F 21.F 22.F 23.F 24.T 25.T 26.T 27.F 28.T 29.T 30.T 31.T 32.T 33.T 34.F 35.T