The most common, used in hot dogs and other popular recipes, is made on automated production lines, with virtually no human contact and with strict hygiene steps. This belies the myth that sausage factories are still loathsome environments, with blood and grease oozing everywhere.
This idea was disseminated mainly by the famous phrase of the German chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898), who said that people should never know how sausages and laws are made. In fact, the only part of the process that can affect the most sensitive stomachs is the choice of ingredients, as this delicacy is made with minced or ground meat from any piece of beef, pork or chicken. “Usually, what goes into this mix are leftovers from traditional cuts and less appreciated parts, such as the cheeks and viscera of cattle and pigs”, says food engineer Eunice Yamada, from the Institute of Food Technology in Campinas (SP) .
However, the recipe usually changes a little according to the type of product. “When the sausage is chicken or turkey, the meat used in manufacturing is the one that sticks to the bones after removing the main pieces, such as the breast, thigh and drumstick”, says another food engineer, Carmen Castillo, from the University of São Paulo (USP).
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animal mixture
Remains of beef, pork and chicken are the main ingredients of the product
1. The sausage’s raw material is the so-called industrial meat, made up mainly of leftovers and trimmings from traditional cuts and from undervalued regions of beef, chicken and pork. In the first stage of production, the frozen parts are cut into very small pieces by a set of automatic machines.
two. After shredding, the meat goes through a device called a cutter, which transforms the mixture into a kind of homogeneous bran. The next step is to add doses of salt, cornstarch, spices and preservatives (such as sodium nitrite) to the raw material, which give the mixture a pink color. The recipe is then about 55% meat and 45% other ingredients.
3. The embedding process itself begins as soon as the paste exits the cutter. The mixture is used to fill the casings, which can be natural (like sheep intestines, for example) or artificial, made of plastic or cellulose, with an average diameter of 2 centimeters. Once filled, the casings are mechanically twisted or tied
4. Once closed, the sausages are left for half an hour in an oven at 80ºC. A thermometer controls the temperature, notifying the time to stop cooking, when the inside of the sausage reaches 70ºC. The technique is a little different for smoked sausages, dipped at this stage in a liquid with a wood essence, which gives the product its characteristic flavor.
5. After cooking, the sausages are cooled with a shower of ice water for about 20 minutes, killing microorganisms that survived the heat of the oven. Chilling also loosens the plastic casing, but the sausage retains its shape because the proteins in the meat coagulate during cooking, creating a thin outer layer that holds the product’s shape.
6. At this point, the sausage could even be consumed, but it still goes through the dyeing process, to improve the appearance of the product. At that time, it is immersed for two minutes in a tank with annatto solution, a natural dye. Afterwards, a phosphoric acid bath helps to fix the red color.
7. In the last stage of production, the sausages are vacuum-packed to ensure they are kept for a longer period. Before eating them, however, it is advisable to boil the product, to get rid of microorganisms that may have resisted the cooking and thermal shock processes.