Homemade Sausage Making

I bought a reasonably heavy duty Meat Chopper made by Orimas, model TBS 200.

It comes with 4 discs of varying sizes, along with 4 knives. Two of the knives have 4 blades, one has 3 and the other has only 2.

Can someone shed light on what purpose the 3 and 2 blade knives serve?

-t

Thewitt wrote:I bought a reasonably heavy duty Meat Chopper made by Orimas, model TBS 200.
It comes with 4 discs of varying sizes, along with 4 knives. Two of the knives have 4 blades, one has 3 and the other has only 2.
Can someone shed light on what purpose the 3 and 2 blade knives serve?

Well, I'll go out on a limb and take a couple of guesses. (Too much engineering without a helmet...)

---If you change from a two-blade knife to a 3-blade, to a 4-blade, the particle size coming through the plate should get smaller, assuming the meat mixture is of reasonable viscosity and the machine runs/feeds at only one speed.
---Again assuming the machine runs/feeds at only one speed, even though it's "heavy duty" it may be that the machine doesn't have enough power to shove viscous meat mixture through the holes in the disk with the two-blade knife at a given speed, so going to 3-blade or 4-blade would require less power if passing mince through the disk is the limiting factor.
---If, instead, the limiting factor is movement of the knife through the meat adjacent to the disk, moving for a 4-blade to a 3-blade or 2-blade would reduce power requirement.
---Is one of the two 4-blade knives a spare, or is it a different configuration? Is one of the knives WAY different from the others, like it might be used for stuffing? Is there a special (mostly open, as opposed to having lots of holes) disk to be used for stuffing? All these factors enter.

In any event, the operating ranges for the machine with the various knife and disk configurations probably overlap, so it's operator preference as to what combination you should use. My advice: try it and see. If the machine sounds like it's bogging down, try a different combination. Likewise, if it sounds like it's coasting...

Best advice: enjoy. ...and let us know in another post.

What recipes do you plan to make? We're always interested. Thanks for posting. Post again soon.

Thank you.

That's sort of what I thought, but not having used anything but an old hand grinder from the 1920s, these options were a bit confusing.

The two 4 blade knives are identical.

There is no stuffing plate, but the large hole plate has 6, 18mm holes so I'm going to treat it as a stuffing plate with the 2 blade knife if I need a knife in the grinder in order to fill casings.

Casings are in the mail now so I hope to stuff my first sausages later this week. Still looking for a local source. Found one guy selling sheep, but he is much more expensive than I get buy thru the mail, even including shipping to Malaysia!

I've ground a few kilos of beef, pork and chicken so far and the grinder goes through it all quite effortlessly. I've not tried every combination of blade, plate and meat yet...

I'll be starting with some Bangers and Longganisas, then working with sheep casings and a breakfast sausage till I can do those in my sleep. A local cafe wants fresh breakfast sausage if I can make their spice blend. Their last sausage maker left the country, and so far no one has stepped up to take his place.

My personal goal is a beef, chicken halal sausage that makes you think you are eating a nice pork Italian sausage... I've not found anything locally that is halal that I really enjoy eating - and it's no wonder my Muslim friends don't appreciate sausage, based on the beef or chicken halal offerings available here commercially. They are bland, the smoked beef is dry, texture less, just meet in a tube...

There appears to be a local expat community that will support a fresh pork sausage business, and some high end restaurants who are looking for a local source for German and Italian sausages, so I'm going to try my hand at learning the craft and see what I can do.

I'll post my winning longganisa recipe once I try a few variations on my Filipino friends. They claim a local market for 1000 Longganisas a week. Ha ha ha. I guess I'll see.

-t

Here's our not-so-secret recipe collection: http://wedlinydomowe.pl/en/viewtopic.php?t=5146
(Now we'll have to k..., er, make you share. Yeah. That's it! Share.) Anyway, I'm not sure if any of the recipes are specifically halal but you will be able to tell from the lists of ingredients and make them with halal components as they are available in your area. (See especially the beef and lamb recipes.) In addition, use the "search' function to find other recipes in the various forum threads. There's a wealth of information out there. ...in here. ...whatever. It won't surprise me, too, if you get some additional replies soon from guys who like to make similar sausages. I'm continually surprised at how widespread the people are on this forum.

I look forward especially to your longganisa recipe. Enjoy!

As always there are cautions: "Keep it cold" and "Add cure where appropriate." If you haven't yet, have a look at Stan Marianski's website http://www.meatsandsausages.com/ or better yet, get their book, "Home Production of Quality Meats and Sausages" by Stanley Marianski.

One question- - I couldn't find a copy of the manual for your machine on-line. Did you get one with the machine? I'm intrigued. (...and, like most guys, I would never dream of reading the manual until later, after... you know.)

I'm reading Marianski's book now. Very interesting. I'm an engineer and have been an avid cook for 40 years. The meat science in his book is fascinating. I owned a restaurant many years ago for a short period of time, but I still consider myself an infant in meat processing.

I've browsed the recipe list already, and will definitely share my successful mixes when I have something worth eating

No manual with my machine unfortunately. I've written the company but no reply. I'm on my way to China in a couple of weeks and will task someone there with trying to locate a manual for me. Sometimes a call is more effective, however I don't speak enough Mandarin to do it myself.

-t