Need tips to speed up prep time for making in house sausage. We have been doing it now for 3 months, people love it but it is a bit labor intensive - i timed myself today, took 50 minutes to dice and spice 25 lbs bone in pork butt , covered in the walk in to grind tomorrow. Freeze before grinding ? For how long ? Would feeding my butt through the robo coupe first save time ? SHAWN !
Don’tuse pork butt, use pork cushion meat which is also from shoulder. Depending on power of grinder. Cut in long thin strips, feed through quick but not fast. We prep meat then put in walk in for an hour then grind, season, then grind again. Don’t dice, and you want very cold but not frozen. We do a whole case in 25 minutes active prep time. Pork cushion meat is boneless and much cheaper than butt.
Even better than cushion meat (lack of fat in it, and that huge chunk of cartilage that needs to be removed before grinding) We use boneless pork picnic trim, we do not cube it, we simply cut it in strips that fit through the neck of the grinder.
We do 60 pounds at a crack and from unboxing it to ground and placed in a meat lug is about 30 minutes
I tried the picnic trim but it was just too much fat and gristle for me. For regular sausage links the cushion is too lean so we add belly. But for bulk pizza sausage I love how the cushion doesn’t shrink and tastes like pure meat and doesn’t get greasy. We buy the Berkshire heritage pork from sysco, it ain’t cheap but it doesn’t come with the cartilage. I think it’s 3.28 lb, the picnic trim us like 1.30 or something. Have you made bacon using cuts other than belly? I need to look into that.
Our retail bacon that we slice and sell by the pound is belly, I really like the Canadian pork bellies because they are pre trimmed and fit perfectly in my meat lugs for curing, they are all darn near to 12.5 pounds each, with thickness being even too.
Our “Pizza Bacon” is made from picnic trim, because after curing & smoking it, we run it through the grinder and bake it off.
Curing Formula;
For each pound of meat for bacon, I use .75 TBS of salt & sugar, and 1.4 grams of cure #1 you can scale this any way you’d like, I suggest getting a digital scale that measure down to 1/10th of a gram though, proper cure usage is very important.
Easy Method; Morton’s Tender Quick at 1 TBS per pound, and use .5 TBS of sugar per pound to lessen the harshness of the salt
Does pizza bacon get crispy?
Yes, because it is fully cooked and drained before use, after its time in the smoker, it gets let to relax for a few days in the cooler , then ground through a meat grinder, then baked. drained, cooled and packaged in 2-pound packages and frozen until use. It is always the uppermost topping on a pizza too.
We are working on a BLT pizza right now because the bacon/tomato combo just works well together
We added that to our menu last time we printed a new menu and it has been a solid seller. We use spinach for the “lettuce”. We also do a Bacon Pesto Club pizza with chicken, bacon, spinach and basil pesto sauce. Also sells well.
I wish people in my area would eat spinach and fresh basil on a pizza, but it just wont happen. I had to drop spinach and basil because I was tossing out more than I was using.
Fresh garlic gets used only because I included it on a few of our specialty pizzas. Fresh sliced tomatoes are not very popular here, but I refuse to let them go away, when they are paired with bacon, the locals will eat them, and only then
bacon … oh wait you added another topping ?? oh well… BACON!