Meat emulsifying options

[Richtee]

Stuff your sausage using your grinder instead of a stuffer. It will emulsify the meat soon enough, all by itself (if you have the patience)

Hah! Yes it will. Seriously...maybe try running the batch thru a small tube on the grinder, with a little finger pressure applied at the opening?

[curious aardvark]

Yep I generally use the kenwood mixer - standard cake mixing attachment - for bratwurst.
I add double/heavy cream and eggs to my bratwurst so it's quite a soft mixture till it's mixed.

No you don't need any binders, protein powders or other commercial additives (actully you never need any of those for sausages. They are just ways for commercial producers to add cheap ingredients like fat and water to sausage). Just a few oats. About 1/3 cup per 5lb of meat.

Although to be honest you can actually emulsify sausage mix in a bowl by hand or in a standard manual meat mixer.

you also never need to grind the meat more than once if you mix it enough and at a cold enough temperature. Semi-frozen meat - when vigorously mixed will break down into smaller particles naturally anyway.

Essentially emulsification happens when the binding proteins in the meat are activated by the salt in the seasoning and the mixture is thoroughly mixed so that there are no large particles of fat or meat. This ensures that when you cook the sausage the fat and liquid is held in little pockets surronded by protein and does not cook out. Keeping your sausage juicy and bouncy.

When mixing sausage meat - by any method - it goes through three very distinct phases.

1) first mixing. simple mix to incorporate the seasonings in the meat. Sausage meat is soft, almost no binding and all the fat and liquid will cook out. Mexican chorizo is the only thing that springs to mind you'd want this for.

2) the sausage meat gets sticky. This is an indication that the binding proteins have been activated. At this stage the fat and water will still mostly cook out, but the sausage will hold together quite well.

3) the sausage meat stops being sticky and becomes very firm and 'bouncy'. the surface displays very distinct stretch marks. This is a fully emulsified sausage meat. None of the fat or liquid should cook out. This is the stage I mix pretty much all my sausage too. As it allows you to make succulent juicy sausage without adding lots of liquid or fat.
From a commercial point of view mixing to the emulsification point allows you to add lots of fat and water - which are cheap bulking agents.