- [Announcer] Funding for this program was provided in part by the RE Synergy Foundation, content for the sustainable world, G and C Foods, quality at every turn.

Pittsburgh Spice and Seasoning Company, making life taste better.

The Allen family, Robert, Ashley, Carol, and Fred.

And viewers like you.

(upbeat music) - I'm the son of a butcher.

- You might be a son of a butcher, but I'm the original butcher.

Some ask me, what is the meat industry to you?

For me, it starts at a place where my family runs a grocery, butcher shop, and a catering business.

And sure it's about the business side of things, but for me, at its core, it's a story about relationships.

(upbeat music ends) - Welcome to this episode of "Son of a Butcher".

I'm A.J.

O'Neil, your host, and this is my dad, Gale O'Neil, the original butcher, and today we're gonna teach you guys how to make a cultured, fermented dried summer sausage.

So we're gonna, we're aiming to have a 90% lean block, meat block.

And so we're gonna start with, we're using top rounds here, and my dad's gonna be cutting up a chuck shoulder clod to add to our meat block.

And so I'm gonna let him walk through how he trims this up with you, and I'm gonna start trimming up these top rounds and get them ready to go.

- Okay, I'm going to start there.

First is, this is off of a shoulder of a beef.

You just pull that front leg and front shoulder bone.

This is called a trice major that's underneath the bone, which is a good, tender product here.

I had it cut out, but I'm gonna trim 'er up for you real quick.

It's a muscle that is not used much, so that will make it tender.

Okay, that will take that muscle out, and then I'll just trim a little bit of this off here, and we'll get into the English a little bit more.

Okay, this muscle right here is the, it's where your flat iron comes from.

So in this part here is your English.

Lot of times, we will do a lot with this.

You can do the stir fry, you can do stew meat, other things like that.

Just doing a real quick version of this.

And also, you cut it a little thinner, like three quarters.

You can do these on the grill.

Most of the time I like to do it slow cook it like in a mushroom soup, anything like that, they turn out good.

Bet you use slow cookies so it makes 'em good and tender.

And I'll tear into this, where the flat iron comes out of.

This also makes a really good roast for on your grill if you slow cook it in one of your smokers.

Okay, there's the flat iron, the start of it.

And this is one I was saying about if you leave that hole, it is really good on the grill, nice and tender, a lot of marbling.

But there is a line of gristle in here, and I'll kind of pull that back for you.

- [A.J.]

So you'll also make, he'll make that a roast as well sometimes for folks where he'll do what he's doing right now, pull that seam out, net it back together, and make a roast outta that.

It does a nice job.

- Yeah, there's that piece of gristle that I was talking about.

This will be the start of the flat iron.

So we'll just get that on out of there.

But when I do a for roast, I just pull back pretty much about halfway.

This is really light sinew, so it doesn't... It pretty much melts.

- So also add that, as part of this meat block, we're also gonna do 10 pounds of bacon per 100, and we're also gonna do 10% pork added to this, since it is mainly a beef product that we're making.

That's where we did think it would be better to have some of the bottom round, or the top round that I'm getting from the hind of the beef, and then also some of the shoulder clod.

You got more high quality fat towards the front of the animal, so towards like the shoulder and the neck part of the animal versus what you'll have just in the hind of the beef.

And so that's why having these mixtures is gonna compliment each other as well.

(meat swishing) (knife tapping) - That's top round also.

You use it, we use a lot for like roast beef as one of our better, better selling lunch meats out there.

And you can see why, 'cause he's all nice and lean, and... Hate to do this, but there's some of them nice roasts going into her.

There's your nice steaks, and your English.

Now I'll also pull this little piece of gristle out there.

What do you need on the fat content there?

Looking pretty good (indistinct)?

- Yeah, I think it is, ad those look pretty good.

So for, you know, for this purpose, we're kind of trying to evaluate.

It's better for us to get it trimmed up, make sure we have as lean as we need, and then if we need to come back and add some fat to it, we can do that as well.

So we're just trying to eyeball that a little bit better here.

- Once you throw it in the grinder, you'll see how much fat content you really have, and then you can add at that time any fat.

But it's better to start out lean then work your way to it.

- Alright, so we got our meat block here, we're gonna go ahead and temper that.

We're gonna put it in the freezer, start to drop the temperature a little bit.

That'll make for, whenever we go to grind it, it'll cut it a lot nicer whenever it's chilled as cold as possible.

And then we're gonna show you guys about some of the spices, and talk about how these spices are gonna interact with each other, how they compliment each other, and what their purpose is gonna be.

So we'll do that next.

(bright music) - [Narrator] Historically, summer sausage predated refrigeration, and refer to meats that could be consumed in the summer months, when high temperatures would cause fresh meats to spoil.

For this reason, they became popular gifts during the winter holidays, especially in German American settler communities.

- Hey, we're back here.

I'm gonna talk to you guys a little bit about the ingredients we're gonna be using in our summer sausage.

As you can see, there's a plethora of ingredients here that we're gonna be using, and they all have their own function.

They all have a certain spice that you, as a commonality, to maybe certain regions.

And so we're gonna talk a little bit about that here today with us.

We have an expert from Con Yeager Spice Company, Keith Kijowoski, and he's a guy I call when I got questions about how these ingredients interact and react with each other, make sure we're doing the right things.

So Keith, thanks for being with us today.

- You're welcome A.J, glad to be here.

- We'll get started here, talking about some of these ingredients we're gonna be using.

So the star of the show is always the salt.

So we have that starting out.

That's what we need when we're gonna be preserving this meat, and making sure that it's safe and ready to eat.

As we talked about before, this is gonna be a fermented product.

So in order for that fermentation to work properly, we need to make sure that we create a perfect environment for this culture to live and work properly, and do what it's supposed to do.

What we got here to start with is our tinted curing salt.

Some call it speed cure.

What other names do we have for it, Keith?

- Pink Cure, yep.

- Pink cure?

- Quick cure.

(bright music) - [Narrator] Tinted curing salt generates a pinkish shade on the meat, and extends its shelf life.

It is made mostly of salt.

Salt acts as a preservative through osmosis, where the water within a cell is drawn out through the cell walls.

Food spoilage and food poisoning are caused by single celled organisms called bacteria.

Salt pulls out the water from within the bacteria cells, killing them.

(music fades) - Next on our ingredient list is sodium erythorbate.

Wanna talk a little bit about what this is gonna do in this product?

- Well, it's a cure accelerator, so it helps the conversion from nitrite to nitric oxide, works with the myoglobin in the blood.

- Okay.

- And it just, it's what gives us accelerates that cured color, that nice red color that we get after we cook it with the nitrite working with it.

So it's got some other properties as well, but those are the main reasons for the acceleration of the conversion of the nitrite.

- The next ingredient we have on here is our dextrose.

And so let's talk a little bit about the role of the dextrose, and how that would be, I mean, you and I have had the extensive conversations about this.

- Yeah, so it is a simple sugar that is absolutely necessary for the culture to eat.

So this is a living bacteria that needs a simple sugar to feed upon to be able to lower the pH in the meat to give us that nice, soft tang that we have.

That's one of the characteristics of a true summer sausage.

- Yeah.

- Again, we need the dextrose in there to give the reaction with the culture, and then at that time, you'll drive the temperature up, then you'll kill it, right?

- Yep.

- All right.

So it doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to eat all of the dextrose, right?

But there is enough there for it to sustain itself and become edible for it.

- And we still follow that too.

I've been told with this lactic acid starter culture that within 24 hours, 12 hours, you should be going into the smokehouse to start that fermentation to create that environment for it to thrive.

- Right, that's true.

- Okay.

- Yep.

- And so, we got distilled water here, and what's the importance of using the distilled water to activate the culture?

- Well, a chlorinated water or tap water, you know, depending on your locality, and the percentage of all those, you know, fluoride and all those other chemicals that are in the water, you can destroy the culture before it even gets to do the function that it's supposed to do.

- Yeah.

Yeah, so we'll get the culture in, it's freeze dried, has to remain in the freezer the whole time.

- It needs to be rehydrated, correct?

- Yeah, it needs to be rehydrated.

- Yep.

- Thanks, Keith on that, appreciate that.

Next ingredient we have here is the corn syrup solids.

And so you'll see, I see some... If you had all these ingredients in a bag, and you can buy it from different spice companies, sometimes the ingredients, the corn syrup solids are already in there, so let's talk a little bit about what they do.

- So, corn syrup solids, if we look at a relative sweetness value chart, we see that sucrose is sugar, has a value of 100.

Dextrose has a value of 70, and corn syrup solids have a value of 42.

So you would have to use over two pounds of corn syrup solids to get the sweetness of one pound of sugar.

- [A.J.]

Yeah.

- So a lot of times what they, the corn syrup solids in there, are in there strictly to tie up the water, so that reduces your water activity.

- Okay.

- If you're trying to make a true, non-refrigerated, shelf stable product.

- Well thanks, I wanted to spend a lot of time talking about this fermentation stage.

'cause I get a lot of of consumers coming in saying, "Hey, I wanna try to make this, I wanna try to do what you're doing", and it's like, this is a very complex process.

- It is.

- And you have to have the right equipment, and any step along the way- - A high rate of failure.

- Yeah, you have a high rate of failure.

(chuckling) And you know, that could also lead to issues with pathogens and- - Yeah.

- And foodborne illnesses- - Exactly.

- And stuff like that, and so... And it can be very discouraging if you're the consumer.

You just shot a deer, and you wanna try to make this stuff, and then you put all this money into it, and it failed.

And so that's why we're just, we wanna make sure that we're allowing everyone to understand this is a complex process.

And you know, and working with Keith over the years, he's taught me to be very detail oriented, to make sure you're, you're taking your temperatures, you're doing things exactly the way it's supposed to be, and there's no contamination going on within that process.

Some other ingredients we have here, this is our nutmeg.

And so what kind of flavor is the nutmeg gonna give me?

- Very aromatic, isn't it?

- Yeah, yeah, you can definitely, I mean, just even standing here, that's the one that I'm pulling out for sure.

- Right, right, exactly, yeah.

So we're gonna do nutmeg.

We chose to do a coarse ground black pepper.

Some people might go the route of a fine ground black pepper, just more for aesthetics.

Then we have a white pepper here that we're adding to the product.

Could I have just increased my black pepper, and not needed the white pepper?

- I think, although they come from the same plant, I think they're unique to each other.

- So they'll also be complimenting each other throughout.

- Yeah, I think they do compliment each other very well, yep.

- Okay, and then we have a ground all spice.

Any thoughts around the ground all spice?

- Again has a very... This is what's cool is, each one of these has a unique flavor, and they will co compliment each other, and I think that all spice in there is a good choice as well.

It's very aromatic as well.

- So you got all spice, and then the coriander that he mentioned.

- [Keith] Yep.

- Yep, we have that added to it, whole mustard seed.

I typically do see that there's just enough of it in that it'll show up.

- I like it for the visual aspect, just like the coarse black pepper, and it's got that little bit of a bite to it, you know what I mean?

- Yeah.

- As well, so... - Yep.

- That's a good choice.

- And then we have our ground celery, and we have a ground mustard.

- Yep, which kinda acts as a binder as well.

- Okay, gotcha.

- Yep.

- And then we have a ground ginger, and then we'll have our water.

Alright, so we'll get this ready to go in the grinder.

We're gonna grind our meat, and then we're gonna add our seasonings.

(bright music) (music fades) All right, it's time to do the grinding of the meat.

So we have our tempered meat block here, and you can see that it's nice and firm, and so this will be nice whenever we're, when we're cutting it, we're gonna get better particle definition in that process.

(bright music resumes) (bright music continues) (grinder whirring) All right, now we're gonna change our plate to the one eighth inch, and we're gonna run it through two times.

(bright music continues) (grinder whirring) So we've ground everything through one time here, and now we're gonna add the bacon.

The reason I was waiting to add the bacon was, I didn't want to get smashed down to two small particles.

I kind of like having the uniqueness of having that bacon in there.

so I waited till the second time, when I'm gonna add it and grind it.

What I think has been one of my favorite things about working in the meat processing stuff is that my dad's always given me the ability to be creative.

And that's what's neat with the summer sausage.

This is the only product, only like ring baloney product that I make that I grind through the fine blade twice, because we typically like a coarser style of a ring baloney.

But when my customers come in and say, "Yeah, I'd like a fine ground something" I can say, hey, actually, if you like a finer textured product here, you gotta make it in a summer sausage.

- [Keith] Right.

- All right, that's the last of the bacon.

(bright music) (grinder whirring) You can see when I hit these spots like that, that's that bacon coming through.

Alright, now we're ready to add the lactic acid starter culture to the product, and we'll begin mixing that.

All right, now we're gonna continue with the dextrose that the culture's gonna feed upon to help lower our pH.

Well 'cause typically, if I'd buy this, a pre-blended seasoning from a spice company- - Right, everything's gonna be mixed together already.

- Everything's mixed together anyways.

- That's exactly right, yeah.

All right, he's gonna add some water here, and we put the cure already.

As you can see in this container, we put the cure in some water as well to help distribute it more evenly.

(soft upbeat music) He's got all the spices going in, the black pepper, the white pepper, nutmeg, allspice, we got celery, mustard seed, coriander.

- Keith, we've been talking a lot about, you know, consumers doing small batches and stuff.

What do you think?

It had me thinking about, if you don't have the stuffers and right equipment, sometimes you have to make your products wetter so you can- - Right.

- Get it through like hand stuffers and that.

- Right, especially for people that hold product overnight, they're gonna stuff the next day.

Once that meat starts, you know, sits in that cooler overnight, it becomes pretty stiff you know?

So if you don't have a piston stuffer, whatever, and you're just trying to stuff off a grinder, it can make it a little bit more difficult.

- So we can see right now, this is nice and red, and now we're gonna add our curing salt.

All right, we got our product ground, and now we're going to the stuffer.

All right, now we're ready to start stuffing the product.

Before we start stuffing this into our casings, Keith, will you talk to us a little bit about- - Yeah, so- - the different types of materials?

- Right, so this is what we call fibrous casing.

It's available in different colors.

A clear, mahogany, and red are probably the three most popular colors, and what customers will do is, they'll use the mahogany for like a plain summer sausage, and they may use a red if they've got cheese in it.

But this casing is inedible.

It has to be peeled off before you eat the product.

- And then you wanna talk a little bit about our other casing we're gonna be using today?

- [Keith] Yeah, so this casing, we carried them at one time, but this from a different manufacturer, it's a muslin.

I would assume that's cotton, right?

- [A.J.]

Yeah.

- [Keith] But if you can see the inside of the casing, it's coated with black pepper.

Is it just black pepper, or- - [A.J.]

Yeah, just black pepper.

- there are other spices as well.

So that when this product is tied off and cooked in the smokehouse, that pepper is going to attach itself to the outside of the meat product.

So it's really, it's unique, and it's pretty good product.

It's different for sure.

So he's just creating a little bit of pressure there to, you know, keep it nice and tight and everything.

And it's a vacuum stuffer.

It's a heck of a lot easier to use a vacuum stuffer than it is if you're hand cranking, for sure.

(bright music) - And now we're going to the smoker to ferment our summer sausage.

All right, so we're back.

Our summer sausage fermented overnight.

That was a eight hour fermentation schedule, and then we took the pH meter out of it, put our internal temperature probe in, and finished cooking this product so it will kill the culture, and now we're ready to pull it out and see what it looks like.

So we have this nice one here in that fibrous casing.

I'm gonna go ahead and show you what that turned out like.

And we'll get one of these black pepper ones.

(bright music) I'm really happy with the way that stuff turned out and the way that looks.

You can see that nice pepper coating in comparison to this one.

The way that turned out cooked on real nice.

Real happy with that product.

I'm a son of a butcher.

- That's right.

(butchers and cast laughing) (bright music continues) - That's all, folks.

(laughing) - [Announcer] Funding for this program was provided in part by the RE Synergy Foundation, content for the sustainable world.

G and C Foods, quality at every turn.

Pittsburgh Spice and Seasoning Company, making life taste better.

The Allen family.

Robert, Ashley, Carol and Fred.

And viewers like you.