Knocking out meat

[Angry Perch]

I wholeheartedly agree with the pride thing. Not only can you say you did it yourself, you can produce a product that is heads and shoulders above what you can buy. And you know exactly what is in it.

92XJ, you do amazing work, but I think you'd agree that anybody can do the same with meat, a little equipment, and time.

[92xj]

I wholeheartedly agree with the pride thing. Not only can you say you did it yourself, you can produce a product that is heads and shoulders above what you can buy. And you know exactly what is in it.

92XJ, you do amazing work, but I think you'd agree that anybody can do the same with meat, a little equipment, and time.

I agree with you 100%.  Anyone can do this.  The toughest part is deciding what percentage of the final product do you want in fat, and they make calculators for that.  Time and patience are the two things I see are the hardest for people to overcome.  When I have folks tell me their product sucks and is never as good as mine; 99.974% of the time the single cause is patience, wether that is in doing the mixing, or during the cooking process.  People don't want to wait the however many hours it takes to get to the correct internal temp without going over a certain temp in the smokehouse.  Around the 8 hour mark everyone is over it and just wanting the meat out, they crank up the temp of the cooker to get to final internal temp and the product is ruined.  The fact is, the entire process is simple that anyone can do.
Weigh meat
Weigh fat
grind
mix with spice blend
grind
stuff
smoke
chill
package
I wish everyone would do it to feel the pride in the freezer and then the pride at the dinner table when your 3 and 5 year eat a piece of meat and I can say I know exactly what has touched that meat from the time it was living in the wild to my kids mouth.