Charcuterie For Dummies. Mark LaFay

inspect the cylinder, piston, and horns for pesky particulate that may be hiding. They tend to stick to welded seams, and in the threads where the locking rings screw on. The inside of your stuffing horns can also be a place where meat hides out. Investing in some tube brushes like the ones pictured in Figure 1-13 will serve you well.

      Photo by David Pluimer

      FIGURE 1-13: Tube brushes for cleaning stuffing horns.

The piston of your stuffer will have a rubber gasket around the outside. Remove the gasket, and clean it and the piston with soapy water before sanitizing it. You also want to remove the pressure release valve on your piston and clean the valve and the hole where it is fitted. Once the stuffer is cleaned and sanitized, make sure to lubricate the piston gasket with food-safe mineral oil. This will keep the rubber from drying out prematurely.

Shopping for Gear Locally

      If you live in a larger municipality where you have access to more retail options, then shopping for your gear locally may be the way to go. A good place to start is by checking in with your local family butcher to see where they prefer to shop. You may find that there are great butcher supply stores under your nose that you never knew about!

If you don’t have a specialized butcher supply store, then you’ll want to look for a restaurant supplier. Here in Indianapolis, a great option is Central Restaurant Products. This is a local company that has been in the area for decades. The biggest benefits to shopping local are that you keep your dollars in your local economy and, above all else, that you can talk to the suppliers in person. There is something special about having a go-to person to help you eliminate guesswork.

Shopping for Gear Online

      If you don’t have the luxury of shopping for equipment locally, then you can still get that in-store feel by shopping online; however, you have to know what you are looking for! A quick Google search for meat grinders or sausage stuffers will bring you a litany of options and may actually seem overwhelming. Buying new equipment with which you have very little experience can be daunting. It can be hard to know how to balance the desire for a low price with the need for high quality. The old adage, “You get what you pay for,” really applies when shopping for meat processing equipment. You can buy almost anything on Amazon.com, but the problem with large sites like Amazon is that it can be hard to sift through the junk.

      Keep in mind that when shopping for your equipment, especially the higher-dollar items, you want to buy from an online retailer who will stand by their products and provide quality customer service. Following are some sites that I often frequent.

       Sausagemaker.com: This is a family-run business located in Buffalo, New York. They have everything you need to get the job done and then some on top of that! The Sausage Maker provides some of the best customer service in the business. If you get a faulty product, or something doesn’t hold up as advertised, then they will solve the problem and take care of you. Figure 1-14 shows the homepage of their website.

       Butcher-packer.com: Located in Madison Heights, Michigan, Butcher and Packer has all the equipment you could need. Their costs are also in line with those of their competitors, and they stand by their products. However, they don’t have quite the product options of sausagemaker.com.

       Waltonsinc.com: Walton’s is another Midwestern family-owned business. They have a large selection of products, and they provide great customer service.

      Source: Sausagemaker.com

      FIGURE 1-14: Sausagemaker.com homepage.

Chapter 2

      Working with Potentially Hazardous Food

      IN THIS CHAPTER

      

Learning basic sanitation

      

Understanding pathogens of concern

      

Navigating safe handling of animal proteins

      

Relying on science

      There is nothing worse than sitting down to dinner where someone at the table starts a conversation about something, dare I say, gross. You know what kind of topics I’m talking about: things that would be considered uncouth. For the sake of manners, make sure you aren’t sitting at the dinner table when you dig into the next few pages. When it comes to food handling, safety must be of paramount importance to you. In fact, you can’t be a good food artisan if you can’t manage basic hygiene and sanitation. It is so easy to make yourself sick if you don’t take every possible precaution when handling food.

      I’ll take it a step further, though. When it comes to working with potentially hazardous food, like meat, there are additional safeguards that must be in place to ensure your safety as well as the safety of anyone who may ingest your creations. Think I’m joking? According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2016 there were an estimated 36 million cases of foodborne illness in America. That means that approximately one in every ten people got sick once that year from food. About 30 million of those cases could have been avoided simply through adherence to a proper personal hygiene program in and outside of the kitchen (https://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/pdfs/scallan-estimated-illnesses-foodborne-pathogens.pdf).

I won’t bore you with the details here (that’s for later); in this chapter you will learn basic sanitation, hygiene, and safe food handling skills. You will also learn about pathogens of concern and how to safeguard against them with strategies backed by science.

Personal Hygiene

      As a kid, I used to get so irritated when my parents would harp on me to wash behind my ears and in my belly button (God must have used a melon baller when he made my belly button). But this isn’t the type of personal hygiene that is of concern here. Well, it is and it isn’t. Before you can even think about working with food meant for human consumption, you need to be thinking about cleanliness and sanitation, and that starts with you. Hand washing is the first thing that you should do. According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), you should wash your hands with warm water and lather up with antibacterial soap for at least 12 seconds before rinsing and drying your hands with a single-use towel. So count them off: one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, you get the point! Once you’ve washed your hands, consider yourself scrubbed in for surgery.

      

Here is a list of activities that will (should) trigger a rewash:

       Touching your phone

       Touching your face

       Touching your hair

       Touching money

       Putting your hands in your pockets

       Touching