Meat is the general term used to explain the edible part of animal tissue and several processed or manufactured products ready from these tissues.
The meat is also processed by meat processing techniques and machines. Various types of meat processing machines available in the market are useful to process meat.
Types of Meat Processing Equipment in Agriculture
1. Meat Grinder: The meat grinder, also known as a meat mincer, is a kitchen appliance. It is used for fine chopping or mincing and mixing of raw or cooked meat, vegetables, fish, and some similar food. The meat grinder is available in 150-800 kg capacities and comes in various models.
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Types of Cutting Systems for Meat Grinders
1. Enterprise System: Is mainly used in smaller meat grinders with orifice diameters up to 98 mm and consists of one-star knife, sharpened only on the side facing the disc, and one grinder plate. Hole diameters can vary from 13 to 5 mm.
2. Unger System: Is used in meat grinders with orifice diameters up to 440 mm and consists of the kidney plate, one- or two-star knives sharpened on both edges, and one or two grinder plates.
For a final particle size above 8 mm, the recommended setting is kidney plate-star knife-grinder plate.
3. Bowl Cutter (Bowl Chopper): The bowl cutter is commonly used meat chopping equipment designed to produce small or very small meat and fat particles.
The machine consists of a horizontally revolving bowl and a set of curved knives rotating vertically on a horizontal axle. Many types and sizes exist with bowl volumes ranging from 10 to 2000 liters.
4. Filling Machine (Sausage Stuffer): These machines are used for filling all types of meat in containers such as casings, glass jars, cans, etc. The most common type of filling machine in small- and medium-size operations is the piston type.
A piston is moved inside a cylinder, forcing the meat material through the filling nozzle (funnel, stuffing horn) into the containers.
Piston stuffers are either attached to the filling table or designed as floor models. In small-scale operations, manual stuffers are usually sufficient; sometimes even simple hand-held funnels are used to push meat mixes into casings.
5. Clipping Machine: Clipping machines place small aluminum sealing clips on sausage ends and replace the manual tying of sausages. When using shirred casings, the time-consuming loading of pre-cut casings is no longer necessary.
Wastage of casings can be reduced to a minimum by tight filling and leaving only as much casing for the sausage end as needed for the placing of the clips.
6. Vacuum Packaging Machine: For vacuum packaging, the meat product has to be placed into a vacuum bag (multi-layer synthetic bag). Air is removed from the bag by means of the vacuum packaging machine, and the bag is then sealed.
Special vacuum packaging machines can operate with gas-flushing, where a mixture of gas is injected after evacuating the air.
Such protective gas atmospheres inside the product package inhibit bacterial growth and stabilize the meat color. The gas mixtures usually contain CO₂ and N₂.
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7. Mixer/Blender Mixers: Are used to blend meat and spices, or coarse and finely chopped meat. The machine generally consists of a rectangular or round bottom vessel through which two parallel shafts operate.
Various paddles are mounted on those shafts to mix the meat. The mixer is discharged through tilting by 90 degrees.
Some mixers are designed as vacuum mixers, as mixing under vacuum (exclusion of oxygen) has advantages for the development of desirable product color and texture.
8. Emulsifying Machine (Colloid Mill): The emulsifier serves for the preparation of very fine meat emulsions. Its functional parts are a perforated plate, attached to which two-edged blades are rotating (rotor blade).
Next to the blades, there is a centrifugal pump that forces the pre-ground meat through the perforated plate. Most emulsifiers are vertical units.
Compared to the bowl cutter, the emulsifier operates at much higher speed, producing a finer emulsion-like mix. The emulsifier is also perfectly suited to produce semi-processed products such as pig skin emulsions.
9. Frozen Meat Cutter: This machine is used to cut frozen meat into pieces prior to grinding or bowl cutting. There are two types of these machines which work with knives cutting or use rotating drums with attached sharp knives.
10. Meat Diameter: The meat diameter is a meat cutting machine designed by a system which works with only a piece of meat. This machine is available in 9-25 kg with different ranges of models.
11. Meat Timber: Meat timber is a well-known meat processor that processes naturally. It comes in a variety of models with different features.
12. Meat Poor: Meat Poor is also a meat processor which is used in meat processing. Meat Poor comes in different types of models with excellent features.
13. Meat Hamburger Dose: Meat Hamburger dose comes in a variety of models that are useful for processed meat.
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