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Two dollars a starch sausage, there is meat inside?

It takes a little Hexagon Technology

By Shutty GelinoPublished 2 years ago 7 min read
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Two dollars a starch sausage, there is meat inside?
Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash

The battle-hardened ham sausage may not think that it can return to the market after more than thirty years, it is still in the top stream.

Young people who were emptied of pocket money by starchy sausages from roadside stalls when they were young still choose to contribute their wages to ham hocks as adults, and rage against the joy of eating starchy sausages on small red books and short video platforms, "A little more meat I don't love to eat".

It's just that there is nothing easy about adult life, and even ham sausage is full of deception. When I was a kid, I thought it was a meat sausage, but adults said it was full of starch; when I grew up, I was convinced of the pure starch in starch sausage, but finally, I found that there was meat inside.

Why in the end is a starchy ham sausage better than a pure meat sausage? How do people get a sense of starch from ham sausage which is a meat product?

Starchy sausage

Most of the qualified starchy sausages are filled with meat

"It may not occur to die-hard fans of starchy sausages that the so-called "starchy sausages" are filled with meat.

Regardless of what diners think of ham sausage, it has ruled the snacking world for more than three decades as a big brother and can be classified according to its business ability as an extra big brother, a superior big brother, a regular big brother, and a special type that contains only a very small amount of starch [1].

Regardless of the class of ham sausages, whether they are 20 cents a piece or one dollar a piece, according to the recommended national standard issued in 2006, their starch content cannot exceed a maximum of 10%, and for the elegant Premium grade ham sausages, the starch content cannot exceed 6% [1].

Most ham sausages, comply with this recommended standard to classify themselves / GB/T 20712-2006_Ham Sausage

This classification can be seen on the outer packaging of ham sausages, along with the order of ingredients in the ingredient list. In China, for pre-packaged foods like ham sausages, "they shall be listed in decreasing order of addition at the time of manufacture or processing of the food" [2].

If you pick up a ham sausage, you will find that the starch is almost always listed after the meat and water. This is not a false statement by the business, but rather what a qualified ham sausage should do.

However, the real question may be, how does a ham sausage with a lot of meat content feel starchy? Why is ham sausage more beloved than ordinary meat sausage when it is also meat sausage?

Why is the taste of ham sausage always misunderstood?

To answer this question, we have to start with how the production process of ham sausage is different from that of other sausages.

The starchy feeling of ham sausage can be considered one of the things that seed the beans.

In China, all the other sausages we can eat can be classified as "cooked meat products", while ham sausage has a special status and is governed by a special national standard. The reason for this is that ham sausage is made in a special step: emulsification, to make the meat more tender and creamy [3].

To stop the lean and fatty meat from "playing their own game", the first step of emulsification is to beat the fatty part of the meat to a very small size that cannot be distinguished by the naked eye through high-speed chopping and then to distribute it evenly in the puree, which is the source of the essential change in the texture of ham sausage [3].

In comparison, the chopping speed of homemade mince still allows us to eat dumplings or sausages with the texture of meat evident inside, while at 6,000 revolutions per minute in a specialized chopping machine, no piece of fat can be seen intact tomorrow [4][5].

However, fat is "gathered as a fire and scattered as stars", and these fat stars are still suspected of gathering together and rejuvenating when heated at high temperatures [12].

So you will find in the ingredient list of ham sausage that after starch, there is another important component, soy protein. Because chopping is not the end of the emulsification process, protein is also needed as an emulsifier to stabilize these fats that have been scattered around the world [6].

The proteins are also influencing the texture of the ham hock now. One part of these proteins are responsible for adsorbing to the surface of the fat for one-to-one persuasion, while the other part absorbs water and swells to form a network of protein gels that isolate the fat particles inside and prevent aggregation. The stronger this gel network is, the more poppy the ham sausage will be, and vice versa [3][6].

The protein grid will act like a small house to isolate the fat / Yuan Dongxue, Yin Yongchao, Chang Jingyao, Kong Baohua & Liu Qian. (2022). Research progress on hydrocolloids to improve the quality of low-fat emulsified minced meat products. Food Industry Science & Technology(11),426-433.

Starch, which is often thought to reduce costs, does indeed "add" to this texture of ham sausage. Only 5% of starch is needed to increase the hardness and elasticity of ham sausage, and when heated, starch pastes and absorbs water more than ten times its volume, making ham sausage more tender to eat [6].

When it comes to the final steaming process, the last pride of ham sausage as a meat product is not to be preserved. Because of the need for high-temperature sterilization, the meat proteins are denatured excessively at temperatures above 115°C, and the fibers of the meat become less elastic - in short, less meaty [7].

In other words, this texture of ham sausage that tastes less meaty or soft or Q-tip is not because of more starch, but because of the special production process. What businessmen did not expect, however, was that the ham sausage, which they had racked their brains to retain its meaty taste, was instead popular again because of its strong starchiness.

This is probably the joke of life for ham sausages.

The original sin of minced meat products has nothing to do with starch

Many other minced meat products are misunderstood ingredients like ham sausage. After all, this kind of food that is cut so much that you can't see the raw material is good for spicing up at first glance.

However, just because it looks like minced meat doesn't mean it was born as "junk food". The Frankfurt sausage, one of the most popular German sausages, is also known for its fine, even texture and soft interior, with a certain proportion of lean and fatty pork, and a strict ingredient and production process [8].

Frankfurt sausage, also known as Vienna sausage, has the same delicate texture as ham sausage and is often used in hotdogs / Bug Creative

Another group that often winds up being victimized is the surimi products represented by fish tofu and cuttlefish balls, which have certain standards for the ratio of ingredients used [9].

Their real original sin may be the issue of food safety and high salt.

Meat products themselves are highly susceptible to microbial contamination, and in China, cooked meat products are a high-risk food for causing foodborne illness. Some scholars summarized reports on microbiological inspection and supervision of cooked meat products across the country from 1998-2012 and found that the hygienic quality of cooked meat products varied greatly, with an overall pass rate ranging from 8.62% to 88.30% [10] [11].

The deliberate pursuit of so-called meat-free starchy sausages, without considering whether the channels are formal and the products meet the standards, maybe a crazy test on the bottom line of the sanitary pass rate.

On the other hand, in the production process of emulsified products such as ham sausage, the high salt concentration is what makes it easier to extract more protein and emulsify, and also makes it almost difficult to avoid high salt in ham sausage. A 50 g ham sausage requires only about 4 sticks to satisfy a full day's sodium intake [3].

Due to the production process, high salt content in ham sausage is difficult to avoid / Photo Bug Creative

It's just that whether or not you can escape the high salt may not be a matter of ham sausage alone; after all, after a bowl of noodles with ham sausage, you can skip the salt for dinner. Everyone's favorite fried starchy sausage has to be brushed with another layer of sauce after it comes out of the pan. With a hot pot or spicy pot, the pleasure is doubled while the salt is also doubled many times.

Without a focus on overall eating habits, there is little point in giving up ham hocks even completely under the modern food industry.

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About the Creator

Shutty Gelino

When you want to give up, think about what made you persevere to get here in the first place.

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