Читать книгу Charcuterie For Dummies - Mark LaFay - Страница 13

A sausage stuffer’s job is simple: to get ground meat into some sort of casing. There are a few types of sausage stuffer, but the most useful stuffer is called a vertical sausage stuffer (see Figure 1-6). Strictly speaking, stuffers are quite simple and are composed of the following parts:

 Cylinder. The cylinder holds your meat mixture.

 Piston. The piston fits perfectly into the cylinder and forces your meat mixture down through the cylinder. The piston is forced down by a hand crank.

 Horn. The horn attaches to the bottom of the cylinder and is the approximate diameter of the sausage you are stuffing. Your casing fits onto the horn.

Photo by David Pluimer

FIGURE 1-6: Vertical stuffer and parts.

Vertical stuffers are ideal because their orientation gives you the greatest mechanical advantage as you crank the piston down. They are also ideal for stuffing a wet mixture like the emulsified sausages discussed in Chapter 6.

Cranking a stuffer can at times require some shoulder and arm strength. Depending on how firm your meat mixture is, you will want to make sure that the stuffer you select either comes with clamps to hold it down to your work surface, or at minimum has enough surface area on the base of the stuffer to use bench clamps like the ones pictured in Figure 1-7.

Photo by David Pluimer

FIGURE 1-7: Bench clamps for your stuffer.