Frankfurters

Origins and diffusion

The sausage it is a sausage-based food based on meat; it represents the "Central European alter ego of Italian sausages, so much" that the literary translation of the term "würstel" actually means "sausage".

The sausage was born in Austria (frankfurter-sausage), Germany (würstchen) and Switzerland (wienerli); also represents a typical food of our Trentino Alto Adige (wiener or wiener würstchen) but it seems to have particular success also among the overseas populations (hot dog), as it represents a progenitor of the American PRO-atherogenic diet (that is, the typical diet which, due to its abundance in saturated fats and cholesterol, tends to favor the formation of atherosclerotic plaques responsible for coronary heart disease and stroke).

Preparation

Traditionally sausage is a sausage obtained by grinding pork and / or beef; according to the local recipe and the type of frankfurter, the ingredients (percentages of meat), the shapes, the weights, the external casing, the preservation method, etc., the various preparations are significantly different from each other.
Roughly speaking, it is possible to define that traditional sausage is a sausage obtained by grinding animal meat and fat with ice and flavorings, then stuffed and cooked in a steam oven. Currently, the industrial production of traditional sausages MUST also make use of additives (especially preservatives) ... but analyzing the various products available on the market, it seems obvious that in Italy a prevalent use is made of frankfurters obtained from mechanically separated meat and therefore qualitatively POOR!

Poor sausages

Without mentioning any brand, the reader is perfectly capable of independently distinguishing traditional frankfurters from poor ones; the detail that makes the difference is the origin and processing method of the primary ingredient: meat.

It being understood that (traditionally) the frankfurter should NOT contain offal or processing waste, the method through which they are processed also plays a fundamental role.

Poor frankfurters are obtained by mechanical separation of the carn; therefore, the consumer who wants to avoid buying them can easily refer to the "food label, consequently excluding a priori all packages bearing the wording"products with mechanically separated meat'.

Homemade sausages



Homemade Würstel - No Added Fats

Problems with playing the video? Reload the video from youtube.

• Go to the Video Page
• Go to the Video Recipes Section
• Watch the video on youtube

Mechanically separated meat

Let's start by specifying that, even if the content of offal and processing waste helps to determine the quality of the sausage on the market, in Italy, a pork sausage will always be better than a chicken and / or turkey one.

This statement is justifiable by the fact that, while a frankfurter obtained from the grinding of large animals usually does NOT take advantage of the mechanical meat separation technique, a product deriving from poultry meat (chicken and turkey) makes use (often and willingly!) Of this strategy. .
The advantage of using mechanically separated meat is obvious; by exploiting this technique it is possible to drastically reduce both the raw material and processing costs at the same time.
Let's try to understand why:
The mechanical separation of meat to produce chicken and / or turkey frankfurters includes:

1. The use of chicken and / or turkey carcasses deprived of: skin, legs, neck, wings, thighs and breast.
2. The use of presses that crumble, grind and sift the carcasses, separating "at least worst" the bones from the meat which takes on the consistency and color of a pink puree.

At this point, the mechanically separated meat (which constitutes up to 90% of the finished product) is corrected with additives (preservatives, thickeners, polyphosphates, etc.), flavor regulated, stuffed, immersed in flavored and spiced water, and finally packaged.

Nutritional properties