When discussing sausage casings, it is necessary to start with our oldest sausage packaging material: animal casings. Animal casings have been the traditional container for sausage materials for centuries and are still associated with high quality sausage products. They offer a unique combination of properties that provide valuable processing characteristics and meet the requirements of an increasingly popular natural product. This material made from animal intestines for sausage casings is actually the submucosa, a collagen layer that provides strength to specific organs. Since the material used is collagen, the handling of the casings in the slaughterhouse and in the subsequent steps of the casings processing has a very clear impact on the utility of the final product.
As is the case with all collagen materials, the collagen in the casings hardens and becomes more difficult to dissolve through the application of salt. This is essentially the same process as that used for rawhide curing. Therefore, curing of casings in slaughterhouses has a lot to do with proper curing and the final quality of the finished casings.
The raw collagen material, which is the basic structure of animal casings, has unique properties that apply to the processing. Initially, when collagen is subjected to heat and drying, moisture permeability is reduced. This drying also affects smoke penetration.
Small-diameter animal casings are derived from the small intestines of pigs and sheep. Sheep casings are the smallest in diameter and the most tender. These are best suited for fresh sausages, without further processing to soften the casings, and for small diameter cooked and smoked sausages. There are different grades of sheep casings. grade B has small holes and is mainly suitable for coarsely ground fresh sausages. grade A is most suitable for emulsified sausages. Pork casings are used for certain types of fresh sausages as well as various smoked, dried and semi-dried sausages. They are somewhat softer than sheep casings.
During the smoking and cooking process, the initial critical steps of drying and smoking must be observed very carefully. The casings should be dry to a sticky consistency before smoke is applied. Otherwise, the smoke will penetrate the casings and deposit on the meat surface, which separates the casings and leads to a pale, lusterless appearance. Likewise, if the sausage is over-dried, the smoke will essentially only be deposited on the outer surface with little to no flavor impact. Animal casings are well suited for liquid smoking applications, either by drenching or atomization.
Even when carefully graded, animal casings lack a certain degree of uniformity and therefore their processability is somewhat limited. For this reason, the labor input required to process animal casings is somewhat higher than with machine-made casings. This is where the processor must make some management decisions based on the type of product being manufactured and the customers to whom it is to be sold.
SHENGMAO has different kinds of sausage casings for sale, and we offer casing clips and clipping machines, welcome your enquiry.
