Sausage casings or sausage skins are the material used to wrap the sausage filling. In the past, sausages were produced using naturally available casings, such as those from pigs, sheep, goats, cattle, and sometimes horses. Due to the shortage of natural resources, today's sausage casings are mainly made from film-forming polymers, utilizing collagen, cellulose and plastics such as polyamide, polypropylene and polyethylene.
Sheep and pig casings are sold in bundles or bales. They can be dry salted and then need to be rinsed before use. During the rinsing process, the casings can be checked for strength, perforation and compliance with size specifications. Pre-rinsed casings are packaged in a brine solution. The pre-tubed casings are wrinkled on the plastic casing; these can then be transferred directly to the stuffing corner. To increase productivity, some processors will rinse the casings in a separate location and then pull them onto a stainless steel mandrel so they can be quickly applied to the stuffing corners.
During the smoking and cooking process, the initial critical steps of drying and smoking must be observed very carefully. Before using smoke, the casings should be dried to a sticky consistency. If this is not the case, the smoke will penetrate the casings and deposit on the surface of the meat, thus separating the casings and causing a pale, dull appearance. By the same token, if the sausage is over-dried, the smoke flavor will essentially be deposited only on the outer surface with little to no flavor effect. Animal casings are well suited for liquid smoke applications, either by wetting or by atomization.
A variety of large diameter natural casings are available. Beef meatballs from small intestines are commonly used to make ring-shaped sausages. In terms of processing characteristics, the same processing methods as for sheep and pig casings can be used. From a palatability standpoint, beef rounds are probably the largest diameter casings that one would classify as still edible. Some of these larger diameter sausages require support when hanging; the support may be a series of rope loops or nets. Most beef casings are usually removed from the sausage before serving.
S632 U clips
One type of large diameter casing that is often used is the sewn casing, specifically the sewn plug. Sewn raw pork stuffers are used not only for some use salami and smoked sausages also for all types of liver products. Sometimes these sewn casings are lined with paper or another animal casings, such as pork belly lined with beef middle. In the case of sewn stuffing, the fatty layer of the stuffing is left on the inside of the casing. Special attention should be paid to these casings to check the degree of rancidity of this fat layer. Salt can trigger rancidity, and unless these casings are carefully and properly processed, the fat layer may be sour.
Even after careful grading, animal casings lack a degree of uniformity and are therefore limited in processability. For this reason, processing animal casings requires a higher labor input than processing machine-made casings. This is where processors must make some management decisions based on the type of product being manufactured and the customers to be sold.
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