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What on earth is bologna made of? I'm sure that most people are aware that bologna is meat but exactly what remains a mystery to me?

I've noticed that it has a similar texture and flavor whether it is turkey, beef, chicken, or pork so my assumption is that it is not at all regular meat. What is it? And is it high in purines?

Writing bologna off as simply organ meat could make it anything, in my opinion -- from skin to bone marrow to tongue to lung to brains! Yuck! Regular beef meat, for example, could never be made out to be light pink or whitish tan. Does any one know specifics as to what this stuff is?

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Hi Anon . I looked up Bologna for you and found this, this and this.

As for the purine content, see here.

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Regular beef meat, for example, could never be made out to be light pink or whitish tan.

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Add enough additional fat, and you could make it as light pink as you want. Thats also how ground beef is made.

You know how you can by different fat percentages. Do you think there is somebody in the meat room running some time conduming experiment on how much fat is in the beef and then labeling it as such? Not at all.

You have a bucket of lean beef (scraps, and usuaiy a sub-primal cut called two peice boneless chuck - same part used to make London Broils) You also have a bucket of beef fat (from trimmings)

You run the beef through the grinder and compare the outcome to a color chart. If its too red, you dump it back in, whith a couple pounds of fat and run it though again. Still, too red, then add more fat. The lighter pink it becomes, the more fat is in it.

There is a color chart which shows the color for 80%, 85%, and 90 or 92% lean.

Welcome to the world of what you eat

(Some cheaper bologna also has dry milk in it as well)

-dave



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You're drunk again!
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Writing bologna off as simply organ meat could make it anything, in my opinion -- from skin to bone marrow to tongue to lung to brains! Yuck! Regular beef meat, for example, could never be made out to be light pink or whitish tan. Does any one know specifics as to what this stuff is?

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Sorry to burst a bubble for you, but sausages are mostly just a way to make eating all the bits of an animal that you'd rather not see the shape of, palatable. Only very high-class sausages will involve a high percentage of regular muscle meat. The rest will be varying quantities of various organs and other stuff you probably wouldn't eat if it was served to you straight.

I forget who it was who said it but it's pretty much true, "Anyone who sees either laws or sausages being made will lose respect for both."

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Wow Dave, I thought it would be a bit more scientific than that. Something that actually included measuring the porportions of lean and fat.

I guess that is difficult since the meat used already has varying degrees of fat in it depending on the cut.

Very interesing. Thanks.

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Yeah, I was sort of suprized by that as well. One thing that I am happy to report, is on sanitation. At least in the store I was in. Everything; tables, floors, walls, knives, tubs, saws, cubers, and the grinder was broken down at the end of every cutting day and washed, sanitized, and rinsed.

-dave


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You're drunk again!
No, I'm just exhausted 'cause I've been up all night drinking.


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There are certain foods of which I DO NOT want to know the ingredients. Bologna is one of them. Also hot dogs.
When I was a kid my mother made me Braunschweiger sandwiches and I loved them. Then in my late teens I found out an alternative name for it was Liverwurst I never ate it again

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But why not? If it was tasty before hand, why would it no longer be tasty after you found it was a liver sausage. There are a lot of liver sausages out there. There are also a lot of "variety meat" sausages (and other foods) out there. Many are tasty BECAUSE of whats in them, not IN SPITE of whats in them. Black pudding would not be black pudding without the blood.

One of my favorite dishes is liberkaske - Liver Cheese. The name might throw you, but if you can find a place that will make fresh, hot, Liberkaske sandwitches, then you are a lucky man (I happly, do know of such a place )

mmmmm. Liberkaske








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You're drunk again!
No, I'm just exhausted 'cause I've been up all night drinking.


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You know how you can by different fat percentages. Do you think there is somebody in the meat room running some time conduming experiment on how much fat is in the beef and then labeling it as such? Not at all.

You have a bucket of lean beef (scraps, and usuaiy a sub-primal cut called two peice boneless chuck - same part used to make London Broils) You also have a bucket of beef fat (from trimmings)

You run the beef through the grinder and compare the outcome to a color chart. If its too red, you dump it back in, whith a couple pounds of fat and run it though again. Still, too red, then add more fat. The lighter pink it becomes, the more fat is in it.

There is a color chart which shows the color for 80%, 85%, and 90 or 92% lean.

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Hi Dave, if I may interject, I used to work in a factory (for 6 months) that produced meat patties, and I used to load up the frozen 30kg slabs of meat/fat to be minced.

Each recipe called for different contents of different leanness of the meat, so from that you could judge how much fat would have to be added. Then you would take a few handfuls, take it off to the quality control room, put it in a little blender, put a small portion of it onto a tray for a machine to analyse and it would then display the fat content.

Whether it did it by colour matching I'm not sure, but I can't imagine they'd bother with a machine when an eye could probably do the job just as easily, and more cheaply.

Once you were given the analysis, you'd go back and add more meat or more fat until the machine was happy.

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