Even ancient people thought of ramming minced meat into the washed intestines of animals. So this product has been with a person for a long time, and there is hardly anyone who has never eaten a sausage in their life. November 13 is even declared its international day. It is interesting that some consider sausages a convenient alternative to meat and calmly give them to children, others are sure that they are terribly harmful, solid soy and chemistry. Who is right?
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– Once upon a time, sausages were made by hand: good quality meat was finely chopped, lard, salt, spices were added, minced meat was stuffed into the intestines. Such a product was also served in restaurants – with truffles, for example, stewed in wine or cream. And then industrial meat grinders appeared, and the recipe changed, – technologist Ekaterina Melnikova tells the story of the product. – In the USSR, by order of the people’s commissar of the food industry, Anastas Mikoyan, 20 meat processing plants were built in different cities. In 1936, the production of sausages was launched. GOST was approved: sausages should contain more than 50 percent of natural meat. Plus spices, milk powder or cream, as well as sodium nitrite – preservative E250. It retains an appetizing pink color (otherwise sausages and sausages would be gray like boiled meat), but its main task is to eliminate the risk of anaerobic microorganisms, such as the causative agent of botulism.
Now, as you know, we do not have GOST, but technical conditions, but this does not mean that sausages have become worse. You just need to pay attention to the category – it should be indicated on the label. The letter designations correspond to the amount of muscle tissue, that is, meat, in the product:
- A – 80%
- B – 60 – 80%
- B – 40 – 60%
Quality sausages cannot cost less than a kilo of meat from which they are made. What they put in a cheap product, I personally can’t predict. Most likely, this is an emulsion of skin, veins, cartilage and offal, thickened with starch and flavored from the heart with flavors, dyes, spices.
What else do you need to know:
- The shelf life of loose sausages in a natural casing is three, in an artificial one – five days. Vacuum-packed – 10 – 15 days, but once the package is opened, you have three days to eat them.
- You can keep sausages in the freezer for up to two months. Then they will gradually lose their taste.
- Too bright pink means that the dye was overdone. The color of sausages should be restrained.
- If you see any herbal ingredients in the composition – return the package to the shelf.
- Do not take chicken and turkey sausages as dietary. Minced poultry meat is quite liquid. Therefore, starch plus vegetable, such as carrot, fiber is used to retain moisture. In general, it’s better to just cook chicken, and take traditional sausages.
- In production, sausages are thermally processed. So you don’t need to boil them for a long time. You can pour hot water, hold for a minute in boiling water or heat in the microwave (just make cuts so that they do not burst).
Mixed and famous
Born in Frankfurt, Johann Laner moved to Vienna and opened a butcher’s shop. It was he who came up with the idea of mixing ground beef with pork, so that the sausages turned out to be exceptionally juicy. It is believed that for the first time such sausages went on sale on November 13, 1805, and this date went down in history as the birthday of the sausage.
Frankfurt and Vienna to this day dispute the right to be considered the birthplace of sausages. At the same time, in Austria such sausages are called Frankfurt (herr Laner decided so), and in other countries – Viennese.
Do not give children
Nutritionists are skeptical about sausages. It is definitely not recommended to give them to young children, although special ones are now being produced for them, in which there seem to be fewer preservatives (they are not even as pink as the “adult” product). But still without additives in production in any way. Plus a lot of fat and salt. In general, we do not give children under five years of age, then – no more than once a week. However, adults are also advised to adhere to the same frequency. With hypertension, obesity, metabolic disorders, allergies, gastrointestinal diseases, sausages will have to be abandoned.
What is the salt
We borrowed a funny word for Russian hearing from the French. Their saucisse comes from the Latin salscius, “salty”. In the XVIII century in the Russian language there was a variant of “socisk”.
Keep in mind
- After manual deboning of carcasses, meat still remains on the bones. It is sent to a separator press: mechanically deboned meat is obtained (it may be indicated on the labels: MMO). The unit separates the main bones from the meat, but some part is still ground. Cartilage and fat also get into minced meat. In general, there is nothing wrong with this, except that the protein in such a product is half as much, and there is more fat than in the one from normal meat. As a rule, MMO goes for boiled sausages and inexpensive sausages.
- 76 hot dogs in ten minutes – the world record for eating sausages.
Photo source: Ivan Makeev/KP