Hebrew National Hot Dogs

hey guys, this is austin with waltonstv! andwelcome to meatgistics and how to make hot dogs .....at waltonsinc.com meatgistics is the process of transformingmeat from animal to edible, and today we will be making 100% beef hot dogs from beef trim.however, hot dogs can truly be made from either

Hebrew National Hot Dogs, beef, pork, turkey, chicken, or a combinationof any of them. for something to be really called a hot dog though, it must have a veryminute particle size, or something that is emulsified. in a hot dog meat particle size so small that the fat particlescompared to the lean are basically indistinguishable.

another staple of hot dogs, is to make a skinlessproduct, or not have a casing on the final product. this is not a requirement though.many people still do and can use a natural casing or collagen casing. today we are makinghot dogs using a cellulose or plastic casing which we will remove once the hot dogs havebeen cooked and smoked. we will also make a few hot dogs with collagen casings so wecan compare the difference between the two. we are starting out with 100% beef, in a 25pound meat block that is about 85% lean and 15% fat. if it is possible with your meatblock, separate the fat from the lean, because when you mix and process just half of thelean meat, but use all of the salt and seasoning in it, it will help maintain a temporarilyhigher salt content which will help with the

emulsification of protein in the meat andthe binding of the rest of the meat, fat and water together in the final product. our meatblock today is lean enough, being only 15% fat, that we will do everything all at once.if you have a higher fat content, like up to 30 or 40 percent, then i would separatethe fat and grind separately and mix separately for the first half of the mixing cycle. now we are ready to grind we will grind everything 3 times. first througha 3/8 inch (or 10mm) plate, and then twice through a 1/8 inch (or 3mm) plate. now on to mixing. this is when we will addall of our ingredients. for 25 pounds of meat,

we will need one quart of ice cold water,one 6 ounce package of sure gel meat binder, one package of walton's hot dog seasoning,and one package of our 1 oz sure cure we will start by mixing the sure gelinto our water. it will have a bit of a tendency to clump, so it will take a couple minutesto try and get it as dissolved as possible. now, we'll start the mixer, which is our weston44 pound meat mixer, attached to our #22 weston meat grinder. i'm a bit lazy, so when we hookup the meat mixer to the grinder, we don't actually have to crank the handle, the grinderwill automatically turn the mixing paddles for us. using a meat mixer is definitely preferredfor making hot dogs. many other products like a fresh bratwurst, i would say it is completelyfine to hand mix, and while it is possible

to hand mix when making hot dogs, it is extremelydifficult just because we have to make sure we get a lot of protein extraction, wherethe meat gets really sticky, to make the final product turn out right. hand mixing will takea lot longer to mix, and may not turn out as ideal of a product as using a meat mixerwould. as we run the meat mixer, we can begin toslowly add in the seasoning, then the sure cure, and lastly the water and sure gel mixture.we will need to mix for at least 8 minutes, and we also need to reverse the mixing directionabout every minute. with the mixing done, here you can see justhow sticky the meat is. this protein extraction is vital for our final product turning outcorrectly. with mixing done, we'll now load

up our walton's 26 pound sausage stuffer andget to stuffing. just be careful when loading the stuffer to try and avoid having any airpockets. for stuffing, just remember that stuffingcorrectly takes practice. you may not stuff a perfect product on the first try, but youshould pick it up pretty quickly. we want the casing to be firm, but we don't want toforce it to where we get blow outs or so full that we cannot twist link. when we start twist linking, remember youonly have to twist every other link. what you do is simply pinch the casing, and twistthe link. then, move down the rope pinch the casing and twist again. repeat this processuntil the whole rope is twist linked.

we are almost ready to cook now. since wedid not use something like sodium erythorbate, smoked meat stabilizer, or cure excellerator,we are going to have to hold the hot dogs in the fridge for about 12 hours, and thenwe will start cooking. if you want to avoid the holding period, simply use one of theadditives like sodium erythorbate, smoked meat stabilizer, or cure excellerator availableat waltonsinc.com and you can cook your product immediately after stuffing into casing. ourcook cycle will be this: 15 minutes at 120 degrees, 30 minutes at 130 degrees, 30 minutesat 140, 30 minutes at 150 with high humidity, and then increase the smokehouse temp to 175and cook with high humidty until we hit an internal temperature of 150 degrees and holdthat internal temp for at least 4 minutes

so we meet lethality. to guarantee meetinglethality, you can also cook until you hit a 160 degree internal temp. the final stepis to just shower the product for about 15 minutes to help set the casing and cool theproduct. when everything is done, we'll bring the hot dogs back in and show you the finalproduct. here is our final cooked product. they turnedout really good and look fantastic! we did have a little bit of a problem getting thetwist links to stay as we tried to hang the hot dogs on smoke sticks, so we changed tojust laying them flat on racks to smoke and then tied a few of the twist links to helphold them together better. do remember that since we used a cellulose casing, we'll needto strip the casing off, but it is pretty

easy to do and there is a convenient blackstripe on the casing so we can easily see what casings have or have not yet been removed. now we've got a few casings stripped off,here is what the final version of the hot dogs looks like, compared to with the cellulosecasing on, plus the difference between the collagen casings we also used for some ofthe hot dogs. the biggest advantage of using the collagen is that we do not have to stripoff the casing and it is edible. however, these that we did with cellulose are reallya more traditional hot dog. for a process for making hot dogs at home, these turnedout really well, but to get even closer to a real traditional hot dog, you would wantto use a bowl chopper or emulsifier, plus

use a steam cook cycle instead of a normalsmokehouse or oven. without those things, these hot dogs turned out as good as we couldhave hoped for and are quite delicious! that wraps things up, so hopefully you havea better understanding on how to make hot dogs now. make sure you subscribe to our waltonstvchannel to stay up-to-date on all of our latest

videos, and, if you like this video make sureyou hit that thumbs up or like button below. as always, visit our website at waltonsinc.comto find everything but the meat! that's all for today. thanks for watching meatgistcsand how to make hot dogs. i'm austin with waltonstv and i'll see you guys next