Comminuted meat products and apparatuses and methods for producing comminuted meat products
Assigneeempirical foods, inc.
InventorNicholas A. Roth
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A method includes receiving a stream of input material made up of pieces of meat and separating a first material and a second material from the input material. The first material includes liquified meat fat and the second material includes raw lean meat. Fat granules are formed from a portion of the first material. A quantity of the meat fat granules at a meat fat blending temperature are then combined with a quantity of the second material at a lean meat blending temperature to produce a target comminuted meat product having a target lean point.
Claims19
An apparatus for producing a raw comminuted meat product, the apparatus including:
- (a) an input heat exchange system connected to receive a stream of input material, the input material including pieces of meat, and the input heat exchange system being operable to heat the input material to produce a separation input material, the separation input material comprising a mixture of liquified meat fat and raw lean meat;
- (b) a separator system connected to receive a portion of the separation input material and to separate a first material and a second material from the separation input material so that the first material and the second material are separate from each other, the first material including a portion of the liquified meat fat included in the separation input material and being substantially free of lean meat, the second material including a portion of the raw lean meat included in the separation input material;
- (c) a meat fat granule production system connected to receive a portion of first material and produce meat fat granules from the received portion of the first material;
- (d) a raw lean meat heat exchange system connected to receive a portion of the second material and cool the received portion of the second material;
- and
- (e) a mixing system adapted to receive a quantity of the meat fat granules at a meat fat blending temperature and to receive a quantity of the second material at a lean meat blending temperature and mix the received quantity of the meat fat granules and the received quantity of the second material to produce a target comminuted meat product having a target lean point.
An apparatus including:
- (a) an input stream processing system that is operable to (i) receive a stream of input material including pieces of meat, (ii) produce a first material and a second material from the stream of input material, the first material including liquified meat fat and the second material including raw lean meat, and (iii) form meat fat granules from a portion of the first material;
- (b) a mixing vessel configured to receive a portion of the meat fat granules formed by the input stream processing system and to receive a portion of the second material produced by the input stream processing system;
- and
- (c) a raw comminuted meat product at a target lean point contained within the mixing vessel, the raw comminuted meat product comprising a mixture of a quantity of the meat fat granules received from the input stream processing system and a quantity of the second material received from the input stream processing system.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.