Meat tenderizer with force limiting apparatus and orthogonal blade set

Abstract

A mechanical meat tenderizer having the features of a force-limiting apparatus and an orthogonal blade set. The tenderizer comprises a set of orthogonal knife cutting blades and a reciprocable head for releasably holding individual knife cutting blades for insertion into meat to be tenderized. The reciprocable head comprises a meat securing member such as a hold-down plate, a blade orienting member such as an orientation plate for orienting the knives, and a friction plate for providing a predetermined frictional release force for independently positioning and holding the set of orthogonal blades so that when any one of the orthogonal blades encounters a release force exceeding the predetermined release force the blade is released and not damaged. The orthogonal blade set preferably includes straight blades and orthogonal blades, each having a spring or frictional member for frictionally engaging a respective portion of a friction bar.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.