Traditionally, the mixing process has been used to combine meat with other ingredients, or to extract protein to improve moisture and fat binding, as well as texture, upon cooking. Today, mixing is increasingly being combined with processes such as cooking and chilling to improve these processes and the final products. Chilling in a mixer can be an effective process, whether the chilling is applied to cooked meat blends or to raw meat blends that are to be further processed.
Traditionally, kettles were used to cook meat to make products such as chili, taco meat, etc. Daniel Voit of Blentech has talked about this subject at OSU’s Thermal Processing Short Course and he has emphasized that cooking meat products in a horizontal, jacketed mixer (with horizontal agitators) results in more even mixing and less damage to the meat particles during cooking, compared to kettles or mixers with vertical agitators. Meat particles are also more likely to settle out when mixed in a kettle or mixer with vertical agitator, which can result in uneven cooking of meat particles.