A sausage room can be rigged up very cheap; all you need to start with is a small Enterprise grinder, so that you can grind up your trimmings and work them into sausage, and by working the meat trimmings up into the different formulas that we give in our book, “Secrets of Meat Curing and Sausage Making,” you will not have any loss, as all of your trimmings can be worked up to good advantage. You also should make a great display of your own cured corned beef and turn out fine corned beef, so that when your customers buy it, they are well pleased. The main thing in the success of running a retail market is that the butcher understands how to buy his live stock so that he gets the right quality of beef and gets it at the right price. If you have good meats to sell you will have no trouble in selling them, but if you have poor goods to sell, you may sell them to a customer once or twice, but the third time the customer will not come near you. The same thing holds good with you; if you were buying some of your supplies from the jobber and the jobber did not send you good goods, you may try him once more and if he again sends you poor goods, the third time you certainly will not buy from him, but you will go to some other jobber who will give you the best goods for your money. Your customers are just as smart and as sensitive as you are, and want the same kind of treatment that you like, so if you will always treat your customers as you would like to be treated yourself if you were buying meat at a market, you are bound to meet with success.
CUTTING UP MEATS—NECESSARY FOR EXPERIENCE.
Query.—J. J. writes: I have decided to go into the meat business and would like to know if you can advise me of some booklet or pamphlet on cutting up meat; also let me know the price of your book, and if you know of a good firm handling butcher supplies and refrigerators.
Ans.—We judge from your inquiry that you are inexperienced in the meat business, and if such is the case, we would advise that you go to work for some good butcher for a while before going into the business for yourself. You could there learn the practical side of the business, and provided you do not now understand how to cut up meat to the greatest profit, you could acquire knowledge upon these points which would be of more value to you than volumes that could be written upon the subject. We most emphatically advise you to learn the business thoroughly before embarking into it on your own account. We take great pleasure in sending you our booklet, “Secrets of Meat Curing and Sausage Making,” which you will find of great value to you in teaching you to cure meat and make sausage.
IMITATION FREEZE-EM PICKLE.
Query.—L. M. writes: “M—— & ——, from whom I buy most of my butcher supplies, handle an imitation of your Freeze-Em Pickle which they claim is the same as your preparation. I do not want it and will not have it. They tried to convince me that what they had is what I want, but I have used Freeze-Em Pickle for years and, knowing from your advertisements that there are imitations of it, I want to steer clear of them. Will you please send me the name of a jobber handling Freeze-Em Pickle near me?”
Ans.—This is a clear case of an attempt for a substitution of spurious goods for those of our manufacture. These dealers can not help knowing that our customers want Freeze-Em-Pickle, and nothing else, but for the sake of reaping an illegitimate profit, they misrepresent imitation goods as being the same as ours. We wish to state that there is only one Freeze-Em-Pickle, and all claims to the contrary are absolutely false. They are merely the tricks of illegitimate dealers to pirate the good reputation made by our preparations. In order to be convinced of the superiority of Freeze-Em-Pickle, it is only necessary to test it with any preparation purporting to be the same or similar to it and selling under similar names, which are calculated to deceive.
SOURING OF HAM IN SMOKE HOUSE.
Query.—M. P. M. writes: “I am having trouble with my hams souring in the smokehouse. They seem to get too much smoke. What can you suggest that will help me to avoid this trouble and to keep my hams sweet?”
Ans.—You are mistaken in supposing that your hams sour from getting too much smoke; that is not the trouble. Hams will not sour from such cause. Your trouble is owing entirely to the fact that the hams are not properly and fully cured before going into the smoke house. Smoke aids to preserve hams and will not cause them to sour. They sour because the portion that has not been thoroughly cured, which is generally close to the bone, has not been reached by the brine. In many cases souring comes from imperfect chilling of meat before putting it into the brine; then again you may not have overhauled the meat at the proper time and with the frequency which good curing requires. In the first place, the hog should not be killed when overheated or excited. Second, after they have been scalded and scraped, they must be dressed as quickly as possible, washed out thoroughly with clean water, then split and allowed to hang in a well ventilated room until partly cooled off. They should then be run into a cooler or chilling room as quickly as possible, where the temperature should be reduced to 32 to 34 degrees Fahrenheit. They should be allowed to thus chill for 24 hours for medium size hogs. When hogs are properly chilled, the temperature of the inside of the ham or shoulder will not be more than one to one and one-half degrees higher than the cooler. Those without ice machinery for curing, who are using common ice houses, can employ the crushed ice method for chilling the meat. By this is meant to put the meat on the floor and throw cracked ice over it, and thus allow it to remain over night. After being thoroughly chilled, the hams must undergo the various processes which you will find set forth in our book, “Secrets of Meat Curing and Sausage Making,” which we take pleasure in sending to you free of charge. If you will follow the directions contained in this book you will never have trouble with soured hams from imperfect curing or other causes.