Meat Smoothie | National Geographic

so how do you turn two tons of meat into
a hot dog we do that over in the
chopping room it’s right this way now if
you’re a vegetarian
you might want to look away
the meet arrives here in two thousand
pound bins so the first step in making a
hot dog involves raking the meat into
these smaller stainless steel carts next
a worker dumps the bull meat into a
giant mixing bowl called the chopper as
the chopper spins a rotating stainless
steel blade grinds to meat
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to make sure the dogs taste like a hot
dog workers also add water salt a sugar
substitute called sorbitol and something
called liquid smoke so bread cooks its
hotdogs in an oven but the liquid smoke
makes them taste like they came out of a
smokehouse next they add the beef
trimmings along with a packet of blended
spices what kind of spices do you guys I
can’t tell you it’s our secret it’s our
it’s our proprietary secret lab all
right oregano I can tell you but I’d
have to shoot you the last ingredients
of bread ads has nothing to do with
taste
it’s called sodium nitrite sodium
nitrite is a curing agent it helps to
give us the color we’re looking for as
well as extend our shelf life all right
so what color are you looking for – hot
dog we’re really looking for a nice dark
reddish brown
all right if we left out sodium nitrite
what will we get we would have a gray
hot dog very well don’t go for gray on
no they don’t after the mixture spends
another minute in the chopper
a worker activates a large rotating
blade called the dumper wheel
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this channel’s the beef slurry into a
giant funnel which is the top of a
machine called the emulsifier
down below four plates grind the meat
even more just like a mill when it comes
out the other side it looks like a meat
smoothie
and what happens next nothing at least
for the next 24 hours
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you