- [Narrator] Funding for this program was provided in part by the RE Synergy Foundation, content for the sustainable world; G&C Foods, quality at every turn; Pittsburgh Spice and Seasoning Company, making life taste better; the Allen Family, Robert, Ashley, Carol, and Fred; and viewers like you.

(lively music) - I'm the son of a butcher.

- You might be a son of a butcher, but I'm the original butcher.

- Some ask me, "What is the meat industry to you?"

For me, it starts at a place where my family runs a grocery, butcher shop, and a catering business.

I'm sure it's about the business side of things, but for me, at its core, it's a story about relationships.

Thanks for joining us on this episode of "Son of a Butcher."

I'm A.J.

O'Neil, and this is my father, Gale O'Neil.

On this episode, we're gonna show you guys how to make our Cajun turkey lunch meat.

What makes it unique, as does all these episodes of "Son of a Butcher," is we're trying to make the healthiest version, cleanest label of products that we can throughout this.

That's been our niche here at O'Neil's Quality Foods is that we give good, quality meats.

Lunch meat is a big thing that people come to our location for, and we serve lots of deli sandwiches and stuff throughout the day.

So we're gonna let you look behind the scenes at how we make our turkey lunch meat.

Okay, we're gonna start off here.

I'm gonna show you guys how we trim up this turkey.

We got a batch of turkey tenders, and we got some whole turkey breasts here.

And we'll go ahead and get started here.

Dad, I'm gonna have you trim up a little bit of the connective tissue on the outside of these.

Another thing we look for is, oftentimes, when we buy in cases of these, right along the edge here, they'll leave that gristle line on.

So we wanna make sure we get the gristle line off as well.

So he did on the first one here, removed the tender right here.

And we're gonna separate out the tender.

It has a little bit more connective tissue, this line of tissue that comes through here.

So we're gonna separate that from the breast, and we do two different grinds when we're grinding, doing this process.

The intention is to make sure that with our leanest stuff like the breast meat, we're gonna run it through our largest diameter plate, which would be our 3/8.

And that'll give you like this nice, meaty bite.

And then, the turkey tenders, we're gonna go through what would be our hamburger plate, which is a 1/8 plate.

And that's gonna help to make sure that we're grinding up all this connective tissue and that when someone looks at the face of our turkey lunch meat, that they're not seeing any sinew or silver skin in there.

So that's what you can see right there.

He took the, he seamed out that that piece of the breast where we typically would have that connective tissue in there.

And making sure it's all trimmed up nice.

And then, we'll just cut it into a couple smaller pieces to go through the grinder.

- [Gale] No tissues at all on this.

(buoyant music) (string being bowed) (spring recoiling) - [Narrator] When it comes to over-the-counter deli meats, turkey, with a share of 34.6%, is even more popular than ham, followed by beef and chicken.

(buoyant music continues) - I'm gonna start doing the turkey tenders.

This is a job that dad says, "You can do that one.

"You got them little girly fingers."

So he always wants me to pull that connective tissue or the outside skin off of the tenders.

- Yeah, that SOB has multiple versions to it, depending on what time of day it is.

(knife clunks) (meat splatting) (meat splatting) - So this, the trimming and the work that we're doing right now, I'd say most commercial lunch meats, they won't focus on any of this.

They're pretty much gonna grind it and emulsify it as much as they can and take care of some of that other stuff through that initial process of what they're doing.

A lot of the turkey breast, turkey lunch meat, you're gonna see that you'd see in a commercial store.

They'll use mechanically separated chicken, which basically means they're gonna take chicken pieces, bone-in chicken pieces.

And they're gonna put it in a vat, and they're gonna use like water jets to pretty much blow all the remaining meat off of the bone.

And then, what they'll have afterwards, then they would put into their further processed stuff, whether it be turkey lunch meat or if it would be hotdogs or whatever.

Just as if many of these episodes and processes you're gonna see, we always say if you start out with quality raw materials, then you're gonna end up with a quality product in the end.

So we definitely make sure we take our time and go the extra mile even on these first initial steps.

And some of these tender, you'll have a little extra tendon on it, so I can clip those off as well.

Make sure they're not showing up later.

(knife cutting) - You can see it's all pure meat.

(meat splatting) This is where your turkey tender comes from.

(knife slicing) (knife scraping) - Here's a good example on this Turkey tender here.

You can see there's this connective tissue throughout that tender.

So what we could do is do more knife work and separate that out just like that to get it out.

And then, I could do everything through the big plate.

But that's a lot of extra labor that goes into that process, that's why we do the two different types of grinds, more for efficiency.

(meat splats) - That's some of these tendons that you might find in other products where you won't find in ours.

- All right, get the tenders over there.

(meat splatting) Okay, we got this stuff separated out.

And now, we're ready for the grinder.

(warm music) (string being bowed) (spring recoiling) - [Narrator] Cajun turkey is high in protein and offers essential vitamins and minerals like B vitamins, iron, and zinc.

It is a lean meat option, making it an excellent choice for those seeking a healthy yet satisfying meal.

- All right, now that dad and I trimmed up the turkey breasts and the turkey tenders, we weighed the product to see how much brine we were gonna need.

And so now, we're gonna mix up our brine.

So I got ice water here.

We need to, when we're adding this phosphate, which is gonna help to increase the pH of the meat, so we can hold onto the water.

It needs to be less than 40 degrees.

So now that we achieved that, then we're gonna go ahead and start mixing the phosphate into it.

(ice rattling) Now, I'm gonna keep mixing that phosphate until it's completely dissolved throughout the product.

Or I should say throughout the water.

(ice rattling continues) All right, we completely dissolve that out.

I can see the water start to clear up as it was dissolving.

So now, we're gonna add the salt.

(ice rattling) (ice rattling continues) So the salt in this instance has a few purposes.

One is to help to preserve the meat.

Now, this is our lunch meat that we're doing.

It's fully cooked, but it's an uncured product.

So we need the salt to kind of help with the window.

We have a seven-day window that we're allowed to use for doing this lunch meat.

So the salt's gonna help with that, but it's also gonna help too for the protein extraction of the turkey whenever we're in the tumbling process.

So you have to make sure you have certain levels of salt.

A minimum of 1.8% salt is what you need.

And since our salt levels is so high, you wouldn't wanna have a turkey lunch meat that as soon as you bite into it, all you can taste is salt.

Now, we need to kinda counteract that with the sugar.

So you can't just reduce the salt.

The salt is multifunctional in that, so now we're just gonna add some dextrose to help to sweeten this, so it's not so salty in the turkey.

(ice rattling) (ice rattling continues) (ice rattling continues) Okay, now we're gonna add the non-fat dried milk.

(ice rattling) This is gonna help to retain some of the moisture of the product.

(ice rattling continues) And then, lastly, we're gonna add this special vinegar.

This is to help against listeria.

(cozy music) (string being bowed) (spring recoiling) - [Narrator] Listeria is a hardy bacteria often spread through contaminated food such as deli meats, soft cheeses, and raw produce.

(ice rattling) (ice rattling continues) - Okay, and now that we've made our brine, we're gonna add it to our turkey product and put it in a tumbler and begin the tumble process.

(snug music) - [Person] He's on the green.

(Gale talking indistinctly) (Gale chuckling) (golf club thwacks) (viewers hooting) - Okay, and now we're gonna take the the turkey breast and grind 'em through the 3/8 plate.

(container clunks) (meat splatting) (container clunks) (machine grinding) (machine grinding continues) So there's our ground turkey breast, and now we're gonna swap out the plate, go to the smaller 1/8 plate and grind the tenders through.

(containers scrapes) (hardware clinking) (attachment rasping) (attachment clunking) (hardware clinking) (attachment rasping) (container scraping) Okay, now, we're gonna add our turkey tenders.

(container thuds) (meat splatting) (container clunking) (lid clinks) (machine grinding) (container clunking) All right, so we mixed both those grinds together.

You can see right there, I got the fine ground product and the coarser ground.

You can see 'em there.

We're gonna go to the tumbler with the brine and mix it for one hour.

(pleasant music) (machine humming) (pleasant music continues) (machine humming continues) (machine humming) (machine humming continues) All right, so we pulled this turkey lunch meat out of the tumbler.

You can see it's got a real nice bind to it, sticking to my hand, so we know it did a good job.

That's gonna mean whenever we stuff this into a loaf, it's gonna hold its texture and it'll hold together nicely.

I'm gonna set my stuffer to our portion size.

So I have it pre-programmed in here for our lunch meat size, so we can stay consistent.

(lid plops) All right, now, we got these casings.

This is a cloth casing or netting.

These ones actually, this is a really cool program.

A couple years ago, we got into this where we can buy these casings already pre-coated.

And so it happens whenever I stuff it into this casing, then it's gonna cook these spices.

And this is for our Cajun turkey that we're doing.

It's gonna cook these spices right on the outside of the turkey.

So this is a real cool plus.

This netting comes with the release agent, and that was always a big issue for us whenever we would net 'em, trying to get it off.

After it's cooked, the netting almost wants to cook onto the product.

And then, as you're peeling it off, it wants to pull some of the skin off the outside of it.

It kinda ruined the look of it.

I'd say, we used to do all of our turkeys as a whole muscle, and so we would inject them similar to what we do our roast beef.

And we'd just take two breasts, we'd tumble 'em, and stick 'em through the tube and net 'em.

And after we'd pull 'em out, whenever the girls were slicing it, sometimes they wanted to fall apart.

So when we started grinding these, the turkey breasts and the tenders and putting 'em together like this, we got a lot better bind.

(machine humming) And what's really cool about these is it actually has an elastic netting on it as well, so it gives us the shape of the squares.

Kinda gives it that nice home-style look.

- These stuffing, it also, it holds tension on it.

And what that does is keep all the air out of it, so there's no like holes in the turkey.

(machine humming continues) I guess I can't talk and tie at the same time.

- So we got this netting.

We also have it in a black pepper.

We have it for our capicola hams.

And we have some with a caramel color as well with the smoke already in it.

So you get some of that smoked flavor into the product.

This was a game changer.

This technology existed on a commercial, on a big-scale level for a long time.

And finally, they made it available for some smaller people like us.

Basically, some of these supply companies sold to one guy, and he's breaking down packages in order to get it to us.

(distant object clanging) We also do a Cajun ranch turkey lunch meat where I'll add ranch seasoning in it, as well as a little bit of Cajun.

(machine humming continues) (metal rod scraping) We don't wanna have any waste, so we went ahead with the material that was left in here and put that back in the lunch meat as well.

- There you go.

(steel table clunking) - And now, we're gonna take these turkeys, put 'em, lay 'em on the smoke rack and get 'em in the smoker.

(homely music) - Getting good crop this year size wise.

And you very seldom get jalapenos that big.

(homely music continues) That'd be good stuffers right there.

- [Person] Yeah.

- Flavor-wise, the best.

There's a little fellow coming on there.

There's another nice, big guy right here, right off the plant.

- All right, we're back.

Our turkey lunch meat is done.

It actually went through the whole cooking process, and then it went through the cooling process.

So we're gonna pull it out and show you what it looks like.

(door latch clunks) We're gonna pull our internal temperature probe outta here.

And so here's our turkey lunch meat.

We're gonna go ahead and cut the casing off it.

I wanna show you how nice and easy that netting peels off of it.

I told you before, it has that release agent in it, so that net will come off real nice.

(knife clinks) (knife clinks) And so I told you before that this netting had spice coated on the inside.

You can see there isn't any spice left on that netting, and it's now all on the turkey.

So I'll go ahead and cut this.

(knife clinks) And there's our Turkey lunch meat.

So now, we'll take it up to the deli and sell it for our retail customers.

(easygoing music) (easygoing music continues) (easygoing music continues) Thanks for joining us this week, another episode of "Son of a Butcher," as we made our Cajun turkey lunch meat.

- If you're ever in the Clarion area, stop in and try our award-winning lunch meat.

Everything's homemade.

(easygoing music continues) (easygoing music continues) - Hey, we're back with another episode of "Son of a Butcher."

I'm A.J.

O'Neil.

- That son of a butcher.

(everyone chuckling) (easygoing music continues) (door squeaks) And that's all folks.

(chuckling) - [Narrator] Funding for this program was provided in part by the RE Synergy Foundation, content for the sustainable world; G&C Foods, quality at every turn; Pittsburgh Spice and Seasoning Company, making life taste better; the Allen Family, Robert, Ashley, Carol, and Fred; and viewers like you.