Bowl Cutter?

[Mark Evenden]

Hi

Firstly I am not a butcher so please forgive any errors.

I actually breed Discus fish for a living and we feed them a food made from Beef Heart - I have imported the food for 20 years but it has now been stopped so we have to make the food ourselves, but I am not doing very well.

Basically we have to trim the hearts down to just the lean meat - this is minced down to 3mm - all of which I can do.

But the next stage involves mixing / chopping it finer still - a college in Germany said we need a machin that makes Liver Sausage ( that is the texture we need to achieve)

Domestic blenders are not up to it (we do batches of 30 to 40kg at a time)

I was told to get a "bowl cutter" but these are too expensive - then I looked at Robot Coupe blenders, again rather pricey, but end of the day I need to be able to make the minced heart into a paste.

Any pointers would be appreciated and appologies for the long post

Thanks

mark

[wheels]

Hi Mark,

As you'll appreciate, we're not geared up to answer questions about fish!

But you're correct, to make an emulsion of larger quantities of meat, a bowl cutter is what's needed.

For small amounts, we use high-end domestic food processors. For slightly larger amounts, you'd look to a Robot-chef. But, for the amounts you want to process, I can't see any alternative but a bowl-cutter.

The only suggestion I can make is that you find someone who uses one, and either contract them to do the job for you, or let you use it.

Other than that, look to Ebay and bankruptcy auctions.

Sorry to be so negative, maybe another member can help more.

Phil

[crustyo44]

I have seen cheap Chinese bowl cutters for around AU $ 450.00
Google Alibaba.com for info and prices and if the manufacturer handles trial shipments.
These cheap ones might be OK for us hobbyists, for 30-40 kg batches you might have to buy something more sturdy.
Here in Australia we have businesses that sell reconditioned butchery equipment, I bet you have them
where you live as well.
Good luck.
Jan.

[DanMcG]

Where are you locate? A used bowl cutter will cost under $2000 here in NY

[RodinBangkok]

Actually you have another option to a bowl cutter, thats a vertical blade cutter, here's a vid of one, there are a lot of different versions out there, we have a Chinese made version, it looks like a giant robo coup. These are used in Asia, and here in Thailand especially for making fish balls and veg pastes but can be used for meats. They will emulsify quite well. The downside to these is they heat up the emulsion they are making more than a bowl cutter, and are not as well suited for controlling texture. But for your application I think you might look to one of these.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWfdrlh9KXM

[Mark Evenden]

Thank you everyone.

I don't need to do 30-40 kg in one hit - we can do smaller amounts - couple of kilos per "spin" so to speak so might get away with a decent food processor.

Its quite an eye opener as to how much stuff costs !

[Tintin]

I picked up a Hobart 18 inch Bowl Cutter for £200 on Ebay you just need to keep looking
works fantastic for fine cutting mixing and emulsifying for polish and frankfurters http://photobucket.com/tintinspic?albumview=slideshow