Abstract: Methods and apparatus are disclosed for producing irregular pieces of meat from meat products. Further, a method of mass-producing a home-style meat product with an irregular appearance includes combining whole muscle meat with a mixture having a low-phosphate solution and/or a low-salt solution and cooking the combination to produce whole muscle meat logs. Once the whole muscle meat has been cooked, the meat may be pulled, shredded, or sliced on a variety of pulling, shredding, and slicing equipment to create a home-style meat product with an irregular appearance.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus are disclosed for producing irregular pieces of meat from meat products. Further, a method of mass-producing a home-style meat product with an irregular appearance includes combining whole muscle meat with a mixture having a low-phosphate solution and/or a low-salt solution and cooking the combination to produce whole muscle meat logs. Once the whole muscle meat has been cooked, the meat may be pulled, shredded, or sliced on a variety of pulling, shredding, and slicing equipment to create a home-style meat product with an irregular appearance.

Abstract: A food product having a pre-cooked loose meat filling along with a seasoning mix is provided in an edible casing. The edible casing is filled with the pre-cooked loose meat filling and the seasoning mix to produce a filled casing that is subsequently cooked to produce a meat link. The food product also may have a raw meat batter that is combined with the pre-cooked loose meat filling and filled into the edible casing along with the pre-cooked loose meat filling prior to subsequent cooking of the meat link. The pre-cooked loose meat filling may include discrete, not fully ground meat material including meat finely chopped, diced, chunks, shred, and splinters of meat. Alternatively, the pre-cooked loose meat filling may include cooked ground meat, though the pre-cooked loose meat filling will still have individual pieces larger than an emulsified product.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus are disclosed for producing irregular pieces of meat from meat products. Further, a method of mass-producing a home-style meat product with an irregular appearance includes combining whole muscle meat with a mixture having a low-phosphate solution and/or a low-salt solution and cooking the combination to produce whole muscle meat logs. Once the whole muscle meat has been cooked, the meat may be pulled, shredded, or sliced on a variety of pulling, shredding, and slicing equipment to create a home-style meat product with an irregular appearance.

Abstract: A system and method are provided that allow meat logs to be manually loaded into a slicing station and thereafter be continuously automatically processed at the slicing station, a harping station, and an insertion station for automated packaging thereof without the need for handling of the meat stacks by workers. To this end, the slicing station is effective to form smaller sections or chubs from the meat logs and to do so such that the chubs are provided with substantially parallel flat end-faces to ensure that high quality meat slices are generated therefrom. The chubs are then transported to the harping station where each of the chubs undergoes a single cutting operation, thus simultaneously forming the meat slices therefrom and substantially maintaining the slices in the configuration of the chubs for generating well-formed stacks of the slices.