After spending the first half of the semester learning about ingredients and procedures used in making further processed meat products and gaining hands-on experience in lab, we were asked to work in pairs to develop a new product. Initially, my partner and I were determined to create a wine summer sausage. After many failed trial runs during our limited time, we decided to save the wine for another time and switch flavor profiles to a jalapeno popper-inspired summer sausage. Only two trial runs led us to our final formulation, which happened to be tasty and eye-catching. A focus group study was performed and received positive feedback, so we proceeded with our Poppin' Summer Sausage. We took our product and planned everything from the final formulation to the cooking process, type of packaging, nutrition label, production process in an industry setting, and pricing. At the final meeting of the class, all seven groups offered samples to a large array of people who were asked to rank the products 1st through 7th. Our product came in 3rd place, falling only two points short of 2nd.
Overall, I found this project extremely interesting because it gave me insight on what is done by research and development scientists in the meat industry. Although it was a lot of work going through each step and figuring out where improvements and changes should be made, this project was, by far, my favorite part of the semester.