We have a tumbler that holds about 30 lbs of meat. Sometimes we keep it running all day and barely keep up with what we're selling. If it's a good tri tip ad, and it's the weekend.

Ours is a 20 lb tumbler, we do good with it . three favorites are Burgundy Pepper Marinade, Butter Garlic Marinade, Herb & Garlic Marinade. We mostly do orders as they come, steaks mostly

Ok, I've heard of these vacuum tumblers but what exactly do they do?
Can anyone enlighten me. I am always looking for an edge over the competition.
Butcheroo Oz-stalia (down under)

Hi butcheroo, Glad to see you on the board again, Heard ya'll have had some bad flooding down there again.

Vacuum tumbling is a method of marinating meat, poultry and seafood to provide ready to cook, value added products at either the food processing plant or the supermarket/butcher shop. The vacuum causes the product to absorb more marinade, which makes the product juicier and faster cooking. The tumbling massages the product, which makes it more tender. The result is a tasty product which your customers will love!

A tumbling program enables you to provide the high quality, ready to cook or ready to eat products today's customers demand. You will give your customers a tender, juicy, flavorful product which they can take home and immediately pop in the oven or throw on the grill, or even one which you have already cooked for them. You will boost your meat, seafood and deli departments' sales and profit margins.

Marinating with a vacuum tumbler causes the marinade to penetrate evenly throughout the product, which eliminates flavor "hot spots" and "dead zones." The massaging action of tumbling makes the product much more tender. Tumbling only takes 20 minutes on average versus 24 hours or more for soak marinating. You get a juicer, more consistent and more tender product in a fraction of the time freeing up valuable cooler space AND using far less marinade.

Today's consumer does not have the time to prepare elaborate meals. If you can provide that consumer with a premium, value added product which is ready to cook or eat, they will buy more and be willing to pay more for it. Since vacuum tumbling will increase product weight yield by up to 10% the cost per pound of tumbled product is often less than that of raw product, even after figuring in the cost of marinade. You can charge a premium price for tumbled product - often as much as 25% more. Vacuum tumbling increases the shelf life of fresh product which reduces waste. This all adds up to more sales and significantly higher profit margins!

Payback time will vary from store to store, or from plant to plant. A major chain in the southeastern U.S. did a study and found that the tumbler paid for itself in only seven weeks

 

We have a few running here, we have about ten different marinates we use for our customers, I could write a novel on marinating, also I have one tumbler that I want to sell if anyone is interested.

Tumbler vacuum 500 lb. Unit #3 115v

Model: hvts-500

S/N: t235

Brand: Hollymatic

Bought On: 2007

jbprimecut wrote:

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We have a few running here, we have about ten different marinates we use for our customers, I could write a novel on marinating, also I have one tumbler that I want to sell if anyone is interested.

Tumbler vacuum 500 lb. Unit #3 115v

Model: hvts-500

S/N: t235

Brand: Hollymatic

Bought On: 2007

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 OMG, jbprimecut, that's a huge tumbler!

I have two tumblers. A small 30lb tumbler that we use for retail chicken breasts and some boneless pork chops. It has one speed but we can draw various amounts of vacuum.
I also have a 500 lb tumbler that I mainly use for curing hams & bacons. We can adjust the vacuum level and speed on our larger tumbler.
I don't like to tumble beef as it seems the tumbling action combined with the salt soluble protiens in the beef are extracted too easily, then when the beef is cooked those protiens form a crust on the beef that I deem very undesireable. If I am going to marinade beef I think its best to just mix your marinade and soak the beef overnight in it, mix it sparingly so you don't extract the protiens.

Ideally you should keep your tumbler in a refrigerated room. The tumbling action creates heat and makes it harder for the meat to "pick up" the marinade you are trying to get into it. Tumbling in a cooler running in the mid to low 30's works best for us.

I've worked with a 30# tumbler at a store I worked for about 10 years ago. We moved a fair amount of marinated chicken breast. They do increase product weight, but I'm not sure that outweighs the labor involved. I don't currently use tumblers but I'm considering it.