Chicken Processing Insight

Chicken products are favored all over the world and in recent years poultry meat consumption has increased dramatically. So chicken processing industry is also universally risen now.
Chicken processing generally contains two stages including primary processing and deep processing. Primary processing refers to that chicken are slaughtered, plucked, cleaned, cooled and either filleted, cut into pieces or left ’whole’. Then this processed meat is frozen, packaged, and sent to dealers or for further processing. The second stage is deep-processing which means something is done to the whole carcass such as cut-up, deboning, further cutting, coating and etc.. Approximately 31 percent of chicken meat goes to further processing.

I. Chicken Primary Processing

Primary Processing Flow Chart

Here the flowchart exactly shows main steps of chicken primary processing steps.

Machines Applied in Primary Processing

♦ Chicken Meat Blast Freezing Machine

The blast freezer is mainly used for commerce to save and preserve kinds of chicken meat which need freezing. It can freeze the food in minimum time so that the multiple nutrition and fresh flavor of the food can be kept.

♦ Poultry Brine injector

This machine is designed for injecting brine into the chicken to add a special flavor.

♦ Poultry Deboning Machine

It can separate meat from bone and the final meat can be used for further processing of meat products such as sausages, meatball, meat pie and so on.

♦ Chicken Roaster

The roaster is used to roast the whole chicken and other poultry like duck, goose. It is also applied to other meat such as pork steak, lamb shashlik, etc. This roasting machine is ideal barbecue equipment for the supermarket, restaurant, individual business household, etc.

♦ Poultry Feather Removal Machine

The poultry removal machine can effectively pluck off the feathers of the chicken. The detailed steps of feather removing are as following:
a. Scale chicken to loosen its feathers in hot water about 70-80 degrees before putting it into the plucker.
b. Turn on the plucker, and let the chicken go round and round until all the feathers are plucked off.
c. Turn off the plucker, take out the chicken and clean the plucker with water.

II. Chicken Deep-Processing

1. Chicken Meat

Chicken meat is the most vital consumption part of chicken poultry in the market. It can be processed into kinds of traditional meat products like chicken sausage and etc. or new meat products, also can be cooked into different delicious meat food. Recent years, the chicken meat industry has developed new types of chicken meat products, which contributed significantly to meeting the global increase in demand for poultry meat. Here are several common types of processed chicken meat which are much favored by people in daily diets.

♦ Chicken sausages

Here are two types of chicken sausages: one is sausages and other products with 100% chicken meat, and the other is sausages containing meat mixes including chicken meat such as chicken frankfurter, chicken bologna etc.. Chicken sausage production is simple with two main machines applied.
Grind 100% chicken meat or meat mixes in the meat grinder and put it in a container. Season with salt and some other flavor, and mix them well. Then stuff each sausage casing with the same amount of meat mixture by the sausage filler.

♦ Coated / breaded products

As the name suggests, coated or breaded chicken products are characterized by the coating of meat surfaces with flour, fat/flour mixes, and breadcrumbs etc.. The typical products are chicken nuggets, which are one of the most popular fast food in the world. Besides KFC, Mcdonald’s, stores for chicken nuggets sale have been commonly seen in the street in many cities, where chicken nuggets can be produced in small scale with the simple steps as follows.
a. Grind chicken meat by grinding machine with desired particle sizes of 1-5 mm, and mix salt and spices into it, then spread the mixture in a tray to the desired thickness covered with plastic foil, at last freeze it preparing for production.
b. After freezing, raw chicken nuggets are cut out from the frozen block by patty making machine.
c. Coat chicken nuggets like egg batter coating, etc.. The coating content varies from the person to person.
d. Fry coated nuggets and scatter some spices on fried nuggets based on customers’ taste.

♦ Chicken burgers

Chicken burger is easily made from spiced ground chicken meat or meat mixes. The mixture for the burgers is portioned into the desired weight and shaped from automatic burger patty making machine.

2. By-products from poultry

By-products from chicken like gizzard, liver, chicken intestine, feet, chicken wings and etc.are good raw materials for the exquisite cuisine, and also can be processed into various products like chicken liver powder, liver sauce sausage and etc..

3. Chicken blood

Chicken blood can be used as the edible food in people’s daily diet, also can be processed into dried blood utilized in feed industry or chemical industry.

4. Chicken Bones  

Here chicken bones refer to abandoned bones in the chicken preliminary processing of slaughtering and cutting. These bones are good materials of soup flavor, bone paste and etc. They are also can be processed into bone meal for feed industry or chemical industry.

5. Chicken Feather

Chicken feather can be processed into feather meal as feed additives or agricultural fertilizers.

6. Internal fat

Chicken internal fat can be made into cooking oil or industrial oil.

Machines Applied in Chicken Processing

1. Machines in Chicken Meat Processing

♦ Meat grinding machine

Meat grinding machine is mainly used for grinding chicken meat into meat stuffings preparing for making chicken sausage, nuggets and etc.. This machine widely suits for the industry of all kinds of sausage, ham sausage, luncheon meat, meatball, the savory flavoring, and pet food, also other meat processing industry.

♦ Sausage Filler

Sausage filler is utilized for filling different kinds of casings for making chicken sausage. There are two types of sausage fillers: quantitative vacuum sausage filler and hydraulic sausage filling machine. The former is suitable for quantitatively filling all kinds of fluid material into varied casings. The latter has better performance for filling dry stuffing than other kinds of sausage filler. You can make a comparison and choose which you prefer.

♦ Automatic burger patty making machine

Automatic burger patty forming machine is for making chicken hamburger and chicken nuggets in the chicken meat processing line. It can automatically perform various procedures, such as meat filling, forming, and output. There are 3 types of burger patty press machines, large type, medium type, and mini type you choose one based on your business.

2. Machines Applied in Chicken Gizzard and Feet Processing

♦ Poultry Gizzard Peeling Machine

This machine is equipped with the spiral rollers, used to peel the skin of poultry gizzard.

♦ Chicken Feet Peeling Production Line

Feet peeling production line is the complete processing unit to get clean chicken feet. It follows the following steps: Conveying→Chicken feet→Conveying→Blanching→Peeling→Pre-cooling
Transport chicken feet by the conveyor to the blanching machine for disinfecting and cooking chicken feet. Thus chicken feet is easy to peeling and it also can protect its natural flavor from being broken. Then transport the chicken feet to the feet peeling machine for peeling feet skin and nail cleanly. At last auto feet pre-cooling machine cool feet to achieve the purpose of detoxification.
For small-scale production, small chicken feet peeling machine is available.

3. Machine Applied in Chicken Bone Processing

Poultry Bone Crushing Machine

The bone crushing machine is designed for grinding chicken bones with the bone particle size of about 3-5mm. For further processing to get a fine bone paste, a bone grinding machine is necessary. Paste grinding machine is widely used in the bone processing industry.

III. Chicken Processing Market Outlook

1. Production

Chicken product output will greatly grow in developing countries and it led by the U.S., China, and Brazil. Poultry processing market will be affected by high input cost, poultry disease and so on.

2. Consumption

Poultry consumption will be influenced by the population, diet preferences, and incomes. Approximately 134 million metric tons of poultry meat will be consumed in 2023 according to the consumption situation in the past few years.

3. Trade

Poultry meat trade share in world meat production increased from 13 percent in the mid-1960s to 28 percent currently. Globally, the poultry sector remains profitable due to abundant feed supplies and sufficient demand.