Hyde’s No Chicken When it Comes to Blades

How important are food processing blades?  They just cut meat or dough or vegetables.  How difficult can that be?

Actually, food processing blades are incredibly important and we’re going to tell you why.

The Meat Miser is one of Hyde’s newest and most popular blades.  It was conceived in 2008 and developed between 2010 and 2012.

The blade was hatched after Hyde staff members attended a poultry industry convention.  While there, Hyde staffers heard members of the poultry industry talk about “yield.”

The industry originally used circular blades to slice and dice its chickens.  The blades worked well but dulled very quickly.

Then a blade came out with a scalloped cutting edge.  This kept an edge longer but created a lot of waste.

Some of the waste was collected and sold, but at a cheaper price.  That’s not good.  It’s premium poultry that should fetch top dollar.

Once those staffers returned to the roost, they set a goal for the company to make a poultry blade that would beat the ones the industry is currently using. Their quest for poultry cutting glory eventually developed into the Meat Miser. 

So, this Meat Miser must be a monster.  How much more chicken can it cut?  Does it also deep fry and fricassee?

Testing the Meat Miser was tricky.  Due to the high volume of chickens the blade had to cut, they really couldn’t set up a test in Southbridge.

Hyde took it to a few poultry plants but they couldn’t run tests that produced any usable data.  Finally, a poultry processing machine maker was able to test Hyde’s food processing blade against the industry standard.

Tests revealed that the Meat Miser increased yield by 1.1 percent. 

Yes, that’s the right number. 

It’s not supposed to be 11. 

It’s not supposed to be 110. 

The Meat Miser increased yield by a tick more than a percent.

That doesn’t sound like much until you consider how much chicken the Meat Miser actually cuts.  It’s used in a machine that cuts 65 chickens a minute, eight hours a day, five days a week.  Each chicken weighs three pounds.

Over the course of a year, the Meat Miser increases yield by 257,400 pounds or 128 tons of chicken.  That’s nothing to cluck about.

Of course, to get that 1.1. percent, Hyde had to rely on its 145 years in the blade making business and nearly 50 years making blades for the poultry industry.

The journey also revealed an unusual aspect about industries that use knives.  People who work in the poultry processing industry know chickens.  They don’t know knives.

Fortunately, the poultry industry has Hyde Industrial Blade Solutions to make all their food processing blades.