consisting essentially of water additional ingredients including flavorings such as spices preservatives and or other ingredients may be introduced in additional streams or may be incorporated in one of the five streams described above some meat products may utilize more than two meats and in some of these instances the system may include additional input assemblies in other cases some meat products require small amounts relative to the overall mixture such as in the range of 2 5 of a plurality of particular meats and these may be pre mixed and delivered to the mixer with a single input for metering them in at the relatively low rate each input line may be provided with the hopper 68 or tank which may hold a pre mixed quantity of its respective constituent for instance a relatively low rate of nitrite solution is used so a single pre mixed quantity in a vat metered through an input line is sufficient for the continuous processing a left over batter line may also be provided to return batter to the mixer for reworking in the embodiment of fig1 each of the input assemblies 66 includes a feed line 80 for carrying an ingredient to the inlet hopper 62 a content analyzer 82 on the feed line and a metering pump 84 or valve downstream from the analyzer on the feed line in other embodiments e g the embodiment of fig7 content analyzers are employed on some but not all of the input assemblies as an ingredient stream passes through an associated content analyzer 82 the stream is analyzed to determine for example fat moisture and or protein content in order to achieve balance between the various ingredients in the desired.