Grinding Your Own Ground Beef
Store bought ground beef is convenient. However, for not much more cost and effort you can grind your own beef. If you like hamburgers cooked to medium or less, you should definitely look into do-it-yourself ground beef. From that point you can upgrade to a dedicated meat grinder and look at expanding into sausage-making.
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Why Grind Your Own Ground Beef?
- With store bought ground beef you do not know where the beef came from or how it was handled.
- Grinding your own beef allows you to control the quality of the meat and ensure it has been safely handled.
- Making your own ground beef allows you to create custom burger blends using a variety of cuts.
- You can start making ground beef with just a knife and upgrade to fancier equipment as desired.
My mom was a dietitian and a food safety expert. She taught me that I should never order a burger cooked to medium unless I was sure where the beef came from.
With a steak any dangerous bacteria will be on the outside of the meat and should be killed in the searing process. However, with ground beef containments from the outside surface can get mixed into any part of the meat. Unless you are sure of how the meat has been handled, you need to make sure the meat has been thoroughly cooked throughout.
At established restaurants I trust I am okay eating a burger cooked to medium. At a fast food restaurant, a cookout or the county fair things get sketchier. In this case I do not like to see pink in my burger.
The same is true for most ground beef bought at the grocery store. We have started buying grass-fed ground beef from butchers we trust. We also have a regular delivery of ground beef from Butcher Box.
Even though I trust our store-bought ground beef, I still grind my own beef when I want a deluxe hamburger. Grinding beef is easy and I like to create custom burger blends.
What tools are needed for grinding beef?
There are several methods you can use to grind your own beef. These include:
- Grinding by hand with a knife
- Grinding in a food processor
- Using a meat grinding attachment to a mixer
- Using a dedicated meat grinder
I have tried all these methods and will only do methods 1 and 4. When grinding ground beef in a food processor it is hard to get the texture to come out right. Some portions tend to get over ground into a paste.
Cutting by hand takes longer, but you can ensure that the grind comes out just right.
As for a meat grinding attachment to a mixer, I have personally not had much success. However, our problem may be more with mixers in general. The meat grinder attachments for our Kitchen Aid mixer get good reviews.
The issue we have had is that our mixer keeps breaking. The mixer has a built-in plastic gear that is designed to break to prevent motor damage. It is a $5 piece that I now have quite a bit of experience replacing.
The mixer attachments tend to be close to the same price as a standalone meat grinder. The online reviews for these attachments are pretty good. If you have a mixer this could be a way to save space with one appliance versus two. However, you will not save much money.
I will also say that we have gone through a couple meat grinders that were not satisfactory. This definitely includes manual meat grinders that you crank by hand. However, we have had some motorized meat grinders that were simply not powerful enough.
I am very happy with our current meat grinder, a Weston with a 575 Watt 3/4 HP motor that we bought for about $100. This has been going strong now for over 10 years.
At $100 our meat grinder is on the lower end of the price scale. If I had to replace our grinder, I would upgrade to the STX Turboforce which seems to be a great deal at $160.
If you are going to ONLY make ground beef you may want to just stick with the hand cutting method or test using your food processor. For our family, in addition to making ground beef we also use our meat grinder for sausage-making.
Sausage-making is where the low-end equipment runs into issues. We have bought a lot of sausage making equipment over the years. The Wseton is my favorite tool for sausage-making BUT I have decided for now making sausage is just too much.
When, and if, I get back into sausage-making I will be doing a whole separate guide to that process.
How to Grind Beef
Whatever method you use for grinding beef, it follows a similar procedure.
- Cut beef into 1-inch cubes
- Place the meat in a single layer on a cookie or baking sheet
- Put meat in the freezer for 20 to 40 minutes until it is solid but not frozen
- Also place feeder tray, blades and any equipment the meat will touch in the freezer
Grinding meat when it is very cold but not quite frozen is crucial. You want to cut the beef into 1-inch and freeze them until they are solid but not frozen. You also want to place the blades and other equipment in the freezer.
As mentioned, we no longer hand grind ground beef. However, it is not difficult. This article from the Woks of Life website has a nice description. However, the one thing they don’t mention is the importance of getting the meat really cold.
If you use a food processor, you also want the meat and the food processor blade cold. You want to process the meat in small batches and use the pulse method of turning the food processor on and off for a few seconds at a time.
I have found that the hand chopped method comes out just as good as a food processor. It is also less effort when you account for having to clean the food processor.
A dedicated meat grinder is the ideal method. In this case you simply place the meat in a feeder tray and push it through the grinder. Most grinders come with a variety of grinding plates that will get the meat to the right coarseness.
Generally, for ground beef you want to grind the meat using a grinder plate of about one-quarter inch. Some guides suggest running the meat through the grinder twice, but I have found this is generally not necessary for ground beef (sausage is a different story). The exception is if you are creating a burger blend for several different types of meat cuts.
Our dedicated meat grinder can process 2 to 3 pounds per minute. Outside of getting the meat and equipment cold the entire process for grinding 5 pounds of hamburger meat for a party is less than 10 minutes.
Of course, there will be cleanup involved. Many parts of a meat grinder can not go in the dishwasher and need to be cleaned by hand. I have found that manually cleaning our meat grinder takes about 10 minutes.
Burger Blends and Sausage Making
Much of the fun with making your own ground beef is creating custom burger blends. First We Feast has some great ideas for various burger blends. I have also bought the Pat LaFrieda cook book and experimented with some of their blends.
A burger blend involves buying several cuts of meat and grinding them together. Admittedly, 90% of the time when making hamburgers I buy a chuck roast on sale and do not bother with a blend. This is the way most hamburgers are made and is perfectly fine.
As mentioned, I do not do a lot of sausage-making. Mainly this is because of the time consuming process of stuffing the meat into casings. Most meat grinders also include equipment for stuffing sausage. Nevertheless, this is a project.
I do use my meat grinder to make sausage that I use directly in recipes. For example, my chorizo sausage goes through the grinder and is stored in bulk and used just like ground beef.
My son thought grinding beef would be gross. However, once I showed him how easy it was he really loves it. He created his own version of stuffed burgers featuring meat he ground himself in the meat grinder.
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