Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Grinding My Meat

Heather got me the meat grinder attachment for the kitchen aid and first off it works great.  I've never enjoyed grind my meat more.  If you're not familiar with the meat grinder for the kitchen aid here's a photo:
It hooks on the front easily and there's a paddle to push the meat down into the grinding area.  In the photo above they cube it but you can cut it into a few longer strips instead to save some time.  I did pork/beef/lamb meatballs for new years which turned out great but even with 1/3 lamb, the lamb flavor was a little overpowering.  If I do it again i'll probably try 1:2:3 parts lamb:pork:beef.  I personally think meatballs should be dominantly beefy flavored.

Anyway, here are a few tips on using the grinder.  Last night I wanted to do a very rare burger, which I'm scared to do with supermarket ground meat.  I picked up a rib eye roast which was on sale for 4.99/lb.  A lot of people suggest chuck roast, but at 4.99/lb i figured i'd try the rib eye.  its a cut with great flavor, lots of fat (Which you definitely want in burger meat), no bones to deal with and not much gristly connective tissue like silver skin or ligaments which can clog up the grinder.




To prep the meat first thing is washing it off under cold water.  Most bacteria is on the outside of meat that's been exposed to all kinds of surfaces and materials (aka fecal matter and other dirty crap) during processing. That's one reason ground meat is so dangerous, the whole thing has been run through a grinder of dubious antiseptic standards and then on through packing etc, leaving it open to tons of bacteria growth.  So I wash my meat before grinding which can get rid of a great deal of bacteria on the surface.  Then I salted the outside of the meat heavily for extra disinfection.  Don't worry about over salting since its a big chunk of meat and surface/volume ration is low.  You can't really over salt it.  I let the salt sit for 10 minutes ( i assume this is long enough to kill any remaining bacteria, but I'm just guessing on that), I butterflied the the roast and then cut it into strips.  Basically you just want a size that will fit into the grinder tube easily, so 1''x1''x6'' or so.  Make sure your knife and cutting board are very clean.  I washed mine with antibacterial soap even though they were already coming out of the cabinet clean.  I've also read you can drop the whole roast into boiling water for 10-20 seconds instead of washing and salting.

At this point I carefully selected a strip from "inside" the roast and threw it in the freezer for about 10 minutes.  This makes it grind more easily and prevent fat from getting to soft during grinding.  I then used this to make myself a bit of tartare.  Since its from the inside, it should be virtually bacteria free.  Added a bit of salt and pepper and had a delicious snack while cooking.  Obviously this comes with risks, so do as you see fit.  Anyway, the rest of the strips got put into the freezer for about 20 minutes in a large metal bowl.
 
At this point I salted the individual strips, but much more lightly and began grinding.  The whole roast was 2.4lbs and that took about 7 minutes to grind.  Fast and easy.

And I ended up with this much ground beef.  It might be hard to gauge but those burgers are pretty big. 


 I added some pepper and a little worchteshire sauce and then dropped them in a smoking hot pan with a couple teaspoons of butter and vegetable oil mix.  Mixing the two raises the smoking/burning point of the butter a little.  Only problem I had was forgetting that I had cooled the meat so much in the freezer so I undercooked them a bit at first.  It was no problem to throw them back on for another couple minutes and in fact its probably better this way since it lets you get a heavy sear and develop flavor on the outside while staying nicely pink inside.  Then a 5 minute rest and onto a bun with grilled onions, gruyere, pickles, mayo, ketchup and tomato.   

 The burger was great, and as I said before the big draw is feeling safe eating rare ground beef.  If I could find a few quail eggs I'd make steak tartate again tonight. A big secondary benefit is the ability to grind meats besides beef which can be hard to find.  Lamb, turkey, chicken, venison, bison etc.  I'm going to be in a chili competition in a couple months so being able to try out all the various combos is going to be really helpful.  I'm thinking beef, pork, venison, turkey, lamb.  Tough to do that without your own grinder.  Now get your noses to the grindstone and start cooking, suckas.

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