Does anyone ground their own beef?

And no, that is not a euphimism.

I was just reading a disgusting article about E. coli and how hamburgers are made. It made me think I was better off making my own ground beef. Anybody ever tried it? Or is it just easier to pay the big $ for grass fed beef?

And I should have said grind, as someone is sure to point out.

E.Coli can be killed with the proper amount of heat. I do NOT cook my burgers with anything less than full brown through the centre. no pink, no red, no oozing juices. I know a lot of people don't care for it that way.. but I do not take chances

Yeah, but if I kill it with fire that much, I'd rather just have a veggie burger or something else.

friends of mine process their own deer, which includes grinding the meat and making sausage. they said that its pretty much an all day ordeal to process a couple deer, but well worth it.

you can usually find someone selling cow-shares at your local farmers market, and they're usually also high quality grass fed cows as well. in the cow share, you can get together with friends and buy half a cow, then split it up between you, or pay a bit more and have them portion and wrap it all. overall it comes out to a 25ish% savings over buying at the store, but you also get a lot of ground chuck and stew meat, as well as stuff i don't think i'd use like soup bones. ymmv, of course

Cabelas has a meat grinder for $40. Read the instructions and wash stuff carefully.

People have been grinding meat for thousands of years.

mmmmm sausages mmmmmm........

Grinding meat is pretty awesome. You'll start making your own blends (short rib/brisket burgers anyone?) and sausages before long. There's really nothing to it.

You can do it in a good food processor, but it's really easy to overwork it and wind up hurting the quality of your meat.

But the best thing you can do is start buying your meat from sources you can trust.

I have ground my own meat for decades. It lets me get real lean beef, control what goes in it and adjust my grind for where I'm using the meat.

For instance very large and coarse for chili.

I cut all the fat I can find off the meat. Makes it taste much better and is better for you.

My son the chef tried to tell me that fat made the flavor and that the meat won't stick together without the fat because that's what they told him in school because that's what the meat industry wants you to believe so they can sell all of the meat.

We did a blind taste test. That means I ground the meat and then let him cook with it. Afterwards he picked the leanest meat as the best in taste. He couldn't tell a difference between how the meat stuck together either.

What got us to grinding our own meat was meatloaf. We both used to love it as a kid but we hardly ate it as adults because it tasted so fatty. One day I pulled a meatloaf out of the oven and realized that the fat level was over half the way up the loaf which explains the fatty taste.

When we grind our own meat the fat level is only about 1/2" in the bottom of the pan and we now love meatloaf again.

mad_machine wrote: E.Coli can be killed with the proper amount of heat. I do NOT cook my burgers with anything less than full brown through the centre. no pink, no red, no oozing juices. I know a lot of people don't care for it that way.. but I do not take chances

I'm with Otto, why even make a burger?

Steaks past medium-rare, and burgers past medium are a waste, IMHO.

I do it once and a while - mostly for my own burgers so i can ontrol the courseness of it - got an attachment for my kitchen aid mixer - works well.

Why grind it? You can eat it practically raw if you don't poke any holes in it and just torch the outside for a few seconds.

just have steaks cut to look like hamburgers!

I get my beef 1/2 cow at a time. I've reduced my risk because all of the meat comes from the same animal. If every beef meal you eat comes from a different one (likely) I've reduced my chances by like 300x alone.

It's also raised and finished all on grass in a field, never sits in it's own manure etc etc etc. I pick it up at the butcher, no middle man. Best tasting beef ever, and not more expensive over the year.

Home ground chicken and turkey is excellent, store ground not so much. Store ground has all the extra skin they can find laying around thrown back in and the fat content is up there with the worst beef or maybe even worse.

An interesting phenomenon with chicken and turkey is that it will form itself back together into shapes and it will hold that shape so you can do things that interest the kids.

Be buy all of our beef direct from the farmer. All pasture-raised and grass fed. We usually have the butcher not grind it. We now feel comfy enough with the butcher that he'll be grinding our beef now. Man it's time consuming.

tuna55 wrote: I get my beef 1/2 cow at a time. I've reduced my risk because all of the meat comes from the same animal.

Well, technically you can only do that twice before you need a different animal unless you have some kind of mutant regenerative cow that can survive being harvested in halves.

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: You can eat it practically raw if you don't poke any holes in it and just torch the outside for a few seconds.

Carne cruda....

Now I'm hungry.

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote:

tuna55 wrote: I get my beef 1/2 cow at a time. I've reduced my risk because all of the meat comes from the same animal.

Well, technically you can only do that twice before you need a different animal unless you have some kind of mutant regenerative cow that can survive being harvested in halves.

Right, so you eat beef 200-300 times, each time from a different cow. In that timeframe, I eat from one cow. My risk is 200x-300x less than yours.

There are lots of reasons to eat ground meat over steak - spaghetti, lasagna, chili, tacos, burritos, enchiladas, etc. etc. etc.

^Luckily, these are all things that i hate ground beef in.

The only thing in there that i like ground anything in is lasagna, and that gets sausage.

Ground beef should only be in hamburgers or meatloaf. In any other application, it can go to hell as far as i'm concerned.

My in-laws raise their own beef. They also have chickens and pigs. Our Christmas present is usually a freezer full of meat. Our ground beef is so lean that you can't actually drain any fat off it when you brown it in a pan. The steaks are awesome. So much better than store-bought.

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote:

tuna55 wrote: I get my beef 1/2 cow at a time. I've reduced my risk because all of the meat comes from the same animal.

Well, technically you can only do that twice before you need a different animal unless you have some kind of mutant regenerative cow that can survive being harvested in halves.

If I just kept cutting pieces off a living cow would it keep growing back giving me an endless supply?

depends on how small the pieces are... eventually though, you would get a lot of gristle from the scars.

mad_machine wrote: E.Coli can be killed with the proper amount of heat. I do NOT cook my burgers with anything less than full brown through the centre. no pink, no red, no oozing juices. I know a lot of people don't care for it that way.. but I do not take chances

I'm with Otto, why even make a burger?

Steaks past medium-rare, and burgers past medium are a waste, IMHO.

Because they are still tasty. I prefer my meats well done.. when you have an intestinal issue like myself, you do not take chances. I have had food poisioning once too many times

carguy123 wrote: There are lots of reasons to eat ground meat over steak - need to hide taste of rotten meat, need to add filler to fool guests into thinking its a larger portion, usually pee sitting down...

fixed :)

Wally wrote: If I just kept cutting pieces off a living cow would it keep growing back giving me an endless supply?

Sure although after the first few times you have to chase it and watch out for the horns.

Keith wrote: Our ground beef is so lean that you can't actually drain any fat off it when you brown it in a pan. The steaks are awesome. So much better than store-bought.

Amen brother! I dont' like store-bought beef anymore. I can brown a pound of meat and get, maybe a tbs of fat drained off. And I actaully taste a difference from one cow to the next. Strange thing, one night, while eating steaks my wife and I were discussing how this cow tasted so much better than the last one. You never say that while eating Kroger meat.