Sometimes I grind my own beef, and my own pork for breakfast sausage or italian sausage, occasionally even turkey.

I mostly grind after I've run out of my packaged ground beef, then I usually grind either chuck or round. I prefer chuck but I'll use round if that's what I have.

My beef is very lean, so if I'm making burgers I often add a little fat.

I use the meat grinding attachment that Elery bought for the KitchenAid, or an old hand grinder that bolts to my table. I'd like to have a good electric meat grinder, though, because the hand grinder really makes me work and the Kitchen Aid is too high. I'm short and by the time I put the mixer on the counter, the meat goes in the top and I have to stand on a chair.

Oh, and all the grinders I've used work better if the meat is very cold, even a bit frozen.

Annie

I have ground my own beef - usually when chuck roasts are on sale. Once I ground some London Broil and it was too lean and dry, even though it went in spaghetti sauce.

When I make sausage I grind my own pork, usually getting it on sale and using a pork shoulder or other large cut of meat. Even then I sometimes have to buy a pound of bacon to add some fat to it.

Yet one more with a similar "grinding" story to those above. It's a good option so you can get the kind of grind you like to have for the type of recipes you are using it in. If I want a coarse grind for chili, then I'll grind it myself - especially if I find a good bargain to use (sirloin, sirloin tip, top round, chuck steak/roast).

I probably grind more pork for sausage than ground beef. It's great for turkey, as teresa nc7 mentioned. Grinding your own is the best way to avoid having any poultry skin included in the mixture. I'm never sure what thay toss in the commercial mixtures of turkey burger.... There are more bacteria on raw poultry skin than there are on muscle meats (see: On Food and Cooking - The Science and Lore of the Kitchen - by Harold McGee), and I avoid adding ANY skin to ground turkey.

If you have a good-quality food processor, you'll find instructions for ground meat and meat mixtures for it.

I use an old-fashioned Universal Food and Meat Grinder (clamp-on style), and I also like to use partially-frozen meat. This is the grinder my mother gave me in 1971 to use for grinding baby food for our first-born.

-Grainlady

I used to grind beef, and I would grind chuck or round, like Annie. Depending on what the end product is, you may have to adjust the fat - often steaks are too lean to use for hamburger or meatloaf. I would also grind pork and turkey, but now I only grind turkey, since DB will not eat beef or pork. I use the Kitchenaid meat grinder attachment. I do not grind it ahead of time and freeze it - it is better to freeze the meat before grinding it - then you can grind it when it is still partially frozen. I did it for fat control, but I found out that removing the fat was a bad idea. I also expected the quality to be better, and I was not concerned about the price. I tend to use the meat grinder more for grinding cooked meat than for raw.

Lars

I've ground my own beef. I use the Kitchen Aid Mixer with the meat grinder attachment. I use a boneless chuck roast and I put it through twice.

I do it for the taste. And I grind it all up, form patties and stick them into ziplocks in the freezer.

This is what I love about this forum. There's always something to learn. It never occurred to me to grind the meat partially frozen, but having read that some of you do it that way, it makes sense to me...it would cut down on the fat mucking up the works, which has always been something of an irritation to me.

I began grinding my own beef because it seemed like the price of ground beef had gotten ridiculous...especially the leaner grind. If I'm making burgers, I want a fair amount of fat, because otherwise they can be dry. But, when using ground beef for any recipe in which I brown it first, most of the fat goes into a can to dispose of...so why pay for it when leaner cuts of chuck and round are less expensive than the store ground stuff?

Another issue is cleanliness. After so many years in the restaurant biz, I know that as slapsidaisical as I can sometimes be about housework, my kitchen is far cleaner than that of most restaurants. So, I am skeptical in the extreme about how clean any individual working at a grocery store might keep the equipment.

I do often grind my own pork for use in Chinese recipes and breakfast sausage and one of the grocery stores near me regularly offers pork fat for sale quite cheaply to add when using the cheaper cuts.

I guess I mostly grind my own meat for reasons of economy, but also because I like knowing what goes into my food in general. Hey! I'm a Foodie Control Freak! :D

Well, Rachelellen, you are in good company here, right? ;o)

Teresa, at times herself a FCF - which could also stand for Fan of the Cooking Forum or Foodie at the Cooking Forum or Friend of the Cooking Forum.....or?

I am Nancy's husband and since I grind the beef, she asked me to post.

I use the grinder attachment on a Kitchenaid mixer. I grind my own beef because of flavor. Store bought ground beef is inconsistent and often lacks flavor. I usually grind the meat only a couple of hours before I use it and I only buy about enough for the meal. I don't want to freeze it because it changes the flavor.

I generally buy 7 bone chuck steak or underblade steak (fairly inenexpensive and can be cheaper than store made ground beef but this is not my main reason). I look for marbling in the meat and I eyeball the fat so that it would make the ground beef about 80-85% lean (no fat, no flavor). I cut the beef up into about 1 inch cubes - this helps prevent the fat from clogging the grinder. I tried the partial freezing but I found it unnecessary if you cut it up into the smaller cubes.

When making ground beef for hamburgers, adding about a 1/4 cup of italian bread crumbs to a pound of ground beef adds some additional flavor without knowing that bread crumbs are in it and it absorbs/retains some of the cooking juices from the meat.

Grinding meat for sausage is my latest. Homemade maple sausage on a Sunday morning is great comfort food and the stores have nothing that can compare. Store sausages frequently use preservatives which tend to make the sausage "repeat" on you. Homemade sausage lets you know exactly what was put in.

I bought a Bosch meat grinder - very nice, and used it once.
After spending an hour cleaning it out and trying to figure out which way the pieces went when putting it all back together I put it in the back of the closet and never used it again.

We're lucky here in that you can pick out the piece of meat you want at the supermarket butcher and they will grind it for you, and put it twice through the machine if you want it fine.
So I don't bother doing it myself.

SharonCb

SharonCb, just another little thing that makes shopping and living on your island a little bit of paradise!

Nancy's Husband, thanks for sharing your knowledge! I will try the smaller cubes next time I have to grind some beef. I do use Alton Brown's method of the small cubes when I make sausage. He sprinkles the spices and seasonings over the diced meat and let it chill for awhile before grinding - much easier and better results than trying to mix the seasonings into ground pork.

I do the same as shaun. I haven't done it in awhile.

Sue

LOL teresa, Nancy's (my) husbands' name is Wayne. He does make one mean tasting sausage! NancyLouise

Hey, thanks, Wayne. I'll try cubing the meat smaller and see if it helps.

Annie

I too grind my own beef with a Kitchenaid grinder attachment. I use chuck and put it through twice. I'm going to try doing it partially frozen now--that is a great idea. I also find that I can throw in some fresh parsley or whatever other herb and grind that right in too--when I lived in Morocco they would ask if you wanted a handful of herbs in your meat before they ground it, and it was delicious that way.
I read Fast Food Nation a few years ago and in the descriptions of the slaughterhouses it sounded like most of the bacterial contamination of the meat is on the outside of the piece of meat from splashing (ick). So I think there is probably less contamination of the ground beef if you wash the whole piece and then grind it. In the store, it isn't getting washed, and so the bacteria on the outside gets ground into the ground beef.

Thanks for all the info! I am trying to decide whether or not to buy the KA attachment. How hard is it to clean?

I don't think it's a big deal to clean it, May. After all, you probably aren't going to be using every night. I put the non-metal parts in the dishwasher - no problem. And I always air dry the grinding plates and other metal parts very, very dry so there is no rusting.
Teresa

I also occasionally grind my own. I cube the meat I'm going to grind and use my Cuisinart food processor.

Works like a champ.

Cleaning for the KA grinder and sausage stuffer attachment isn't a problem. I put everything into the dishwasher. The plastic parts go in the top rack and the metal pieces go into the silverware basket. I take them out and wipe dry with a towel. NancyLouise

I haven't had a chance to read the other posts, but here's my answer. We do occasionally. Mostly because we find a great price on sirloin, that is better than what I can buy 90-92% ground lean for. This week, one of our convienence stores has sirloin tip roasts for $2.49# and sirloin tip steaks for $2.59#. I can't buy it already done for anything close to that. It's usually at least $3.89#. Sooooo, with everything else I've been doing to get ready for our trip to MI, I've had meat to grind and freeze. We freeze in 1# pkgs in the food saver bags. Works great.

Tami