3 Easy Ways To Grind Beef At Home – Meat Grinder Is Not Necessary!

Last Updated on July 25, 2018 by Rohit the Great

Grinding meat at home is easy, once you have a grinder or a food processor, but gets a bit more demanding, if you want to grind meat by hand…

Nevertheless, we look into all of these.

Let’s get grinding! 🙂

Mince Beef With Meat Grinder

Also called a mincer. There are two types of those available on the market: manual and electric.

It’s easy to guess that electric is more powerful and can grind meat just so much quicker! However, manual grinder is far more reliable – my grandpa uses a grinder which is older than I am.

If you are into grinding your own meat and do it occasionally, you would probably prefer manual grinder – it takes far less space and you can easily hide it away, once you are done.

 Electric mincer is big, heavy and noisy, so take that into account.

So, let’s look at the process.

1. Beef. Sure enough, you are not to grind rib-eye and filet into beef mince. Any lower-end, in other words, leaner, tougher cuts (e.g. round, flank, chuck) are just ideal for grinding. Look out for any “braising beef” as well – it’s all the same thing.

2. Cut. Separate beef chunks into smaller pieces – it really helps the process.

3. Additives. Add salt and spices before grinding. The process will really help to mix up all of those ingredients together.

Now load up your grinder’s tray and mince on!

Once you are done, check ground beef recipes we got.

Grind Beef With Food Processor Or Blender

This is a cool way to grind beef without meat grinder, given that you have the magical tool – the food processor!

Just like previously – choose inexpensive cuts, which do have some fat in them. Little fat (~15%) really helps the flavor and tenderness. Heston Blumenthal uses sirloin for his burgers – good place to start!

1. Cut beef into small, equal-size cubes.

2. You may then allocate them all on a tray and put in the freezer for 15 minutes. It will help with grinding them in the food processor, since they get firmer.

However, if you are quite certain that your food processor is a beast – skip to step 3 right away.

3. Put the cubes inside the processor in small batches (depending on power and size) and use short pulses. See how it goes and press a few more times, if necessary.

4. Use it all up right away or freeze to use later. Remember, you should consume it all, ideally, within 24 hours – excessive contact with air really adds up to deterioration.

There are good and bad things about this method.

Pros:

• Meat grinder is not necessary
• Mince is fresh and juicy
• You know what’s inside (beef recalls anyone?)
• Much safer to go medium-rare
• Fun

Cons:

• Time-consuming
• Extra washing – fat is terrible to clean up from any plastic parts
• Cross contamination – if you decide preparing a smoothie afterwards, you really need to clean up (and get rid of the smell)
• More expensive

Now try some burger recipes!

Wait, no food processor? Don’t worry – next part is for you.

Grind Beef By Hand

To do that, you will need a really sharp knife. Have one? Great!

0. Once again, pre-freezing meat for 15-20 minutes will really help the process.

1. Grab some beef and split it into long chunks.

2. Cut them further into thin stripes, so you have something like macaronis on your board.

3. Chopping time – cut across several stripes at the same time to speed up the process. This is how ground beef is done!

Even though it might seem time-consuming, it really isn’t. I think all three methods roughly take the same amount of time, when taking the clean-up into account.

By the way, you won’t get really fine texture with the last method, but, maybe it’s even better. So many people out there say that coarse mince is much nicer than the fine one.

I hope you can easily grind beef at home now! Please leave a comment or a question below.