Add A Little Extra Fat When Grinding Meat For A Truly Perfect Blend

We take for granted that ground meat is readily available at the grocery store, just hanging out in the cooler in its carefully wrapped plastic packaging just waiting to become burgers. Ground meat doesn't have to be an afterthought, however. In fact, when you choose grab-and-go packages of meat you don't have a lot of control over the quality of your precious patties. Because of this, many grillmasters are getting into grinding their own meat — most notably Mark Bittman and J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, who have both extolled the benefits of home-ground beef.

There's a little more to the process of grinding meat at home than simply buying a grinding attachment for your stand mixer (although that's definitely an important step). One of the most important things to keep in mind is that you need to balance the meat-to-fat ratio so that your burgers, or whatever other dishes you plan to make with ground beef, is juicy and flavorful. To achieve the perfect blend, you're going to need to add a source of extra fat, which you can get from the butcher.

Even if you're trying not to eat saturated fat in your diet, it's important to make a little leeway when it comes to burger meat. While it's tempting to make a very lean blend to try and cut down on calories, when you trim the fat you're also losing flavor and texture, and your cooked burgers will come out dry. This is because meat needs fat interspersed between the muscle fibers. Think of the fat in your grind like marbling in a good steak. Those white flecks of fat in the steak enhance the flavor. Fat is also more tender than muscle, so a burger with less fat will be tougher.

Fat will also prevent your burger from drying out. The longer you plan to cook your burgers, the more fat you should add to your grind. The most common (and most recommended) ratio of beef-to-fat is 80% meat and 20% fat, which is perfect for cooking a burger medium rare or medium. If you're planning to cook them medium well or well done, add even more fat to the grind, as much as 70% meat to 30% fat, because the heat melts away more of the fat the longer it's on the stove or grill. This is why Philly cheesesteaks are always made with shaved ribeye, because it has a lot of fat to keep the meat juicy when it's cooked well done.

It's pretty easy to add extra fat to your house burger blend, all you need to do is pick up some beef fat or pork fat while you're at the butcher. If you're buying your meat from the grocery store, just ask someone behind the counter if they have any extra fat to sell, or call ahead to have them put some aside. Some grocery stores do sell packages of pork fat or beef, so take a look through the cooler before pulling a butcher aside. Remember your desired ratio when you're buying the fat, and buy only what you need. For example if you want to grind five pounds of ground beef, you'll need four pounds of lean meat and one pound of fat. The nice thing about 80:20 beef is that the weights are easy to remember.

When you get your grinding supplies home, cut up the fat into chunks that will fit into the grinder and put them in the freezer until you're ready to actually start grinding. If you use room-temperature fat for grinding, the heat from the grinder (or food processor blades) will melt the fat and your ground meat won't have the right texture. When you're ready to grind, you can mix the frozen chunks in with the meat to get the perfect grind that's dotted with crisp, white flecks — just like the stuff you can buy in the store, but better.