How much to trim

[afteamroper]

For those of you that grind your own burger how "clean" do you get the bits and pieces. By clean I mean do you get all the fat and silver skin off or just throw it in and grind away. I know on roasts and steaks it make as huge difference just wondering about the burger. Also how much and what kind of fat are you grinding in with it. Pork or beef 5,7 or 10% or just straight game hamburger? TIA

 

[realunlucky]

I trim everything my family just prefers it that way and it runs through the grinder better too. I don't mix anything but antelope burger and for that I use regular fatty beef burger. My family eats mostly game meat so I'm not sure about the favor vs beef burger. I would grind and feed them some and wait for family feed back. As a side note it doesn't hold together very well for BBQ if you do not add something to it

 

[5MilesBack]

I try to get all the fat off and most of the silver skin. I don't mix anything with it when I grind it and package it. I use it straight in stuff like spaghetti sauce and chili, but add an equal part of ground chuck to it for burgers and such when I need more moisture in it.

 

[muleman]

I trim all the fat off, but leave some silver and such in the lower legs. If I can get it off easily then it goes. I have found that running it through the grinder twice helps a lot.

 

[Shrek]

I don't actually grind my own but I trim and chop it into chunks before I take it to Mr Taylor my butcher. I don't have any fat added anymore . Burgers are kind of fragile but I don't add anything for them either. If you add pork fat you need to eat it pretty quickly as it can turn bad even frozen. Beef fat will last a long time. I trim all fat and most of the silverskin. I'm not too concerned with the sliverskin because the big hobart doesn't really care. My biggest problem with that beast is that it grinds everything too fine for my taste. I wish I could get a courser chop sometimes. I tried doing it myself but I had a cheap grinder I got at the Walmart and it would choke on any silverskin and was terribly slow. For $30 my butcher will grind and wrap into 1.5 lb packs a whole deer if I bring it to him clean and diced so all he does is dump it in the hopper and package it. Way too convenient compared to fighting with my home grinder , wrapping , and cleaning up.

 

[Stid2677]

I like to use a electric fish fillet knife, one with the serrated blade to trim my grind meat. Makes skimming off the crust when necessary much easier with less waste, also easy to remove the silver skin by holding it in one hand and running the fillet knife it while holding it against a cutting board. Another trick is to use a small propane torch to burn away stray hair.

I too like to grind it twice and I use the WHITE fat on my game, but trim away the YELLOW fat. I like to grind it all into a 5 gallon bucket mix it to redistribute the fat and run through the grinder a second time and straight into the vacuum bags.

If you don't remove all that CHEWY sinew and silver skin, it will just be small pieces and still in your grind.

Steve

 

[Shrek]

Btw , if you do want to add fat the best way I've seen is the way Mr Taylor does it. He freezes the fat and then grinds it frozen. It turns into tiny beads . He then grinds the meat and spreads it on a tray. Sprinkles the fat beads over it in the amount he wants and then runs it through the grinder again. It comes out very evenly mixed.

 

[MTtrout]

I grind it as lean as I can. Like mentioned above you have to be carful when grilling the burgers, but rarely do I have issues with it falling apart or drying out. Another tasty way is to grind ~5lbs lean venison with 1 lb of bacon.

 

[realunlucky]

I have a pretty small grinder and have found that putting the meat in the freezer and not freezing it but firming it up speeds not only the grinding but also the clean up process. I used to double grind and now just use the smaller plate with out it clogging

 

[realunlucky]

X2 running straight into the vac bags. I use a scale under mine as it grinds and smash them flat as the vacuum sealer sucks the air out they freeze faster flat and stack to store in there easier

 

[Stid2677]

+1 on the soft freeze, forgot to add that, make a HUGE difference.

 

[todd kelly]

I'm a little picky with the fat, but do trim off all the silver skin when grinding. You don't get as much, but the end product is so much nicer. The last couple of years I have also quit mixing in pork or beef, and started using soy or whey meat binder with a lot of cold water when making sausages. The sausages stay super moist with out adding a bunch of greasy fat.

 

[ssliger]

I clean it as much as possible. This past fall I had some left over packages of bacon chunks from a pig we bought last year. I ground up some elk course, then ground up the bacon on course as well. Mixed 1lb bacon with 10lbs of ground elk, then thru the grinder on fine into 1lb packages. It came out amazing.

 

[chippewawarrior]

My brother-in-law is a butcher by trade, and when we process any animal both the good fat (white) and some of the silver skin are left on (for burger), but in very limited quantities. It depends on the cut of meat it is coming from in an effort to minimize waste. We try to scrape the silver skin as much was possible.

We only add pork fat if we are making sausages; polish, italians, brats, etc...

I agree with many of the guys here in that a partial freeze works awesome, and we do run it through the grinder twice (coarse plate). It is vacuum sealed in 1lb. bags and frozen flat for economical storage.

 

[Hunt4lyf]

The key for me, as others have stated, is to have it partially frozen as it grinds up so much easier and I take off most of the fat and some of the silver skin. I either make it straight burger without adding anything or I grind up bacon ends for burger and mix it about 20% bacon/80% wild game. The bacon ends make awesome smokey flavored burgers and are much cheaper from the butcher than regular bacon.

 

[bbrown]

"Soft" freeze makes butchering/grinding much easier but that's already been established...

Last year I feel like I was being entirely too picky with my bull and ended up with less meat. This year I left more of the good fat and some of the silver unless it was on the surface and easy to remove and I am pretty sure I got more burger this year off a cow. I do not like mixing any beef or pork fat with my burger - just feels wrong to me but I do use a bit of water when I brown it to keep it from burning.
My wife loves burgers so I did try to mix a pound of bacon (partially froze of course) into 5 pounds of burger so we will see how that turns out.

 

[afteamroper]

Thank you all that is what I wanted to know/learn.

 

[idelkslayer]

I trim as much as I can easily get off but I don't worry too much about areas where the silverskin runs between muscle groups. I err on the side of removing too much versus too little. I would ather end up with 50 lbs of burger I want to eat than 70 lbs I don't want to eat. I like to mix in about 10-15% pork fat by weight to add moisture and help hold it together when I make burgers. I always grind my meat while it is partially frozen and then I grind my fat (also partially frozen) once the meat and fat are ground once then I weigh out the portions and mix it together. Finally I will run the mix through the grinder so everything gets ground once more and helps mix in the fat.

Bear meat is the exception, I will keep and use all the bear fat I can get off my bears. The fat can be rendered for cooking or ground into the meat for sausage. By comparison from my last batch of bear sausage the batch made with only bear fat was preferred over the batch made with a mix of pork fat.