Meat Grinding: plate sizes? regrind?

[Snyd]

I too do a coarse then fine grind. I think the holes are about 3/8 and 1/8. My grinder is an old Hobart floor mixer with the grinder attachment. It has 3 speeds and spits it out as fast as I can stuff it in. It looks like this. It's got some serious torque.

 

[Tbuckus]

Many already posted most of my suggestions.
Here are the only other things I can think of that will help.

Buy a new blade and small plate and keep them together. If you keep the blades mated with a particular plate, they will last longer. My grinder came with extra blades and I keep them with their own plate.
Separate your meat into two groups. One is clean, tendon less cuts, and the other is more gristle type cuts. Run the clean thru once and the gristle twice. That way you are not having to grind so much meat twice. You stated that it's hard to get that much meat into a freezer to referee/ cool, so hopefully you can get the batch that needs the second grind cooled down more.
I usually use the gristly cuts for sausage and keep it out of my hamburger. My family is the same way about chewy hamburger.

 

[Blinginpse]

There is better grinders than LEM and cabelas has. Mine has a rating of 53lb per minute. It does not matter how fast you feed it you can't keep up unless your stuffing 5 or 6" pieces in it. Usually 3" pieces go great. Grind it course and then grind it in a finer plate. Still it takes it like mad and you may half to slow down some but I can grind 200lb pork sausage 2 times in 30mins or less




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[Beendare]

LOL...yes I get that. I am a trimming fanatic. The female gender in my tribe has a fit if they hit anything chewy. I take out a chunk at a time and spend 1-2 hours a night until ready to grind. The trim can be frozen and then thawed for grinding and packaged as burger.

I do the same....trimming almost all of the silver skin and such. Makes the grinding easier. I use #8 plate and grind twice but this year ground one batch of elk single grind...seemed fine but haven't tried it yet.

I also grind with no fat added and if you cook it right with some olive oil....I think it tastes better. The sausage recipes come out more like seasoned meat tho.

 

[5MilesBack]

I have the same #22 Cabela's 1hp grinder and I only single grind with the 4.5mm plate. I also cut the pieces larger than most would and stuff them through if I have to, and it grinds it up as fast as I can get it in the grinder throat. Ground most of my bull into burger so 200+ lbs of burger. Comes out better than what you get in the store. But I also don't mix any fat with it when I'm grinding, so just quality ground elk burger. Only way I would grind it twice is if I was making sausage of some sort.

 

[robby denning]

5miles, do you have to do anything special if you want elk burger patties to get them to stay together? I've done with venison what you did and like it but sometimes they crumble a bit. Just doesn't make sense to throw beef fat in there when we've got the worlds best organic low fat meat to start with! And I missed that you killed a bull this year? congrats

 

[tipsntails7]

5miles, do you have to do anything special if you want elk burger patties to get them to stay together? I've done with venison what you did and like it but sometimes they crumble a bit. Just doesn't make sense to throw beef fat in there when we've got the worlds best organic low fat meat to start with! And I missed that you killed a bull this year? congrats

Robby I'm not 5miles but I've added eggs and bread crumbs to ground elk. I don't do it when I grind but when I pull a section out of the freezer, I let it thaw, then place the ground into a mixing bowl, add 1 egg and 1/8-1/4 cup of bread crumbs per Lb of meat, mix it up then form the patties.


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[Yellowknife]

Robby I'm not 5miles but I've added eggs and bread crumbs to ground elk. I don't do it when I grind but when I pull a section out of the freezer, I let it thaw, then place the ground into a mixing bowl, add 1 egg and 1/8-1/4 cup of bread crumbs per Lb of meat, mix it up then form the patties.

Same trick we use with 0% fat moose and caribou grind. Usually with moose though, I'll add about 5% of it's own fat back in, but even that isn't enough to make is sticky like beef fat does.

 

[realunlucky]

Robby I'm not 5miles but I've added eggs and bread crumbs to ground elk. I don't do it when I grind but when I pull a section out of the freezer, I let it thaw, then place the ground into a mixing bowl, add 1 egg and 1/8-1/4 cup of bread crumbs per Lb of meat, mix it up then form the patties.


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This is how we do it also.

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[MuleyFever]

I don't add anything and have not had issues with my burgers not staying together. Granted I know they could fall apart so I am cautious when flipping them. I have tried the egg and it just did not make that much of a difference to me.

 

[Roy68]

5miles, do you have to do anything special if you want elk burger patties to get them to stay together? I've done with venison what you did and like it but sometimes they crumble a bit. Just doesn't make sense to throw beef fat in there when we've got the worlds best organic low fat meat to start with! And I missed that you killed a bull this year? congrats

Same as the others for us. 1 egg per pound. Not sure if it matters but we use farm fresh eggs. We do let the burger rest on the counter for an hour as well as the egg before doing anything with it. With steaks burger and the like we do not go straight from the fridge to the grill.

 

[Roy68]

To the OP

I have the cabelas #22 that I purchased in 2005 or 06. It has eaten thousands of pounds as yours on deer, elk, hogs. (9 deer last year alone). I keep my plates matched with my knives. You do need to sharpen (flatten) them I pre chill the hopper, auger, and throat in the fridge a day before and try to keep it cool as I go. Do not freeze it. I also use food grade silicone at the end of the year when I store it. I will double and single grind and double grind depending on the meat. I keep the meat soft frozen and I will set a tub in a tub with ice between to keep my ground meat chilled.

The best thing I did was ditch the idea of stuffing off the grinder. It is horribly slow and tedious. My opinion is that a grinder is for grinding not creating pressure behind ground meat and forcing it down a tube into a bag. I believe the friction created by the grinder stuffing tube is what slows it down jus as much as anything else. I bought a hand crank stuffer from Waltons Inc. with various sizes of stuffing horns. I think it holds approx 15# of ground meat at a time. It is one more step but it drastically sped things up and money well spent for us.

 

[beetlespin]

If you want to make your burgers stick together without adding fat, I've had great luck using shredded zucchini. Keeps the burger lean but stays together and helps keep it juicy as well.


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[5MilesBack]

5miles, do you have to do anything special if you want elk burger patties to get them to stay together? I've done with venison what you did and like it but sometimes they crumble a bit. Just doesn't make sense to throw beef fat in there when we've got the worlds best organic low fat meat to start with! And I missed that you killed a bull this year? congrats

Robbie, for patties don't drain the blood, keep it with the meat. That extra moisture helps keep them together as well. Also when flipping, sometimes I use two spatula's.....one on the bottom and one on top to hold it together. I have added good quality ground chuck with the elk burger before but prefer to keep it all elk and cook the burgers rare. I know where this meat came from, and I was the one that processed it so I have no problem with rare burgers. If I add outside burger, then I cook them through.

Made a meatloaf last year that I added chuck to and layered bacon on that the family absolutely loved. Juicy as heck. I need to find that recipe again, my mouth is watering.

There's a pic of the bull in the photo contest thread.

 

[robby denning]

Thank man. I'll try that. I missed your bull in the elk photo thread. Heading there now!

 

[Yellowknife]

Follow up on my thread from a year ago. I did about the usual amount of fall grinding (sheep + moose) and took some of the advise here. Switched from rough trimming and double grinding to trimming a little better, chilling the meat as much as practical, and single grinding using the finer 4.5mm plate. As it turns out, the big #22 1hp sucks still sucks it down and spits it out through that smaller plate nearly as fast as it did with the 7mm. Quality of meat seems to be better. No mushiness from a second grind, and no chewy chunks from a single coarse grind. Meat all passes the "wife and kids" test, so it doesn't get any better than that!

I think the reason I was second grinding it all these years was because the old grinders I used as a kid couldn't do it any other way. Old habits wasted a lot of hours over the last 10 years. As it turns out, this beast doesn't slow down at all by just skipping that step.

 

[Lil dude]

Did you just hand mix the beef fat in before your single fine grind? Also how does this unit work in conjunction with the poly burger bags? Half the battle is filling those bags. I'm eyeing this same grinder right now.

 

[Yellowknife]

I don’t add beef fat. I’ve messed with it before, but half the point is lean meat. That would likely require a re-grind or re-mix of some type.

With a largest plastic tube attached, it stuffs burger bags like a champ. I do need to buy a foot peddle for it, which would increase efficiency. The metal sausage tube stuffer on the other hand is a bit more temperamental.


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[VernAK]

I do most of the above with a few exceptions:

I never use a fine plate.....if the coarse plate grind is too "chunky", run it through the coarse plate a second time.
The fine plates make too much pink slime IMO!

I never add beef fat......I knead a bit of olive oil into the burger to make it hold together better.

 

[Tod osier]

I know this is a follow up from an old thread, but something I've learned about the Cabelas grinders may apply. Many of the large professional Cabelas grinders had an unconventional design of the head (may be you have one given that you have had the grinder 10 years and that is about the age). They had cast ridges inside and don't have the cast and then machined spirals inside the head that most grinders do ( most heads are machined after casting with a tight tolerance to the auger, but the design I'm talking about doesn't). This makes them an inefficient design and mine is slow on regrinds - really slow. This head design was phased out and I looked at buying a conventional head from the manufacturer, but never did.

Like you I learned to grind and regrind, but phased out the pre-grind when I saw it wasn't needed. Glad you got it working for you.