Hot take: Premium ground beef doesn't matter

[Jerod Broussard]

Andrrr it's hard to describe. The stuff from dad is a super fine grind, you can see and taste all the fat, but browning the meat in a pot there is no grease to drain out after browning. The wolly world stuff is a grease draining fest. The texture for burgers infinitely better.

[JCBBQ]

I totally disagree. Grinding my own meat for burgers has made a huge difference. Texture and flavor. Also, I use Picanha and probably go 70/30 .

[TripleB]

I grind my own because of the recall on ground beef that I’ve seen so often, not because of any taste difference I can see from grinding your own. No idea how often these markets are cleaning their grinders.

[TripleB]

That’s the ticket. I buy choice chuck on sale, cut it into 1 or 1.5 lb sizes, freeze it and then grind it for burgers when needed.

[rickgregory]

Well one of the reasons I did this was the Painted Hills is mostly kind of... OK. Nondescript. It's beef.

I think of someone has a variety of cuts around it makes sense to take some of the scraps etc and grind them. but I don't usually have that many and as I noted above, if I buy chuck, it's more than the CAB Prime ground beef. I could grind a prime Costco brisket, but... that would save me $0.70/lb. Not worth the work for a single guy.

[HouseHomey]

This is why I grind my own. I have ground pichana, chucks, shorts, whole briskets, points, flats and all over them map. I even pulled a Jerod and added bacon to the brisket grinds. Geeze man! That’ll have you trippin.

Whatever is on sale, looks good or whatever I have already paid for.

I see what you are saying and mostly agree. I haven’t been a huge fan of painted hills. 3lbs of that I still have. However the painted hill tonight was AMAZING. I just made a version of SOS with scratch stock and chunkage (mushroom, onion, fennel and tomatoes) and let it simmer after a good browning. I ate it over farro. Tomorrow is my Monday so I basically cleaned out the fridge.

Painted hills was MONEY tonight.

Honestly I’m just not a fan of pre ground meats. I certainly won’t by hamburger but sometimes buy ground beef or specific cuts ground.

70/30 is a world apart from 80/20. IMHO fat at that level is like the Richter (spelling??) scale.

[Andrrr]

Curious minds (mine) want to know, what don’t you like about it and what drives that difference in flavor? Diet maybe?

[Jerod Broussard]

After consuming the ground beef from 1200 pound calves my dad slaughters at the local slaughter house I totally hate and detest the ground beef at wolly world, regardless of fat content. Now I just ground bacon ends with my deer meat fitty/fitty and add black and red pepper to the mix before grinding. Maybe I can add some black bear to the mix next year.

[Dewesq55]

I totally love the 80/20 from my local supermarket. I'm also a fan of toasted buns, particularly Martin's Potato buns. Barbara, inexplicably, doesn't like her buns toasted (Hey! Watch it!) 😁

[rickgregory]

To be clear, the Double R was only partly wagyu. I imagine it was used to add fat to lean choice cuts.

[Andrrr]

I don’t know about Costco’s near you but mine always has full prime briskets for $3.49/lb. I haven’t checked on the choice but if you’re willing to trim and grind that’s about as good a deal as I’ve found.

[Mojo0209]

Just a question, but does a really tender piece of meat really work well for something u grind? Seems counter productive to me. Just cause something cost more does it make it better? IDK?

[Attjack]

I've tried expensive wagyu ground beef and found it to be mushy and kind of gross.

[Polarbear777]

Wagyu is a higher percentage than normal of fat, mixed in/marbled with the lean.

grinding for burgers and sausage the tenderness is achieved by grinding and the ratio is determined by the mix, so sausage and burgers are the old wagyu.

Id like to see someone tell the difference at the same grind size and fat ratio.

[Polarbear777]

Yeah grinding your own is more useful for using up trimming scraps and fat if you save and freeze all that stuff.