a different kind of grind

I managed to do two things Sunday afternoon and evening: I made keto mayo, and I ground and prepped my own beef burger patties. Here are some pics and explanations.

First, let's take a tour of the beef going into my burger patties. I went for skirt steak plus some savory marbled meats, so there's definitely some fat content, although maybe not as much as 30% (as with most cuts of chuck). Below is hanu-apdari, or Korean-beef foreleg (at least, that's the literal translation). I'm guessing this is the cut we call the shank in English:

Next is another fairly marbled cut—the seoldo, or bottom round (according to Naver Dictionary), i.e., slices of the cow's ass:

I got the above beef at my local grocery inside my apartment building, but the following monster, a skirt-steak cut, came from America (note the USDA sticker) by way of Costco:

I loved skirt steak as a cut to use when making beef burgundy; it might actually be too tough a cut to use for burgers, but I thought I'd give it a try, anyway.

So I let all the above meat thaw naturally for a few hours; much of it was still frozen when I set up my grinder attachment and started grinding away. I had to cut the frozen parts into strips to get them to feed into the grinder. By the way, here's a diagram of the KitchenAid grinder (mine looks only a little bit different):

I love the name "grind worm." Reminds me of the Shakespearean phrase "blind-worm's sting" from Macbeth (the phrase is uttered by the Weird Sisters). My grinder was made for my KitchenAid stand mixer, but it was actually made by a different company called "Antree," which sounds vaguely Irish, like County Antrim. Anyway, the grinder is as easy to use as the above simple diagram implies. Orienting the blade was the only issue, but there's a metal pip on the blade (C, above) to let you know which side faces outward.

You feed the meat through the tube in the tray; the spinning corkscrew (the grind worm) grabs the meat and pushes it toward the spinning blades; the meat is chopped up and then extruded through the grinding plate, of which there are two kinds: coarse and fine. I used both, passing the meat through the grinder twice, because that's what the majority of people did in the videos I watched. I suspect a single coarse grind is fine for burgers, but for sausages, you'll probably want finer. Anyway, I went the two-grind route, which took some time, but was worth it. And since I specifically picked gristle-free meat, I know my burgers won't have me chewing on anything tough. That's one thing I've long hated about Costco's ground beef.

Here's a random shot of some bacon I fried up Saturday night:

The bacon is for both salads and burgers.

And below is a shot of some homemade olive-oil mayonnaise.

Let's talk about the mayo for a sec. I had originally wanted to make avocado-oil mayonnaise because all the keto-heads in the videos I watch talk about how seed oils and other vegetable oils are generally bad for you, hormonally speaking, the only safe oils being avocado and olive. They sell avocado oil in our downstairs grocery; it's extremely expensive for such a small bottle. And thus far, I'm not that impressed: the oil proved horrible when I used it in pesto, and when I tried making avocado-oil mayo, the result tasted even worse. I am, however, wondering whether the brand of avocado oil being sold downstairs is the same as what Americans are using. My avocado-oil mayo was a disturbing green, but on YouTube, everyone else's avo-mayo was white. That may be part of the problem. Anyway, the result tasted artificial, as if I were eating chemicals. I threw that batch away and made olive-oil mayo, which didn't taste much like real mayo, but it at least tasted edible and perked up when I added some black pepper to it. Behold the results of my labor:

Making your own mayo turns out to be super-easy if you have a tall plastic container and a stick blender. Dump in salt, egg, mustard, and lemon juice. Add a cup of whatever oil you're using. Put in your stick blender and blitz. As the bottom liquid turns white, move your blender up and down to incorporate all the unmixed oil. Voilà—mayo. I think J. Kenji López-Alt pioneered this stick-blender method, taking the onerous arm work out of the equation forever. (Normally, you make mayo by slooooowly adding in oil while whisking vigorously for several minutes. I did this the first time I went to France.)

Below: my grinder doing its evil work. I ended up moving the setup to a big table; the grinder was spitting out the beef's blood, leaving tiny droplets everywhere, so I figured I needed to move everything to somewhere that was easier to clean. But after I moved the stand mixer, the blood problem stopped. Huh.

The grinder:

This final shot below shows the burger patties, each on its own bit of wax paper. Can you see the patties through the Ziploc bag? I used my burger-bun molds to make the patties (which will shrink unless I smash them even flatter to make smash burgers). The patty-making method I arrived at took some trial and error; I figured things out as I went along. Eventually, I realized that the best way to get the burger patties to release from the molds was to use two sheets of wax paper. Each patty weighs about 90 grams (a bit more than 3 ounces), the idea being to make double-stack smash burgers with plenty of cheese. (I have a block of Gruyère at the ready for later this week.)

Making the patties took time and effort, but it was all worth it. What else is a single man going to do on a Sunday? I've got enough patties for over ten burgers (assuming each burger is a double); I can also add the beef to keto spaghetti sauce if I want. And I do really like the idea that I control what goes into my burgers. No gristle, for one thing, and no weird chemicals. I normally add salt, pepper, Italian herbs, powdered garlic, powdered onion, and some chili flakes. All of that adds umami to my burgers, making them awesome. So now, I'm set for several weeks. And the next time I make burgers, I might switch up which meats I use. I've seen some people on YouTube who do a 3:1 proportion of beef to pork belly so they can have bacon-flavored burgers. That might be something to try.