65° out, sunny, and we’re having burgers with garlicky aioli, roasted potato wedges with herbes de provence, and rosé and CdP… my version of heaven.
I just got back from Costco with a pack of nice looking $4/lb sirloin. We’re going to grind half for tonight’s burgers, and then cube and marinate the other half for tomorrow night’s kebabs. I love sirloin burgers, but they need extra fat to really shine. Hence, the aioli.
We experimented quite a bit with grinding beef a few summers ago, but I can’t recall what we liked best. We have the attachment for the KitchenAid stand mixer. If you grind meat this way, do you use the coarse or fine plate? And do you do a single or double pass?
I use the fine plate, because the grind is really pretty chunky with the coarse plate. It helps the texture if you put the grinder parts in the freezer for about 20 minutes before doing the deed (the connectve tissue and fat don’t get quite so stretched/smeared). You can put the cubed meat in the freezer beforehand (say 10-15 minutes… just a good chill, not starting to freeze) for the same reason. With really lean beef I sometimes add bacon, while grinding (say two or three strips for two half-pound burgers). I plan to grill the burgers as soon as possible after grinding to maximize the benefit of DIY.
I have the same attachment for the Kitchenaid and I pretty much only use mine for grinding chili meat so I therefore pretty much only use it on the coarse setting and an single pass.
The manual suggests grinding twice, but indicates that either plate can be used. We’re leaning toward grinding twice, but with the coarse plate both times. We want it tender, but not mealy.
Here’s what we’ve done so far: we cubed the beef, and added quite a bit of extra fat that we trimmed from the sirloin we plan to use for tomorrows kebabs. It’s in the freezer, along with the metal parts from the grinding attachment (excellent tip, David-- Steve found that on a grilling website this afternoon. We haven’t tried it before).
I made the aioli in the good ole Vita-Mix with the recipe from the V-M website. Pretty basic-- egg yolks, lemon, salt, pepper, garlic, and olive oil. For some reason, even once it’s emulsified, my aioli is never as thick as I want it. Is there any help for that? An additional yolk, maybe?
I found a tip on another site that suggests folding a big pat of butter into each hamburger patty for additional succulence. Scary, but what the hell. We don’t eat like this often and Steve’s got plenty of Lipitor!
We’re not help. We’ve only done single passes of the course and single passes of the fine. Never together multiple times. Interested in hearing your results. I would think with something link hamburgers and as much added fat stores you’re adding from various sources it might be a bit mushy.
Hmm. Even with the butter and extra fat, I think our burgers will still be <20% fat since we started with fairly lean sirloin. It’s an ongoing experiment, though, so if it’s mushy, we’ll try something different next time.
I really wish I’d found better hamburger buns. We have the plain old seeded ones from Costco.
Believe it or not, more oil. You’re essentially making mayonnaise (yes, I know you knew that) and the more oil you add (to a point, of course), the thicker it gets as long as you’ve beaten the crap out of your egg yolks beforehand. EDIT - scratch that. The VM recipe calls for 2 1/4 cups of oil to 3 eggs. Julia says no more than 2 cups per 3 eggs or the mayo might turn. Adding more oil isn’t going to help in all likelihood.
Alternately, use your Cuisinart. Julia Child has a great food processor mayo recipe that calls for 2 whole eggs along with a yolk, and it gets thick as hell.
I made a burger on a “pub bun” from Portland French Baking last night. Too dense. Stick with the seeded ones unless you want to try Kaiser rolls or ciabatta rolls.
I passed those by at Costco today because I feared exactly that-- that they’d be too dense and bready. What I’d like to find are brioche buns, because I don’t have the patience to make them.
Our burgers were a resounding success, despite being slightly overcooked. They were fully medium; we prefer them a little more pink, but not as rare as we like steak. Anyway, even at medium, they had great sirloin flavor, and were ridiculously juicy thanks to the butter shavings (maybe 1/2 tsp total per burger) I gently dispersed into the patties. They were about 1/3 lb each, and even the kids finished every bite.
Oh, and the aioli firmed up in the fridge! Very nice, casual dinner.
So Melissa, can you recap beginning to end how much meat, grinding, additives, etc…? I’d like to try to repeat the process here since I have all of the same gear available. TIA.
Joe, we started with about 1.25 lbs of sirloin, cubed in 1.5-2" pieces. Melissa had bought about 4 lbs of steaks, so I trimmed some of the larger fat chunks from the remaining steaks and tossed them in with the cubes to up the overall fat content. We stuck the meat as well as the grinding components (coarse plate and worm assembly) in the freezer for about 30 minutes before grinding. When I pulled it out, the meat was firm but not hard and the fat was pretty solid.
Assembled the chilled components on the grinder attachment and ran the meat through twice on speed 4. Somewhat to my surprise, the second grinding did not seem to break down the meat that much more, but it did help to better incorporate the fat.
Melissa then added salt and fresh pepper to the meat and made four patties using minimal handling - really not much more than gentle shaping and pressing lightly to shape - maybe 5" diameter and about 3/4" thick. As she noted, she added a few small shavings of Irish butter to each patty.
I grilled the patties over a hot flame (475-500 degrees), covered, for about 4 minutes on the first side and 2 and a half minutes on the second side. As Melissa pointed out, the patties were a solid medium when I pulled them off - I should have flipped them after 3 minutes. Nevertheless, as she mentioned, the patties were still tender and juicy, with excellent sirloin flavor.
Kind of a fun experiment, and left me with the impression that hamburger is a rather forgiving medium. We’re looking forward to trying some different meat mixtures and grinding techniques.
Joe, I very gently separated the ground beef into four loose mounds on a parchment-lined baking sheet, and created a wide crater in the middle of each without compressing the beef at all. then I scattered the butter shavings around the crater, and filled the crater in with ground beef from the edges before I gave each one a single good press to form the patties. I wanted to work the meat as little as possible, and I think that really paid off texture-wise.
3 large pasteurized egg yolks
1/4 cup (60 mL) lemon juice
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon white pepper
3 large garlic cloves
1 cup (240 mL) light olive oil
It really did thicken nicely in the fridge. If I have a complaint, it’s that it was a bit too acidic. I don’t think I got a full 1/4 cup out of my small lemon, and it was still quite assertively lemony. Next time I’ll probably cut the lemon juice a little and up the garlic.
I have more than half of the aioli left… must grill a couple of artichokes before the clouds return.
Interesting. I’ve never done it that way. I always just mix it together in the mixing bowl and then form the patties from there.
You guys have me stoked on this idea. I’m thinking I’ll try this soon myself.
Since you guys “chilled” the fat I’m thinking I might save some fat trimmings from steaks in the freezer and when I want to make patties like this defrost some to add to the freshly ground sirloin. Might work.
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