Your Ground Beef Recipe Deserves The Best Beef

Before you prepare your next ground beef recipe read a little bit of what I've learned about ground beef.

I guess in the past I've taken ground beef, or hamburger, for granted. Since I've begun my beef cooking education and this web site I've come to appreciate it much more.

As simple a product as it is there are some intricacies.

Select The Right Beef For Your Ground Beef Recipe

Hamburger is hamburger right? Well, not exactly.

First of all there is a difference in ground beef and ground hamburger even though the words are used interchangeably.

Both are ground from less tender and/or less popular cuts of beef and both can contain up to 30 percent fat. Generally the butcher reserves trimmings from other meat cuts to grind into hamburger and ground beef.

This means in theory there could be pieces of sirloin, chuck, ribs, or even filet mignon in your package.

Hamburger, however, can have fat added. Ground beef cannot. That's the difference. Either will work fine in most any ground beef recipe.

Just remember that both hamburger and ground beef have 30 percent fat!

Next up the hierarchy is ground chuck. This is what I normally buy.

Ground chuck is only from the beef chuck primal. It's still beef bits and pieces and less popular beef cuts but it must all be chuck.

Ground chuck is usually between 15 to 20 percent fat. This is the ideal fat content for ground beef recipes like burgers, meat loaf, and meatballs and such.

Ground round and ground sirloin are normally in most grocers meat department but I rarely buy them. They are ground from the round and sirloin primal respectively and are therefore more expensive.

To me they are just not as good as ground chuck in any ground beef recipe. Except hot dog chili. I use ground round for that.

Ground round is 10 to 15 percent fat and ground sirloin is 8 to 10 percent. That's not enough fat for me.

That's also the reason I never even look at the lean and extra lean packages.

The Grind In Ground Beef

All commercially ground beef that I've noticed seems to have the same grind. I suspect that it's been passed through the grinder just once.

This is an ideal grind for ground beef recipes where you want a light and juicy texture. Such as a hamburger.

However that's not the grind for meat loaves or meatballs where a firmer texture is desirable. That firm texture requires another pass or two through the grinder.

The finer the beef is ground the firmer the texture will be. With a really fine grind you can have a meatloaf that's almost steak like.

I could ask the butcher to grind it more but I usually just pull out my trusty food processor and pulse the beef in batches. Works great.

I also use my food processor for making chili beef where I prefer a coarse grind. Occasionally coarse ground beef is available in my grocery but not often. At least not as often as I'd like.

For my chili ground beef I buy a beef chuck roast, cut it in chunks and then pulse it in the processor until it looks right.

Give It a Try.

As frugal cooks where would we be without ground beef?

With this inexpensive beef product on hand we can serve a healthy, protein packed ground beef recipe every day of the year and never repeat a recipe twice.

Below are some of my favorite recipes. Hopefully some of the information here will help you select a proper package of ground beef and give some of them a try.

More Ground Beef Recipes: