Here's Why You Should Be Grinding Your Own Beef

Ground beef is the foundation of many family meals and gatherings. Whether you are enjoying some burgers at a backyard barbecue or making Anne Burrell's beefy bolognese, ground meat is your anchor ingredient. In fact, Quartz claims that in 2018 alone, people in the United States were chowing down a yearly average of 222 pounds of red meat and poultry per person. That translates to 800 quarter-pound burgers or roughly 2.4 burgers a day. It's fair to say, Americans like meat. 

If you've ever considered grinding red meat, pork, or poultry at home but it turned into nothing more than a fleeting thought, it might be time to get back on that train. Grinding your own meat actually has many benefits that range from cutting costs to better taste. But the fact that you can do it at home and you don't necessarily need to purchase a meat grinder to accomplish the task — as per Taste of Home, a food processor can do the job in a pinch — should definitely make you pause to reconsider your meaty ways.

According to the Kitchn, grinding your own meat accomplishes a couple of things that ultimately result in a more flavorful and better-textured end product, which is the culinary goal every time we cook, right? By grinding your beef or meat of choice at home you get to control how crumbly those chunks of grind actually are and this can really influence the taste of your meal. That's where their cool trick comes in: if you're not happy with your ground meat, simply cook up what you've got, let it cool down, and then grind it again using your food processor. This will give you a finer texture that is perfect for making meaty fillings.

Additionally, as Charbroil explains, grinding your own meat not only gives you the chance to choose your cut and decide what to mix it with, but you also get to "control" your meat blend, the cleanliness of your environment, and the equipment that is used to do it.