Hamburger is Awesome!

We decided to make burgers today since we were watching football. We wanted to fresh grind the meat ourselves and see how it stood up on the grill. It turned out very well!



The setup. My friend has a meat-grinder attachment for the Kitchaid, so she brought it by and we set it up to grind the meat. The meat was fresh chuck from the butcher. It was cut into somewhat small pieces the night before and salted. Supposedly if you grind it and then salt overnight, you can begin to cook the meat. So, it's best to leave it in smaller pieces and grind the next day right before you cook 'em. This is 3.5 lbs of chuck that we made into 8 burgers.





Working the grinder





Grinding the meat. It went through the grinder twice - it still seemed a little chunky the first time around, so we put it through again.





Big bowl o' meat





Making the patties. Be sure to not work the meat too much - don't push too hard.





The formed patties. We sat the patties on the counter for about an hour to bring them up to room temperature.





Loading up the grill. We cooked them with the top on for about 3 min on the first side, then another 3 min on the other side. After that we put the cheese on and let them go for another minute to melt it.





Add the blue cheese for the home stretch





Yum!





Burger construction. The burgers sat for a few minutes, then we put them together. We had some carmelized onions, fresh avocado, along with the other typical condiments.





Final product





Overall it was a great success. Grinding the meat yourself makes for much tastier burger - they taste fresh, the flavor is much better, and they aren't as dense as traditional burgers. There wasn't any seasoning in the burgers except for a little bit of salt and a quick hit of black pepper.


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