Thread: Economics of your own meat grinder

Originally Posted by veitnamcam

I was taught you should never have any mince products rare as by being minced bacteria can be spread all threw the product where as on a steak it is only on the outside where the bacteria can be killed by the heat.

Happy to be corrected on that tho. @Angus what are your thoughts?

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I asked the head chef at work (he's a hunting mate as well) about mince. The surface of red meat has to be cooked to kill any bacteria that may be transferred by contact. Specifically I was asking how a chef can make Steak Tar tar when this is the case. He tells me the only way to do this is get a large piece of meat, cook the entire outside (essentially rare) then set aside to cool on a sterile board / dish. Wait until it is cold, then cut the cooked meat off with a clean knife to ensure that there is absolutely no possible contact from the meat handling.

But unless you are processing / mincing meat that had been cooked, then your mince needs to be cooked through or you are risking food poisoning. I find if you dont want them to dry out, dont cook them on high Turn the heat down cook them through ona low heat, then as they are nearly done take them from that pan and put them on a high heat to brown the surface up.

shit a brick..sorry flyblown thats golden lid NOT RED.....hope it hasnt caused marital disharmony bud....

Hi flyblowen i have the smae mincer its bloody awesome!! N

Little tip if you havent worked it out dont dice the meat before putti g it in the mincer cut it in long strips the auger will pull it through and makes the whole process quicker.

I make my own sausages now too easy as. Go on line to Dunninghams its a supplyer to all the butchers, so you get you sausage mix and casings from them.

If the meat is fresh and properly handled its no worries. By "Medium rare" I mean slightly pink but not like a steak. I can't remember where I saw it but it was one of the famous chefs. Although I do recall him saying something like DO NOT do it with supermarket meat.

I should add that it wouldn't pay to do it with venison mixed with pork. Also always check the juices run clear. Haven't ever got crook as long as it isn't too pink and to be fair have been ill of fast food burgers with well over done patties in the past.

I got a good economics lesson a couple of weeks ago , took a bunch of back legs , tahr & pig to the butcher for salami ,the butcher rang the next day to advise there was quite a bit of meat there so we got a 1/4 made into sausages but still ended up with 75 samami,s & 2 huge bags of sausages ...just as well hes done a good job very happy with the goods , bloody expensive though.

Originally Posted by Boaraxa

I got a good economics lesson a couple of weeks ago , took a bunch of back legs , tahr & pig to the butcher for salami ,the butcher rang the next day to advise there was quite a bit of meat there so we got a 1/4 made into sausages but still ended up with 75 samami,s & 2 huge bags of sausages ...just as well hes done a good job very happy with the goods , bloody expensive though.

75 salamis..ouch...


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Originally Posted by tiroatedson

75 salamis..ouch...


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Salamis...yum

When using meat from the freezer to make patties and sausages do you defrost it or mince it frozen, I'm guessing its alright to then refreeze ? I always thought if you defrosted meat then you couldn't refreeze it.

Originally Posted by rusl

When using meat from the freezer to make patties and sausages do you defrost it or mince it frozen, I'm guessing its alright to then refreeze ? I always thought if you defrosted meat then you couldn't refreeze it.

They say have the meat chilled when mincing. I take mine out, start slicing bits off the meat then put it through the mincer. Use or refreeze as you will. Never been sick eating refrozen mince.


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Originally Posted by Ryan_Songhurst

Do you add fat to your mince? I picked up a hand grinder a while back and have tried to make mince a couple of times with venison but always found it cooks really dry, I don't really like fat off venison, tried using fat off the backsteaks of a real good condition spiker way back when I was a young fella and it put me off leaving too much fat on venison anyhow.... yuck!
I was thinking of giving the mince a go again but adding some beef tallow?

Go to pak n save and ask for a bag of pork fat, costs just about nothing.

15% pork back fat for hamburger patties.

How's the grinder going @Flyblown? I'm thinking of buying one. Cheers.

Kids love mince.

Originally Posted by Flyblown

We had to slaughter a beef steer last week unexpectedly cos he got a respiratory infection and I wouldn’t pay the daylight robbery to get him fixed and a vets cert for the transport to the works. The only problem was freezer space - there’s already a 425kg hook weight Hereford steer in there plus who knows how much venison. So out came all the venison for a check to see whats what. Realised that there was more than I thought...

When we weighed the venison we came up with 97kg off the bone and 24kg on the bone. Hmmm, what to do. Having a yarn wife the The Wife I asked how much mince costs at the supermarket, we looked it up and just about bloody fell off the stool - $15/kg for standard grade??? Bloody hell. No wonder we are always getting asked for homekills...

Last year our old electric mincer finally died, didn’t get round to replacing it. So I bought a Kenwood 2000W mincer from Harvery Norman on a VIP deal for a little over $300 delivered.

Attachment 89941

This morning we minced 32kg of fallow and red venison, and in a production line of me as Butcher-And-Grinder-In-Chief and three sous chefs (and two keen as mustard dustbin dogs for the scraps), we made up heaps of nice fat burger patties using the bite.co.nz recipe which is a real winner (just dropped the parmesan, we don’t need that). We packaged them up into layers in boxes separated by baking paper and back into the freezer they went... in supermarket money for standard grade beef mince thats $480 worth plus whatever the eggs, milk, spices, mustard and garlic costs. The onions, herbs and bread we grow / make ourselves.

http://www.bite.co.nz/recipe/11063/Venison-burgers/

Makes my eyes water how much beef is these days. Now we don’t notice the difference really between beef mince and venison mince, when we cook up bulk meat sauce we usually mix the two. The venison burgers are bloody good, the kids love ‘em and will eat them for brekkie and dinner quite happily all week, very easy to prepare, just cook them from frozen at 180°C for half an hour, job done.

So yeah, just reflecting I guess on how much more of the deer is processed into edible food with a good strong mincer, everything goes in right to the boney part of the ligaments, no hassle having to strip out silvering or tougher parts, in it all goes. Plus it comes with the sausage making tools too. One of the deer in the freezer was a battered old fallow stag who probably wouldn’t have been much chop but as seasoned mince you won’t notice the difference. The new mincer has already paid for itself, I doubt we’d have used a lot of the older venison it would likely have gone to the dogs. If you shoot a few deer and don’t think you’ll likely get through it all, a good mincer is a bloody good investment.

Bet the mince now takes up less space.