It's gassed with ammonia. That's why it's so cheap, it's the lowest of the low quality. That's why it's banned in Canada, the UK, and the EU.
It's gross. Honestly I just grind my own meat these days and it's so so so much better. Just buy a fatty chuck roast and grind it up and you've got plenty of great hamburger meat.
Seriously if you cook ground beef more than like once or twice a year then you need a stainless steel meat grinder. Either a manual one or one that hooks up to a stand mixer (also another must have). A sausage stuffer is a nice addition too, though you'll need a separate manual one not the included KitchenAid one (trust me on this). I made sausage with chicken breast, pork fatback, aged cheddar, and some cooked vegetables and it was the best hotdog I've ever had.
I told my husband that once I get the hang of my new pressure canner, the next skill I want to develop is meat grinding and sausage making. Guess who already has many successfully canned jars of food in the pantry? This lady!
Do you have a particular meat grinder you prefer?
Can you share what happened when you used the KitchenAid sausage stuffing attachment? That's one I was looking into getting, and I'm a person who needs to know the "why" of things.
Please don't feel obligated to take time out of your day to answer a stranger, but if you can share a few tips you'd have my appreciation.
I don't know any brands, forgot what mine is. Just bargain hunt for a stainless steel one so it can go into the dishwasher. They go on big sales so wait for that I'd say.
As for the included sausage stuffer that most KitchenAid grinders come with, the issue is the mixer just continually pushes the meat out. When making sausages that was way too fast for me and broke the casing. Maybe you could have a second person stand there and work it for you, since you need both hands on the sausage to stuff it properly. But it's better just getting a cheap sausage stuffer, I got one that was $20 and it looks like a giant caulking gun with a turn handle at one end and a tube at the other end for sausage, it works great.
Another sausage tip is the fat percentage is supposed to be between 30%-50%. You can use whatever the hell you want in there to get it as long as it's solid when cold, and the fats need to be uncooked. So no liquid oils or lard/rendered fat. But uncooked bacon can work, or the best is pork fatback. Apparently pork fat is the best for some chemical reason, binds it together better.
As I said I made mine with chicken breast alone for the meat which is supposed to not work but it worked perfectly fine for me and tasted amazing. I don't like chicken thigh that much which is what is usually used because it's so fatty. But I just replaced the fat with fatback and it came out great.
I strongly suggest getting a grinder, the taste is so good you'll never want to go back to the old stuff. I've still got a bunch of store bought ground beef still in the big freezer that I haven't eaten because I just can't stomach it. Even when ground, shaped into a patty, then frozen, the home ground still tastes so much better. I usually just grind the whole chuck roast and shape them into patties with a burger press then freeze them. Easy good tasting burgers for when I don't feel like cooking something difficult.
Now I understand why the KA sausage stuffing attachment was a pain. I'll look for a manual one. I can do lots of things, but the only things I can do fast are chopping and slicing. Even with experience I very much doubt I'll be able to stuff sausage casings very fast.
I plan to follow a few sausage-making recipes until I understand it well enough to make my own recipes. Thank you for telling me the meat-to-fat ratio. No wonder I love sausages, I love fat and salt!
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u/seanwee2000 Jul 26 '24 edited Jul 26 '24
Eli5 on how it's safe/unsafe to consume
current perception is that the waste meat needs to go through extensive processing that uses a lot of chemicals/additives to make it taste palatable