Grind Your Own Beef!

I can not believe the price of hamburger (ground beef)!  Just checked my local grocery store and the prices ranged from $4.59 to a whopping $9.54 per pound. Of course the less expensive meat has more fat mixed in. Actually the last 4 pounds of ground beef I purchased seemed to have liquid added to it! What???

I'm not above shopping in the "mark down" section of the meat departments. I often see various beef roasts there usually discounted to around $2.00 to $3.00 per pound.  I have purchased these before and cut up into chunks for beef stew or cut into smaller roasts. So I got to thinking.....I have two vintage meat grinders at home, they used to be my grandmother's....why not grind my own hamburger?

First I had to figure out which grinder to try and how to use it. I decided to try the oldest looking one. Here it is...

 As you can see, it is very old. The instruction sheet is there but in very bad shape.

 There was only one discounted beef roast available, a bit more than I usually pay per pound but I was anxious to try out the grinders.


The price per pound worked out to slightly more than $3.00 a pound. It was a 4.13 lb. boneless beef sirloin tip roast. Regular price was $4.99 lb.  Now I know this would have made a nice roast for Sunday dinner but what I needed was hamburger.

Next I cut the roast up into pieces small enough to fit into the grinder hopper.

Let the grinding begin!

A couple of things I learned. One...use safety glasses. Sometimes the beef would "squirt" out the hopper as it was being drawn into the cutter. You would not want this to get into your eyes.

Second...this is messy. I am thinking that the newer grinders are probably not as messy as this old one. Also they would be electric where this one  has a hand crank. It was very easy to grind however.

So here is my ground beef. As you can see there is very little fat. I did not trim the roast at all but if I had it would have been extremely lean. Personally I want just a little fat as it adds flavor and some moisture to the meat.  I just divided this up into four fairly equal parts, wrapped it, and put in the freezer. Now I had a little more than four pounds of very fresh, very lean, ground beef for about $3.00 a pound.

Comments? I would love to hear from you. ♥