Well I'll be Burger'd

[thelawnet]

Indeed they do, and I agree they live up to their publicity. As to fat content, you do need some, 10-20% tops I'd say. With your own machine you can control the meat and it's content, I've used well marbled chuck and frying steak for premium burgers in the past.

I avoid anything called 'extra-lean' mince, it has no flavour, fat content is typically 5-8%

I think 20% fat content is a good amount for a burger, but that's 20% including the fat in the meat, not 20% added fat. You could make do with 15%, but I really wouldn't want to go lower than that. If your meat has 15-20% fat content you don't need to add any more.

Just looked up the subject in 'Modernist Cuisine':

"Pieces of meat should be 2-6mm in diameter. Coarseness is a key feature, but enough of a gel must form to stick the components together to avoid separation into grease and grainy meat. The goal is to have just enough of a meat gel to hold the patty together but not so much that it becomes rubbery."

There is a focus on stopping the fat from leaking when cooked.

"Start with high-quality fatty tissue. Be careful what you choose: many fat-containing tissues in meat cannot be added directly because they have too much sinew or other components that make them difficult to eat (skin is a good example)."

"With high-quality fatty tissue as the base, the goal is then to keep the fat cells intact, subjecting them to as little mechanical disruption as possible. Careful grinding technique is key - we don't want to overgrind or allow the mixture to get too hot. The pure fat molecules in pork fat melt at 30-40C, Even if the bulk mixture is much cooler than that, friction can easily raise the surface temperature of the fat cells into this range when they're forced through the grinding plate.

Grinding the fat separately from the meat is also helpful. Chilling the fat helps keep the temperature low even with the heat induced by grinding. Do the grinding in small batches, and cool the grinder between them"

"Meats of different textures or origins should be ground separately. Likewise, remove fat from the meat, and grind it separately after you have finished grinding the meat. To obtain fine grinds, start with a coarse grinding plate, and move to finer plates in stages."

It says meat and fat should be chilled to just below freezing before grinding, so they are firm but not solid, and you should also chill the grinder head (using ice cubes)

Some blends are suggested, with proportions:

rare beef:
100g filet mignon
45g rib eye cap
20% fat, cook to 52C

short rib
pure short rib meat
30% fat, cook to 54C

MC team favourite
100g short-rib
100g rib-eye
25g hangar
25% fat, cook to 56C

steak-house blend
100g chuck
50g sirloin
50g flank
25% fat, cook to 54C

It says to cut 2cm meat cubes prior to grinding, removing any large chunks of fat, and chill to -1C. Use a 4mm grind plate.

Collect the ground meat in a cylindrical mould cut in half, and lined with cling film, and then do the same with the other half of the mould, then press the two halves together to form a cylinder, and slice to your desired thickness.

Do not salt prior to cooking, as this extracts myosin protein, which makes a rubbery gel; do not add egg, starches (bread) or protein-containing liquids such as milk.

[keith157]

Personally I would not take the meat beyond chilled, from what I understand with the meat frozen the heat caused by mincing will be sufficient to raise it beyond frozen, even with a chilled machine, then you enter into the bacterial cycle of frozen-warm-cool again then either back into the fridge or freezer. I've always understood that it should be above freezing until such time as the mechanical processes are finished and you are ready to store the finished product. Chefs I've seen recommend putting the mincer head in the freezer to cool it pre use, but keep the mimce well chilled as opposed to frozen.

[thelawnet]

Meat at -1C is not frozen. Meat freezes at -2C.

So they are not freezing it, but getting it as cold as possible to avoid the fat melting when ground.

"It's best to start with meat that is chilled to somewhere between -1.5C and 0C. The meat should be cold enough that it's very stiff - semifrozen, but not frozen solid. As long as the temperature of the mass of meat stays at or below 5C during grinding or chopping, the temperature at the cutting surface will not become unacceptably high."

[keith157]

Okay, I'm sticking to my way based purely on the fact I have neither the equipment nor the time to accurately gauge between -1 &-1.5 so I'll keep on chillin Seriously though thanks for the input it's nice to know why we do what we do other than it works

[Tiny]

Think I have mastered the burger.

Start by slitting the plastic on a pack of Sainsburys taste the difference quarter pounders and then grill them to well done......

I do have a slight oddity when it comes to beef products, steak must be rare but the concept of a medium rare burger makes me feel a bit queasy, anyone else suffer from this?

Cheers tiny

[JEC]

Unless you are making your own mince and putting them straight on the grill it's an absolute no no to undercook a burger. Unlike a steak where the bacteria is just on the outside the action of mincing just aids to mix it all up inside, add a little warmth and you've made your self a bug factory and a ticking toilet bomb

[keith157]

Not that he needs it but I second & third JEC's comments. I remember years ago the food critic from the guardian (not Jay Rayner) whinging about having to sign a disclaimer at the All Bar One to get his burger medium rare. He was swamped with articles along the lines of JEC's post. When I make my own burgers it's from scratch, from cuts of meat traceable by my butcher, those I will have medium but not med-rare. Lif'e too short to spend it on the karzee (the John to our continental cousins ).

[Big_Fat_Dan]

I'm like you Keith, i cook mine medium if the mince is fresh and from the butchers.

Here's a interesting take on it regarding temps to kill the bacteria.
http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/201 ... ef=aht-bb1

[thelawnet]

I'm like you Keith, i cook mine medium if the mince is fresh and from the butchers.

Here's a interesting take on it regarding temps to kill the bacteria.
http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/201 ... ef=aht-bb1

That article doesn't mention bacteria?

You also get parasites in beef. You can read the icky tail of tapeworm infection here: http://fray.com/drugs/worm/

Bacteria death is done by time and temperature. Higher temperature means less time.

US commercial guidance is 151F for 41 seconds, 152 for 32 seconds, 153 for 26 seconds, 154 for 20 seconds, 155 for 16 seconds, 156 for 13 seconds, or 157 (69.4) for 10 seconds. For home use, they recommend cooking the middle to 71C. UK guidance is 70C for 2 minutes.

At 70C E. Coli is reduced by a factor of 10 in 1.4 seconds. In 2 minutes they are talking about a 60D (1 in 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 of bacteria surviving). The required bacteria death for canned food is only 12D, i.e. 1 in 1000000000000, so this is, in a word, overcooked.

If your meat has been stored between 45F and 114F, with a peak at blood temperature (98.6F), then bacteria will grow. It can survive, unscathed, frozen food tempeatures. At above 114F (45.6C), E coli will not grow at all.

For home cooking a bacterial reduction of 4.5D, which is 0.03% of original bacteria suriving is suggested, but up to 1 in 6.5D, which is 1 in 10 million, is commercially proscribed. If your meat contains a lot of bacteria, because it has been poorly processed, slaughtered, or stored (and who really knows), higher levels are necessary.

Basically the faster you cook the meat the higher temperature you need to achieve; D-values (the time needed to kill 90% of the bacteria) go from 1 hour at temperatures in the low 50C (internal temperature) range up to seconds as you approach 70C.

Salmonella survives higher temperatures than E Coli so salmonella temperatures are used for safety.

If you are making your own burgers then a few points come to mind:

* the exterior of the meat will have bacteria on it
* the interior of the meat will not, but will be contaminated as soon as it is ground
* if your meat is chilled to temperatures close to 0C then bacterial growth will be much better inhibited than if you grind beef that has been hanging around on the counter for an hour before grinding.
* freezing your grinder will not only help to avoid melting the fat, but will also help keep bacteria growth down.

This is a graph of salmonella growth against temperature

http://www.fao.org/docrep/007/y5502e/y5502e04.gif

E. coli has a slightly lower temperature profile, but the point is clear - at low temperatures bacteria grow very slowly, but as you approach room temperature things get pretty nasty. From this you can see that if your mince has been minced from very cold then lower D-values (lower temps/shorter cooking times) when cooking are needed to achieve the same final number of bacteria as compared with meat that has been poorly handled. This might not help as much as you think, since 130F is the suggested medium-rare temperature at the page you link to above. At 130F, the required 5D bacterial kill time is 87 minutes! Obviously on any kind of grill, in a matter of seconds any burger would go way beyond 130F.

At 140F, the suggested medium temperature at your link above, the cooking time to achieve 5D kill is 9 minutes at 140F internal (11.5 minutes for 6.5D - commercially safe). Again, that's totally impractical on a flame grill. At 150F, medium-well, you will get 5D in 54 seconds, but again the internal temperature will still be climbing - the 5D temperature halves by 154F, and halves again at 157F. (Note all these times are for salmonella, which can be present in beef, and survives higher temperatures than E. coli.)

So in the end what you end up with for safety is these time/internal temperature combinations (these are commercially safe):

150F for 70 seconds
152F for 44 seconds
154F for 28 seconds
156F for 18 seconds
158F for 11 seconds
160F for 7 seconds

So basically speaking if you cook to 160F as per advice, your burgers will be bacteria-free. They will also be dried out.

On the other hand if you eat a rare or medium-rare burger cooked in a conventional way, then it's bacteriologically identical to eating raw mince. Which is why restaurants expect you to sign disclaimers. Although obviously people DO eat raw mince and meat, in the form steak tartare and carpaccio, you probably wouldn't eat a packet of raw supermarket mince.

If you want guaranteed bacteria-free rare/medium-rare burgers then you need to cook sous vide and then sear. Or I guess you could do your burgers in an oven with good temperature control for hours before searing them on the grill.

Or you can just enter the E. coli lottery.

[keith157]

Or stuff them with cheese/sauteed onions or mushrooms etc which keeps them moist (in a way) and still keep them cooked to the required temp.