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The word “minced meat” comes from the French farce – “filling”, but today this meaning remains only in the word “stuffing”. Well, by actually minced meat, we most often mean a mass of chopped meat, fish or other products, the most important ingredient in any cuisine.
It is impossible to imagine many of your favorite homemade dishes without minced meat – cutlets, cabbage rolls, soup with meatballs, meatballs, thousands of them. Unsurprisingly, minced meat has become a routine for many, and the meat grinder is one of the most commonly used kitchen tools.
From old memory, we consider homemade minced meat better than purchased, however, homemade minced meat can be cooked in different ways, and you should not be afraid of store mince like the plague either. In general, it’s time to understand the different methods of cooking minced meat and understand which one is suitable for what.
Why did you come up with minced meat?
Meat is a muscle, and muscles tend to tense and contract. The more often a muscle is strained, the harder it becomes, and the harder the dish prepared from it will be. The lifestyle of pets that are used for food is somewhat different from the daily routine of office workers: they are in constant motion, and as a result, most of their muscles are used.
Those muscles that do not tense or tense slightly make up only a few percent of the total carcass weight. It is of them that sirloin cuts consist – the very ones that can be simply fried quickly, without fear that they will not be chewed.
With the rest, this trick will not work, their tissue is rich in the tough protein collagen, which softens only after prolonged heat treatment. But you can do without it if you cook minced meat from this meat.
To put it not very appetizingly, but lexically exactly, minced meat is meat that does not have to be chewed, because it has already been “chewed” for you mechanically. There are several ways of these, as already mentioned above, and each of them has its own pros and cons.
Cooking minced meat using a meat grinder
What is it: The most familiar way of cooking minced meat for everyone – at least since the time when a meat grinder appeared in every kitchen, first mechanical, then electric. He is probably familiar to you from childhood if you helped adults in the kitchen: meat coarsely cut into pieces is sent to the bowels of a meat grinder, where a screw of a cunning design invented by an ancient Greek sage
Archimedes, mercilessly pushes him towards the rotating knife, and many thin minced sausages slowly crawl out of the grate.
Pros: Cooking minced meat in a meat grinder is easy and familiar, and the main difficulty will be to wash the meat grinder itself. Modern meat grinders are able to turn several kilograms of meat into minced meat in a matter of minutes.
Cons: As mentioned above, the meat grinder will have to be washed, and it is better to do this right away, without letting the mince residues adhering to it dry out. In addition, opponents of meat grinders criticize this unit for the fact that, contrary to its name, it crushes meat rather than chops, squeezing all the juices out of it, and the dishes prepared from such minced meat come out dry.
How to properly cook minced meat using a meat grinder: First, you need to keep an eye on the meat grinder itself – the above claim is not unfounded, and its knife should be kept well sharpened. Secondly, pieces of meat intended for minced meat can be slightly frozen – so that their edges are hardened and cut better. Otherwise, you will be able to cope with this task quite well without my advice.
What to cook from it: Any homemade dishes, familiar and beloved – stuffed peppers, fire cutlets, Swedish meatballs, pasties, chevapchichi and so on, right up to homemade burgers.
Cooking minced meat
What is it: Minced meat, which was finely chopped with a sharp knife or hatchet – the way it was done before the invention of meat grinders. In some cultures, this is still done, and some recipes even require that the meat be chopped or chopped, and not passed through a meat grinder. In terms of consistency, such minced meat turns out to be more juicy and less viscous than minced meat from a meat grinder, although the latter can be corrected by prolonged kneading.
Pros: Since you do not crush the meat, but only chop it, the loss of juice in this case is minimal, and the finished minced meat dish will turn out to be more juicy. You can also add texture to foods that need it, such as sausages or tartare, by chopping up the meat. The bonus is the absence of the need to wash the meat grinder, as well as the feeling of complete control over the minced meat cooking process and your own steepness.
Cons: Chopping minced meat, especially out of habit, is not an easy task. In addition, cutting meat into minced meat with a knife is a task that requires fantastic patience, and not every kitchen has suitable hatchets. Otherwise, this method has no drawbacks, but the unknown, of course, scares away many.
How to cook minced meat properly: Take a suitable board – large, flat, stable – and two heavy, long-bladed hatchets. Cut the meat into slices or strips; this will make it easier to chop, especially at first, and will not fall off the board. Holding a hatchet in each hand, chop the meat measuredly, moving only the wrists and letting the hatchets sink onto the meat under their own weight, from time to time moving the minced meat to the center with the same hatchets. Stop when the minced meat acquires the desired appearance and consistency.
What to cook from it: Those dishes in which juiciness and / or texture is critical – beef tartare (I have ever had minced meat tartare prepared with a meat grinder, a pitiful sight), kebab, homemade sausages (however, they can also be made from a meat grinder minced meat, considering the recommendations I gave above).
Buying ready-made minced meat
What is it: Minced meat, which is sold in stores, is made on the same meat grinders, only of a different caliber – large, powerful, capable of quickly processing a large amount of meat. In theory, you can expect better quality from it than from homemade minced meat prepared with a meat grinder – but only in theory.
Pros: The main advantage of store-bought minced meat is that you do not need to cook it, you just need to buy it. The meat grinder, by the way, is not for you to wash either.
Cons: There are many of them, and they all lie in the unknown. Firstly, you do not know for sure what kind of meat minced meat is made from – and in fact not only meat is often added to it, but also offal, skin, bone meal and other, not the most delicious things. Secondly, a negligent seller has a great risk of sending meat that could not be sold for minced meat, and, of course, he will not tell you about this either. Thirdly, the shelf life of minced meat lies in the same “gray” zone, and it spoils much faster than meat. There are few people who want to find out all this on their own health, so many prefer homemade minced meat.
How to choose the right purchased minced meat: I cannot recommend buying minced meat, which is sold by weight in stores, unless you personally know those who produce it – for the reasons stated above. In other cases, it is better to give preference to minced meat, which is prepared directly at the factory and sold in packaging: there is a predetermined plan for how much of the raw material will go for minced meat, so at least you can be sure of the freshness of the meat from which it was made. Pay attention to the composition, shelf life and price – minced meat should not be cheaper than the cheapest meat, unless something even cheaper has been added to it.
What to cook from it: Any dish in which minced meat is thoroughly and completely fried – pasta with bolognese sauce or turkey meatballs, terrine, lasagne and so on. Do you often cook cutlets and other minced meat dishes, which minced meat recipes would be of interest to you in the foreseeable future?