Homemade hamburger with bacon and blue cheese
What on earth is in my burger??
Since we did our last whole30 – a while back already – I pay a bit more attention to everything that is in my food. And of course I am not talking about the things we make at home from scratch because I am the one who puts stuff in it, but I am talking about ready made convenience products that we all buy in the supermarket. Take ground beef for instance. I always figured that meat would be meat and I still remember that first time I looked at the list of ingredients on a package of meatloaf… Most I couldn’t even pronounce! There is a big difference between various supermarkets and even within the supermarket so it pays to have a good look. And I am not even talking about preservatives here… 
Now you probably know that I looooove my Kitchen Aid and for a while now I’ve been wanting to get a meatgrinder with it. It’s one of those attachments they have and as you can see it is in ‘da house’! I’ve used it already quite a few times. Before I had it I used to make my chickenburgers in the kitchenprocessor and that works as well, but the texture of the meat is significantly different. The fun part is that you can also put in things like spring onions or chilis and it will grind it all together. Perfect!
Of course you still need to mix in things like salt and other spices you might want to add, but that is normal, I’d think. I always use chicken thighs for burgers as you need a bit of fat to make the burger edible. If you use only lean meat it would become too dry. It’s sort of essential (as I quickly learned!) to chop the meat into manageable pieces before putting it in the machine. Apparently it also helps if the meat is really cold when you put it in. Also clean it straight away. You don’t want stuff stuck and dried in there! Now that is true for all kitchen appliances but mostly so for meat grinding things.
This burger, I can tell you, was fan-tas-tic and you can expect to see some more good meat balls and burgers pass by in the coming time! We have wild plans!
Great looking burger! We have a meat grinder attachment for our mixer, too, and really like it. Your own ground meat tastes so much better than what you buy int he store, doesn’t it? Good post — thanks.
I have the KitchenAid meat grinder also but I have in addition the sausage stuffer for making my own sausage, pasta extruder plates, pasta maker attachment and all the pasta rollers (you can’t add to your pasta when using the extruder plates but can add seeds, herbs and spices with the rollers). One of my most favorite ways to make hamburgers is to grind one pound of beef with one pound of bacon to make 50/50 burgers. They have a very juicy bacon flavor.