Mastering the Grill_ The Owner's Manual for Outdoor Cooking - Andrew Schloss [34]
All but a fraction of the ground meat sold is beef. Of the three cuts of beef most commonly ground, the most flavorful is chuck (from the well-exercised shoulder), followed by bottom round and sirloin. If a smooth texture is of great importance, ground sirloin is the best bet. But if you want flavor, make your burgers from chuck. Round is for those who want to tread the middle ground (or grind).
If your butcher looks at you oddly when you ask for ground pork, veal, or lamb, it is because they likely don’t get much call for these items. Instruct them to run the desired variety of stew meat through a grinder twice. Of course, if you have a meat grinder at home, you can grind the stew meat yourself, a practice that can save money and ensure freshness. (Ground meat is quite perishable.) Although it is possible to use a food processor for chopping meat, the machine will not grind, and can result in a flaccid, unpleasantly textured purée if you’re not careful.
Ground turkey is the most commonly available ground poultry, although ground chicken is on the rise. Usually, ground poultry is made from a combination of dark and white meats, as dark meat improves the overall texture and flavor. Poultry is much lower in fat than beef and other four-legged meats, and for that reason it tends to make drier, blander burgers. To boost flavor, turkey and chicken burger recipes typically include spices and condiments.
The key thing to keep in mind when cooking burgers is this: As protein heats, it contracts, and any juices that it once held are squeezed out. The result is a dry burger. The fat in beef burgers helps to counteract this dryness, but in low-fat burgers, like those made with poultry, the loss of moisture is disastrous. An easy way to help retain juiciness is to include something in the burger mix that absorbs moisture, usually fresh breadcrumbs. Fresh breadcrumbs work better than dry ones, because they are less absorbent, thereby leaving some of the juices in liquid form. Burgers made with dry commercial breadcrumbs tend to make a burger that is soft but not juicy.
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05. Ground Meat
Ground meat is another story. Grinding pulverizes collagen, nullifying any toughness it once imparted. When a tough cut of meat is ground, you get the flavor of a well-exercised muscle with none of its toughness. The cuts of meat that are most often ground are chuck (shoulder), sirloin (where the back meets the hips), and round (leg). Each brings different amounts of flavor and slight variations in texture to the table. A shoulder that moved every time a steer took a step is going to develop more flavor and toughness than a back muscle that lay farther away from a joint.
Because the structural integrity of meat is destroyed by grinding, most of the natural moisture it once held is released as it sits. The small amount that remains evaporates quickly during cooking. Once the moisture is gone, the perception of juiciness depends on the meat’s fat content, which is why ground beef with a fat content of less than 10 percent will yield unpalatably dry results, a 10 to 15 percent fat content will taste lean and juicy, a 15 to 20 percent fat content will taste richer, and burgers with more than 20 percent fat will have full flavor, a fatty mouth feel, and a glistening surface when hot. It is unusual for the fat content of ground meat to exceed 22 percent.
Commercially ground meats are made by combining a percentage of lean meat with a percentage of fat. If you are grinding meats at home, the exact fat percentage is difficult to determine unless you take the trouble to separate all of the fat from the lean, weigh them separately, and calculate the percentage. We have recently seen ground beef packages that list the cut of beef, but not the lean percentage, on the label. The only way to judge the fat content of