Let’s face it, there’s a lot of ways to make a beef burger at a meat plant. But how do you make a truly awe inspiring, award-winning burger?

Most processors making burgers are using beef trim. Beef trim is sourced from the process of cutting the beef carcasses into sub-primals. Normally, those on the meat cutting line at the slaughter plant push the beef trimmings onto a center belt conveyor, then they go to a sort station.

At a beef plant where I used to work employees with well-trained eyes visually sorted the trim into 50% lean, 65% lean and 85% lean combo bins. Some plants sort 85s and 90s – it depends on what type of cattle they are processing and what lean percent of trim they want to sort.

The best burgers are made from fresh beef. Beef burgers that are made from frozen trimmings are inferior in quality. They purge too much when cooked at the restaurant and can be dry when grilled. I know many national and regional chains use frozen burgers or burgers made from frozen trimmings because they have to for logistics and food safety reasons, but they are not as good.

Even better than a burger made from fresh trimmings is a burger made from fresh beef sub-primals. Some restaurants like to use a straight brisket burger, chuck burger or blend of something like chucks, briskets, and boneless short ribs. I know of a restaurant that grinds their own sirloin fresh daily in their kitchen. These burgers are excellent but cost much more to produce than burgers made from straight trimmings. You won’t find burgers like this at a national chain.

Ground chuck burgers are very popular, but I personally like a blended brisket, chuck, and round burger. 100% chuck burgers have good flavor, but they can tend to have too much gristle in them.

You should know that many burgers sold at fast food establishments are blended patties made with fresh domestic cow or bull meat and frozen imported 90s. These burgers, in my opinion, have no flavor and must be served with plenty of lettuce, tomatoes, ketchup, mustard and other toppings to mask the inferior burger patty quality. I know this sounds harsh, but I am a beef burger snob after all.

You should also know that if national chains didn’t blend frozen imported 90s trim with fresh domestic 50s trim, many fast-food chains would have to stop serving beef hamburgers. Most of the imported beef that comes into this country ends up in burgers. I’ve blogged before about imported beef and why it’s necessary.

Now, let’s talk about the equipment used to process burgers. Beef is ground first, normally through a 1/2” plate, then ground through a fine grind plate, which can be anywhere between 1/8” and 3/8” inches. I like burgers made from a bigger fine grind plate, like a 3/8”. The larger the final grind, the better the burger bite, but there is a tradeoff as the bigger the fine grind plate, the greater chance of getting bone chips.

Speaking of bone chips, most newer machines have plates designed to remove bone fragments. This is a must-have tool for making great burgers.

After the beef is ground twice, it goes to the patty machine. There are many types of patty machines with different types of fill systems. Most of the older machines, still in use at many small plants, really pack the meat tight into the plastic mold that forms the patty into the desired thickness and width. Patties made this way are very dense and have an undesirable stiff and chewy bite.

The newer machines don’t use plates to form the patties. Rather they extrude a puck and then the patties are flattened by a roller conveyor belt. Patties made this way have a very nice, loose bite as the meat is not crammed to tight into a mold, as with the older style machines.

If you’ve never seen burgers made in a beef plant, I made a short three-minute video showing you the process. You can see it here.

What’s your favorite blend of gourmet burgers?

The Ultimate Burger, Part 2

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