Next time you’re at a grocery store, find the aisle were they hang the tea strainers and cheese graters. Somewhere among all the shiny things will be a Hagrid-sized fork. Cheap, like under $5. Utterly invaluable kitchen tool. It’s the only thing for stir frying in an iron frypan, for scrambling eggs, for fluffing potatoes; works well as a poor man’s wire whisk, and of course I promise you will never use anything else for browning ground meat.
Well, a very large mortar and pestle are great for reducing raw meat to a fine pulp that will cook up sort of like a good liverwurst texture [you know, no really distinguishable grain to it] or mulltiple runs through a hand cranked meat grinder.
Another suggestion is to cook and crumble the meat, then add water and recook it until the water evaporates off. This isnt bad, but is time consuming … but oddly enough you can regrind cooked meat.
For the pastelike meat for enchiladas you need to request meat paste from the grinder [2x through the extra fine blades] or pound the raw meat in a mortar and pestle. This will leave it with no discernable ‘grain’ which seems to be what you are asking for.
Personally, for enchiladas, we follow this tamale recipe for cooking the meat, and then make regular enchiladas. We love this salsa along with this traditional pico de gallo
i think we need to go shopping, and make this next saturday!
Lissener, could it also be called a blending fork?
For me, I’d always just mash the meat up while cooking with a wooden spatula.
When you buy your ground beef ask the store buther to double grind it then you don’t have to mess with it in the skillet.
I use the whip-stick for my ravioli filling–it must be super fine else the dough will tear. If it is tacos or such, I will slap the whisk attachment on my KitchenAid and blend it to my will.
Never mind a “frying fork,” you need a meat grinder. You can get a hand-cranked one at many kitchenware stores; and there are meat-grinder attachments to many food processors and/or mixers. If it’s still not fine enough, even using the plate with the smallest holes – run it through the grinder twice.
That is absolutely what it is. My mom used it to brown ground meat, despite its apparent intended usage, and that’s what I use it for primarily as well. It’s one of my most essential kitchen tools.