For some years I’ve been making hamburgers using a Cooks Illustrated recipe. You start with sirloin tips and boneless short ribs, neither of which seem to actually exist, at least in my area. But that’s a separate issue. I usually substitute skirt steak and chuck roast. The recipe says to cut into 1" cubes and put in the freezer until “firm but pliable”, then grind the meat in a food processor.
Now the problem is, I have some frozen, actually frozen, meat that I’d like to use in this recipe. I’m not sure of the best way to get it from a hard frozen state to “firm but pliable”. It doesn’t seem to me to be possible to defrost it until it’s in that state – I think the outside will be completely soft before the inside is pliable, in any process that I can imagine. So should I just completely defrost it and then refreeze it?
Throw it into the fridge and give it a squish from time to time to see how thawed it is. How long this should take depends on how the meat is cut. My guess is about a day or possibly more. Is this a roast you have? At some point, cut it into steaks to help it somewhat thaw out. The point is you want your meat cold and you want the fat semi-frozen so it doesn’t turn into mush and smear when you’re grinding it. You don’t have to be that exact about it.
You’re overthinking. The partial freeze is to keep the meat from becoming a scummy mess in your grinder. It’s not really clear if the skirt and chuck are currently whole or not, I assume so. Therefore you thaw until a decent knife can cut through it with some resistance but not much force, and it should feel cold enough to be a little uncomfortable to your hands.
The gospel of “never refreeze meat!” is also a bit exaggerated. You could fully thaw and then throw back in the freezer for 30-60 minutes.
Also freeze your grinder plate and blades, or more parts if your freezer has room.
I like grinding my own beef for hamburgers as well. But like you said, thawing frozen meat is going to give you a soft outside with an ice-hard inside. Not very manageable for grinding. If all you have is frozen, then thaw it out, cut it into grind-friendly chunks, then throw it back in the freezer for 20-30 minutes, depending on how cold the compartment is. If you want to thaw the meat faster, place it (the wrapped beef) in a bowl of cool water and trickle stream the tap over it.
Isn’t that overkill for making hamburger meat? I mean, I could see it if you’re making an emulsified sausage, but it seems extreme for ordinary ground meat.
As long as you don’t see the meat and fat “mushing up” when you’re grinding, you’re fine. My blades clearly need sharpening, as if I try room temp, I get smear all over the place, so I do put the blades and parts in the freezer as well as par-freeze the meat before grinding. I get a much cleaner cut and texture that way. That said, when the grinder was new, it was fine at room temp with the meat straight out of the fridge.
(And for an emulsified sausage, I would think it wouldn’t matter, as you’re turning the whole thing into a paste anyway. It would be in regular sausages where you want distinct and intact pieces of meat and fat where the cleanest cut possible, and hence freezing parts and par-freezing meat, would be desirable.)
The OP and the recipe the OP is using call for using a food processor, nor a grinder. Not that a grinder wouldn’t likely give a better grind, but far more households will have a food processor than a grinder (unless the stand mixer hiding in the closet came with a grinder attachment and the owner knows where s/he packed it away.)
I don’t know… everything I’ve read about sausage-making makes a HUGE point of temperature with respect to emulsified sausages (hot dogs, mortadella, bologna, weisswurst, knackwurst, etc…), and not nearly as much with regular ones, which in effect are not much different than stuffing seasoned ground meat into a casing.
Partially fill a saucepan or pot with lukewarm water (not hot but not cold either, just a bit warm). You want enough to cover the bottom of the saucepan/pot and give it some weight but still be stabilized if you put it on an uneven surface (being your meat).
Assuming your meat is already in a freezer bag, place it in the sink and put the saucepan/pot with the lukewarm water on top of it.
Depending on the thickness of your meat, it should be evenly defrosted in half an hour to an hour or so. If when you check on it and it’s still got a ways to go but the water is cold, freshen the saucepan/pot with some more lukewarm water.
If you need your sink for other things, you can also use the bottom of an up-turned pan/saucepan/pot that has metal on the bottom - the key is putting the meat between two metal surfaces. The warm water will conduct the heat between the surfaces to evenly defrost your meat (that’s why you don’t want hot water, it would start cooking part of the meat too soon).
Hmmm…now that you mention it, that does sound familiar, with even putting ice in the grinder while grinding. My sausage books do say it is important to keep the temp low to have a stable emulsion. But they also say the same about regular sausages. They are very particular about keeping the meat cold and ensuring a clear cut with the blade so as not to smear the fat. The biggest thing to improve my sausage-making was to pay attention to that. Charcuterie: The Craft of Smoking, Salting and Curing for example states “It’s very important to keep your meat as cold as possible during the sausage-making process. Sausage that gets too warm ca “break,” meaning the fat and the protein will separate from each other when cooked. You can’t always see this happen when you’re making the sausage, but it results in a dry, crumly texture, rather than a smooth, firm, juicy bit. Two tips: Don’t leave your meat out at room temperature while you ready your ingredients, and always grind the meat and fat into a bowl set in ice.”
So it looks like I was incorrect in thinking that it didn’t matter. It matters in both cases.