I am making haggis for Thanksgiving - not exactly traditional haggis, because the main ingredient is regular ground lamb and it will be baked instead of boiled in the stomach casing. The recipe, which I got from someone I know, calls for the meat to be ground up finely. I went to the butcher shop and asked for the ground lamb; however, they had it fairly coarsely ground. I asked if they could grind it up finer (it has to match the size and texture of the barley and oats.) They said they could not.
So I need to figure out how to do it on my own. I called the guy who gave me the recipe and he said I could use something called a “meat block” to mince the meat; I can find no record of such a thing existing, at least not by a cursory Google search. So…I have no idea what to do. I don’t feel like buying a food processor just for this one thing; I would never use it again after this. Is there a way to get the ground lamb finer?
No easy way. You can mince it with a knife, but it would take a while. You could get the course ground meat, partially freeze it and grate it with a cheese grater (which would also be time consuming and messy), you could try it in a blender.
You should probably just by a food processor. You can get some fairly cheaply, and they always have uses.
A single cleaver will do. And it’s a lot easier than it seems. I have a meat grinder and a nice, heavy, Chinese cleaver, and the cleaver is faster and requires less cleaning up. I would think with the lamb already coarsely ground, it shouldn’t be too difficult.
I don’t have a cleaver but I do have a large, solid chef’s knife which I routinely use to chop up onions, mushrooms and other vegetables very finely (often in fairly large quantities.) Maybe it won’t be so hard just chopping the meat with that.
In period they ‘ground’ meat by mincing it finely and then taking it into a large mortar and pounding the bejebus out of it until it was a paste. It is also a good way of making sure that the spices are well blended in.
I think it is unfortunate that the meat shop did not agree to grind it up further. Butchers typically make sausages and other processed meats including haggis and should have the ability to grind it up more. In my experience you just run it through the grinder again. Poor customer service.
By a meat block perhaps your friend means a Meat Mallet? That might work considering the meat is already ground a certain amount. How about mashing with a rolling pin or potato masher?
Other wise a traditional meat grinder or small food chopper would do the job and are not very expensive.
I agree with many here - a small food chopper can be cheaply obtained, whether it’s called a “miner”, “chopper”, “grinder”, whatever.
That said - my Great Aunt Pearl used to have this thing like several sharp blades that strapped to the palm of her hand, and she used it to make meat paste/pate by hand. It took a long time, but that’s the way she’d been taught to do it as a young girl… back in the 19th Century. So if you really want to do it by hand it’s obviously possible, but…
I thought the same thing. I asked them specifically - “can you get it any finer than that? The directions say it has to be as fine as the barley and oats that it’s going to be mixed with.” The butchers informed me that they didn’t have the right metal disc for the grinding machine to make it any finer. This is supposed to be the best butcher shop in town, the place where all the professionals get the meat, and they charge top dollar.
I wound up just chopping it up finer with a chef’s knife and then mashing it up, once browned, with a potato masher. It worked fine and didn’t take that long. The consistency of the haggis turned out perfectly and it was a big success.
Can you borrow one for a half hour?
