Mince meat question

gent9662

Normally when I but mince straight from the super market or butchers it comes in fairly large pieces. I have eaten some of my neighbours' chili con carne and lasagne and they seem to have a very finely minced beef. Just wondering does anybody get or use the very fine mince or how do you get it.

Dizzyblonde

The thing with mince is that you need to keep breaking it down with a wooden spoon while you're browning it on the pan or it stays in huge clumps.

Sparks

And the longer you brown it for, the finer the crumbs you can get. That said, you can get various grades of mince from coarse (best for chilli) to very fine (which is basicly meat paste and isn't as good for most things as you'd imagine). You could always get yourself a mincer, buy whole cuts of beef and mince it at home - the world's best burgers lie that way because you can do an initial rough mince on selected cuts and then mix that with whatever you want and then do a finer mince to get the final mince for the burger.

Toto Wolfcastle

The mince I get from my butchers is always much finer (for want of a better word) than the stuff in the supermarkets. I think you can get ground beef too (or maybe it's called something else) but that would be very fine.

Breaking it down in the pan is the way to go if you can't find what you're looking for.

Sparks

Ground meat is just the US term for minced meat as far as I know janey.

Toto Wolfcastle

Yeah, I kind of figured that after I typed it. I was trying to remember the name my mother used to use when ordering very fine mince in the butchers. I can't think of it.

brick tamland

I've noticed that the round mince I get from the Butcher I go to is a lot finer than the Rib that they sell. Maybe thats just that butcher

Spanish Eyes

This works if you want fine grained chilli etc........

Do NOT fry off before making your dish. Yes that's right, bung the whole lot in the pot and add your sauce. Stir as you go, and leave for a minimum of 3 hours either on the stove or in the oven. It makes absolutely no difference to the taste. I think frying off gives the mince a hard and tough texture.

Believe me, I do not like coarse minced meat in any dish, and if it is not cooked for ages it can be grainy. I saw the above tip on the BBC food message board, thought it would never work, but it does.

tinkerbell

I find that only Superquinn sirloin steak mince (the one with the blue healthy option sticker on the pack) - it has less than 4% fat on it, goes extremely fine when fried - it's the nicest mince beef you can get! The one with less than 5% fat doesn't get as fine as the less than 4% one.