I grind my own burgers for my restaurant and I use a cheap 1/2 hp $80.00 grinder but it does the trick. I keep the parts in the freezer after sanitizing them properly.. When I first started this process I found that the beef (using the whole beef shoulder clod) had to be ground more than once. however, the first grind was still extremely delicious and I think that sous vide is a great way for this as the first grind has tiny bits of beef that is a bit chewy and I would imagine that a majority of my customers would not like or understand the texture. The first grind tasted very much like a steak burger because the fat is still more like what you would find when eating a ribeye or ny. Because we want our customers to come back & their taste buds usually win, we then decided to grind our beef twice. this made the ground beef much more of what you would find in a traditional burger. We flat top cook our burgers and they are great. Now our grind consists of trim from a strip loin along with the chain and the fat as well as the shoulder clod, including the flatiron. we do not put egg in it I don't believe in it, feels like meatloaf; just some garlic & fresh ground pepper, not salt as it will dry the burger and turn gray. (do you reccommend activa rm?) this burger is ridiculous. We are also careful not to over press the burger, they are hand formed because I have also found that over pressing with a tool or hands will turn your burgers gray as well. A Form is good. Our burger of course with everything is definitely not 80/20 but more like 70/30 but it is juicy and now we are going to do the cheese! the trick to grinding I have found is to keep everything ice cold! literally, after the first grind, bag the meat & save that, keep in cooler, clean & ice bath your parts again, then regrind. then clean & sanitize your parts then freeze the parts for another day. yeah it's a pain but it's totally worth it. I use a brioche bun but we buy it because I am a tiny quick casual restaurant and do not have the time & staff to make these buns, but we make every damn thing otherwise! lol. we even do the mi-cuit salmon, which I just recently turned into a ground salmon burger with the belly and trim! good day guys!
