The BEST Meat Grinders for Making Your OWN VENISON BURGERS AT HOME!

Hi, I'm Chris with Afflictor Broadheads and today we're going to talk about getting started grinding your own wild game. Stay tuned. So this has been a great season for most of us. It's been a weird season because a lot of successful hunters weren't able to get their game processed. A lot of processors because of COVID or other reasons, shorthandedness, whatever it was, were closed down and some may only have taken deer for a short period of time and then shut the doors to having a new deer coming in. So a lot of people this year have been forced and are being forced to process their own deer, which I think is great. In fact, you can look at a lot of our other videos on processing your deer and it might be helpful to you. But today we're going to talk about grinding. We'll just use venison as our topic because just about everything grinds the same, but we're going to talk about grinding your own deer, what you need to get started. We're going to talk about three of the most popular types of grinders that you can use and then we'll talk a little bit about just how to grind your venison. Maybe some good ratios to use or the difference between using pork fat or beef fat if you're grinding or nothing at all. So let's get started just talking about some basic grinders. This has been the progression of my life of grinding. So when I first started grinding years and years ago, I mean really if I'm honest, 40 years ago, you know, all we had were these little tiny hand grinders that were like mini versions of this right here. They were very effective. They took a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of workout on your arm. There's nothing wrong with these type of hand grinders. In fact, if you get up into these larger sizes like this, they're very efficient and very effective. And if you're only going to process a deer or two a year and utilize that for a burger, then these will work perfect for you. And they are a low cost solution. Even the smaller ones are fine. You just have to be prepared for a little bit of a workout. And it's always best to mount them on a real secure table, someplace where you can really reef on the handle if things get clogged or stuck and that way it'll stay stationary as you do your grinding. So these hand grinders are a great option. It's how I got started and I used them for years and years. And when I finally got this big one, I was so excited because you could really drop a big chunk of meat in here and it would process it really fast. So hand grinders are your first line of defense if you're just getting started. The next thing that I worked up to was stealing my wife's KitchenAid. Now, guys, if your wives aren't, you know, totally vested in your hunting, you may not want to let them see you borrow their KitchenAid mixers because grinding, using the grinding attachment on here, it works fabulous, but it's really not meant for processing a ton of meat. So let's say you shot a couple deer and you saved the hocks and the trimmings and some other little parts and pieces and you're going to sit down, you're going to grind all that together, you're still only going to get a real small batch of burger. These are great for that. If you're going to process even one entire deer into burger, this is probably great for that as well. But as you get into, you're shooting a lot of deer a year, you're going to be processing a lot of burger. It really starts to wear and tear on the KitchenAid motors. Even though they work very well, you'll find that after time you can hear them starting to work really hard, especially at the lower speeds. So again, the grinder attachment, you can buy that separately for your KitchenAid. Real simple. The auger is inside, the plate is at the end, and you have this feed tray up here. And again, this is a really small feed tray, so it's not meant for doing big batches. But nice small batches, really easy. The KitchenAid does a good job. After I about ruined my wife's KitchenAid and we were processing a lot of deer a year, between processing our own deer and friends deer, we were well over 40 deer in a season. So we stepped up to the larger grinder. This one happens to be from Cabela's and it is wonderful. It has a great big tray, has a nice heavy-duty motor in it. It doesn't get hot. I can run this thing for a couple hours straight and it still doesn't get overheated. It keeps grinding perfectly. And it's strong and powerful enough that if you get into some, maybe you didn't trim all the sinew off of pieces, you know, especially if you're doing those lower leg portions, those lower leg portions, they'll stop this almost. They'll clog it up after a bit if you're not careful. Even sometimes the fat that you're using, if you are adding fat and even bacon, can start to clog when they get down to the end, the outlet of the grinder, this plate right here behind this. You'll see that you can get things slowed down pretty good if you get into some real sinew meat or some fat that actually has some, you know, protective coating in it. And sometimes you'll buy trim fat that actually has meat in it as well and sinew attached to it. So these don't tend to handle that very well where you get into a motorized, you really don't have to worry about that. It doesn't clog up. It just blows everything out the other end. And so if you really are considering processing a lot of venison or anything else, it doesn't matter if it's elk or moose or mule deer, whatever you have in your area, bear. We use this, we make a ton of sausage. So it's really handy to have the right equipment to do a lot of stuff. So if you're really going to be doing a lot, this may be your best consideration. If you're going to be moderate, you can look at this. If you're going to be anything, you can use this. You just have to be prepared to get a workout with your arm as you crank it through. Now as you consider processing your meat, there's several schools of thought about what you should add to your grind to make it taste the best. This is all about personal preference. You're going to have your purists that just want pure venison or pure moose or whatever they're grinding, and they don't want anything added to it. Nothing wrong with that at all. You just have to be prepared that sometimes it may be a little bit dry. So your cooking method may change because without any fat at all, venison is pretty dry. And so you'll see that most people will add either beef fat or pork fat to it. Some people like to add bacon, so they already have a bacon burger, and adding bacon gives you some smokiness, some saltiness. It gives you all the fat that you need, and you have some nice pre-made patties. Since we do everything with our burger afterwards, I freeze burger in bulk, and then we use it for chili, I may thought, to make a batch of sausage, our hamburgers, anything that we're doing, pasta sauce, anything that we have, we just add some fat to it right up front when we grind it, and that way it's ready to be used just like burger you would buy off your shelf. So when we grind, we often grind 80-20, you know, whatever it is that you would currently buy at the store in burger, that percentage of fat to meat ratio, you just weigh it out and do the same with this. Now there is some taste difference if you are going to use pork fat versus beef fat, and that's a personal preference thing. I use both, I like both, but I really do like beef fat better. And sometimes when you talk about beef fat, there's different types of beef fat you can get as well from your butcher. You can get the excess trim from the steaks and stuff, that is the bomb, that is the best. Or you can get suet, which is a lot of that excess fat portions that some people put it out for the birds, and it's totally fine to use in your grinding as well, and we do that as well when I can't get the trim fat. Pork fat, really easy to get, and it does a very good job as well, and it's just a flavor difference as you cook your meat that you just may have a preference for. Now a lot of times when you are thinking about grinding for the first time, and you have butchered your own animal, and you have your steaks, and your stew meat, and your roast, and all the different cuts that you made, and you're looking at the end of all this, you just have this little tiny pile of meat that you intended to grind, right? So you're looking at that, you're like, well what am I going to do with this little portion of meat? At that point you can make a decision, am I going to grind this, add a little fat to it, and have a little bit of burger, or am I going to add some more to this to try to bulk it up? When you get into that, then a lot of people like to go ahead and buy a pork butt, where you have this great big piece of affordable meat, it's a bone-in piece of pork, they're usually giant, you can get a nice big piece for 10-12 bucks, you just debone it, chunk it up, and grind it along with that little bit of venison. Now you're looking at more of a 50-50 type deal there, but you are extending that burger out. So again, you know, if you're, if you want to be a purist, and say I'm having pure venison burger, that's one thing, but if you want to try to make things go a little farther, it's totally okay at any time to add, you know, pork butt, pork meat, right along with your grind, and it will come out flavorful and delicious. It'll also give you some options if you want to go ahead and make sausage out of it instead of just grinding it for burger, so you have different ways to play there as far as what do I want personally. And again, this boils down to taste and personal preference. It's a good idea to do some things in small batches. If you're concerned or worried about it, the fun thing about being able to grind your own stuff, it's just like making sausage. You do a really small batch at whatever ratio, whatever flavors, seasoning, bacon, whatever you want to do, and you go ahead while you have all your grinding stuff out, go ahead and throw a little bit in a pan, fry a burger up, and then you can taste it. You can say, oh this is really good. I'm going to stick with this. I'm going to continue on through this, or you can say that's too much, or I need more of this, and you can kind of make these adjustments before you make your entire batch and freeze it. So I hope that was helpful to you. There's just a few great options here for grinders. If you have any questions about grinding different game animals or ratios or anything, just drop them in the comments below. We'd love to walk alongside you helping you process your venison or other game meat for the first time in the burger. Thanks for watching.