Tatoosh

c.oliver - Thanks! i hear you and I was a bit concerned too. Our previous effort (Experiment Number 2) was both meatloaf-y and a flavor fail. It included both eggs and bread crumbs. My wife was not pleased with the result. This time no bread crumbs to be found. The egg flavor was not prevalent - only 2 eggs for the 6.6 pounds of combined meat so they did not contribute significantly except as a binder. And hey, it was ground bacon so eggs kind of fit in a breakfasty sort of way. Not that the burger ended up being breakfasty at all. The twice grind really produced the consistency I wanted. We had done a single grind previously and it gave coarser texture. The second grind through the smaller plate took the consistency down to just what I look for in a burger. Of course, folks like different things. My original concern was cohesion. No problem at all in that area - perfect presentable little pucks visually but easy to bite through. No crumbling, great texture, and big bang flavor. Not meatloafy to me at all. My wife was thumbs up,so were the brothers-in-law. This will be my basic "burger" for the foreseeable future.

Alright - report on experiment number three: Good news! This one worked almost perfectly. I made 3 kilos of burger - 1100 grams of bacon and 1900 grams of beef so pretty close to the 40/60 ratio I want. I did not heat finish the bacon this time, though it was "warm" smoked. We double ground the meat - with large and small holes successivlely. I added 2 tablespoons of sea salt and close to that of fresh ground black pepper. We used two large eggs as a binder. Assembly was 5 to 6 ounce patties, squished a bit more than Heston B. would likely approve of. Roughly 1/2 inch thick and dimpled to prevent doming. They cooked through without a problem. Texture was great, easy to bite, nice mouthfeel, and no crumbling. We got most of the esthetics better too. Meat came to the edge of the buns, which were niclly browned on the cut sides. They were bursting with smokey bacon flavor and the Aussie cheddar cheese melted nicely. Flavor was a 9 to 9.5 in my book. And I owe much of that to you folks. Thank so much for your feedback and Ideas. I will continue to work on these over time. But I will now be working off a very solid base that I would be happy to buy at any upscale burger shop or brew pub. Greatly appreciate each and every one of you helping get these where they need to be.

Thanks folks - lots of good ideas there. I had thought about Transglutaminase (aka meat glue) but not ventured there until I exhaust other approaches. One possibility that I had not broached is simply do not heat finish the bacon. I do a "warm smoke" which means roughly 200F temperature in the smoker - but the internal temps gets in the 125F to 130F for the bacon at tops while putting smoke on it. Then we heat finish in an oven. I can simply not heat finish the bacon I am going to grind. The standard procedure is curing and smoking 10 kilos at a go. Then after heat finishing, we select the cuts we want for grinding, the least appealing for slicing. I can start doing that at the end of the smoking period and set it aside, bypassing the oven. Now cohesion was fine in the last batch, but the taste was off. The wife found the bread crumbs off-putting and the bacon flavor was much diminished. But the patty did not fall apart and the texture and bite was very good. This is with a fair amount of handling. We don't treat the meat like Heston, grinding it out in long tubes that are frozen and sliced to keep the direction perpendicular to the angle of the bite. It's more like, ball for weight, smash into a round form, pressed out to thickness, and frozen. It will be a couple of weeks before I can give this another go. The wife is doing her thesis and I'm doing some of the grunt work (aka Stephen Fetchit) but I'm really chomping at the bit to work with the ideas presented here and get this burger to the next level. But I will definitely trying a couple of changes after we make bacon again.

Tri2Cook - I understand and you may be right. I was thinking more about the appeal of the final product versus food safety specifically. I will think about the egg, though I am hesitant after my wife's reaction to the bread crumbs. I will work with the grind and salt approach first. lordratner - What do you think of adding salt between the first and second grind and refrigerating for at least an hour or longer? Or grind, salt and let sit overnight? Would the salt be better to add after the second grind? and let it develop "cohesion" from that point. Then form into patties. I've been running 5 ouncers but will increase to 6 ounce so they fit the buns better. And maintaining a thickness of 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch. My wife prefers that we sous vide them for a thorough cook throughout prior to finishing on a griddle. We did a semi-sous vide on the last few patties and that seemed to work pretty well. resik929 - For my straight beef burgers, I had been adding a bit of Worcestershire sauce, plus onion and garlic powder. So "adulterating" them is something I'm quite comfy with. We don't have the handy packets of dry dressing mix here in the Philippines so often. I am going to bring over some SACO Cultured Buttermilk powder and I wonder if a couple of tablespoons of that might do per kilo? For a beef patty, i mean - not sure how it would taste in the bacon burger mix, but we can find out. It takes a couple of months to get special order items here plus a pretty fair amount of shipping cost so the buttermilk powder will be awhile before it arrives.

Tri2Cook - I don't know why bacon seems to run by different rules for me, but it does. I routinely cook pork loin and chops to 145F/150F and serve without a qualm. My bacon is heat finished to the same temperatures and not fit for consumption until it spends more time in a pan or oven. I do render some fat when I heat it to that finishing temp but not all by any means and the fat is still fairly white and needs further cooking to be palatable. Your raise an excellent point that I don't have a good answer to. resik929 - My first attempt resulted in a product that definitely needed salt. While my bacon is salty after the dry cure, I soak it for half an hour to help reduce that saltiness to the desired level. I have reduced saltiness until it was nigh on indiscernible but the bacon's flavor suffered so we worked on it to get the balance we found best. However, it does not add enough salt when ground and mixed with the beef. I might consider not soaking bacon that is bound for the grinder down the road. Our double grind and the addition of a small amount of extra salt has the texture and saltiness about where I want it. I need to do the third attempt without the bread crumbs, liquid, and eggs to see if cohesion degrades again. I probably won't add any herbs or spices to it at this point. That may happen down the road but right now i'm focused on getting that big bacon flavor in a burger with the right texture and cohesiveness. We may explore "juicy Lucy" or "stuffed burgers" too - but my signature burger will be the bacon burger that features my own bacon in the mix. I do much appreciate your comments and they give me food for thought. Particularly the sour cream burger - another adventure awaits there, I'm sure!

CatPoet - I definitely will try smoked fat from our cured pork chops in the future. I will also try using a pork loin bacon (aka Canadian bacon) when I make some next month. That should allow me to be much more precise on my fat to lean ratio. But it will be a smaller test batch. My wife, who has pretty amazing taste buds (among other things) really had a problem with the bread crumbs in the mix. So those are now off the approaches we are experimenting with. But thank you for the idea and your info. We have had some requests for a meatloaf and that may bring them back at some point. Mx & Tri2Cook - I heat finish my bacon to 150F internal for food safety. That is not a fully cooked bacon and I doubt anyone would eat it without further cooking. In terms of using cooked meat, I had been warned away from using cooked meat in sausages and was applying that to my burger project as well. But nothing is carved in stone and I'll try different approaches to get that final product just the way I want it. The double grind really improved texture and I got some very positive comments about the "mouth flee' of the burger: easy to bite and chew. So now it is double grind, a certain amount of salt added, testing with both cooked and uncooked (but heat finished) bacon, and the fat/loin approach for more precise amounts of fat to lean control. As I mentioned previously, I want that big bang of flavor - some ketchup and mustard and it had an almost Kansas City BBQ flavor. We are doing Serious Eats "Melty Cheese Slices" using Australian cheddar when we can get it and American cheddar otherwise. They provide a nice flavor boost and a great visual with the way the slices melt over the burger. Then our own "Bread and Butter" pickles for those that want them. The only thing we are grabbing off the grocery shelf (besides condiments) are the buns and even that may change. Slowly but surely we are working toward a pretty darn good result courtesy of all of you.

Just a quick update on our second go. Wife does not like the breadcrumbs and she thinks it has diminished the bacon flavor substantially. I'm not sure why this would happen and I dialed the amounts back by at least half, figuring I would edge up on the recommended amounts to see how the burgers taste and consistency developed. I used dry, freshly made bread crumbs with whole eggs and beer. Amounts: 200 grams of bread crumbs, 4 eggs, 200 ml of beer in 4 kilos of ground meat. We did the second grind which made a substantial improvement in consistency. I added a small amount of salt: 2 tablespoons spread out over the 4 kilos of meat. Cohesion was substantially improved, the burger was moist and cooked through - 5 ounce burgers about 1/2 to 3/4 inch thick. Bottom line for me - I need to recapture the big burst of bacon flavor I had before - it was almost like a BBQ going off in your mouth. There is still some bacon flavor but much more subdued. Get that back and it is a keeper. The burger was not falling apart in the bun so we are doing something right! French Fries: Tried to do a Heston style fry - cut, boil to parcook, two trips to the fryer (aka Belgian Fries) and they came out good but not Heston good. Kind of more like McDonalds good when McDonalds does it right. Cooked through, crunchy, over all satisfactory but not great. Room for improvement, as they say.

c. oliver - Living in SE Asia takes some of the germophobe out of you. to be sure. But we purchase carefully and I have two brothers-in-law that are meat cutters for retail chains. I get a bit better info on the good stuff and that has made a difference for us. CatPoet - that sounds very interesting. We do have extra fat from cured pork chops occasionally. But since I make 10 kilos or better of bacon each month, bacon is kind of the resource I have the most of. I will definitely keep the cured and smoked pork fat for use in the future. nickrey - We do try to chill our meat before grinding. I think I need to improve that aspect, to be sure. But I definitely stay away from grinding warm meat and particularly warm fat. Currently I only have a Kitchen Aid mixer and its grinding attachment - but that has actually been working quite well for me until my larger grinder is finished. I do have the Kitchen Aid Pro 600 version that seems to have better power than the smaller units. And we do keep a good fat to lean ratio. I am certain we are at or over the 25/75 ratio and probably closer to 30/70 fat to lean. lordratner - I am going to use some salt to add cohesion today. I will be fairly light with it due to a number of people do not want a salty product. My bacon is a bit salty, the way we prefer it but not enough when used in this mix of bacon and beef. I look forward to hearing your salt ratio per pound.or kilo. Thank you all for your input. I've reground the mixture for a second grind now. We don't have the opportunity to sous vide this time but I want to do that next time we make this. We are pairing the burger with Heston style french fries and are hoping for a worthwhile burger and fries combo!

c. oliver, good points - but I'm not in the USA. I am in SE Asia where the food supply is not nearly as strict in terms of regulation or even consideration of the end user. Charcoal made of treated 2x4's (or their metric equivalent) are not all that uncommon. Selling of "twice dead" carcasses is illegal but not uncommon with reports of arrests for it in the news occasionally. Twice dead in this case means the sale of carcasses that died of unexplained causes prior to butchery. A recent fish kill due to microbe bloom caused a huge influx of tainted fish into the fish markets. People quit buying because they knew just what was being offered. When it comes to pork, I don't have the same confidence I would in North American product. In fact, some carcasses here are from the States, arriving frozen. When I can, I get those. But they are not always available. Since I am cooking on a griddle, the holes or spaces in grates is not a problem. Their crumbling is due to the lack of cohesion in the ground meat itself. I think that a finer grind, addition of salt, and the use of egg and fine crumbs may help with this. I am hoping the crumbs will also help retain some of the juice's flavor too. I do need a longer handle turner and tongs as well. Singeing my arm hair is not an uncommon occurrence when running a hot grill on my Weber kettle.

CatPoet, that is what I figured regarding the potatoes. So far i have seen people talking about gluten free here but rarely asking for or requiring it. I'n sure it is more of a concern elsewhere. So while I will try a couple of variations during our next grind, I've settled on 1) a double grind for finer texture, 2) your egg/bread crumb mix 3) more salt during the mixing. For the temperature question as it relates to appearance, I am thinning the patties out for simpler cooking through out. I will try a sous vide setup soon as well. I will shoot for a 145F to 150F internal (when on the griddle without sous vide) and the 145F to 147F when I try the sous vide approach. These are close to the finishing temps when I make my bacon. And of course, even when heat finished, bacon requires more cooking before consumption, none of us are pulling bacon out of the fridge and eating it straight, though we might do that with a hotdog which is usually finished to the same temperature range. (Okay, we might have done it with the hotdog when we were a kid, if not now.)

CatPoet - I was planning on drying out in the oven and grinding some white bread. The potato version is appealing too but I do prefer them as a side dish, to be honest. Thanks for the heads up on the bread crumbs.

Shalmanese - Thank you, I will give a bit of salt a try the next time we grind bacon and beef. I had stayed away from adding salt because I'd read it could cause the meat to lose structure. But falling apart while cooking is unacceptable and a finer texture is a trade I'd make as long as I end up with a decent burger. In fact, one of the criticisms of my first attempt at grinding the bacon/beef burger was the need for a bit more salt. CatPoet - I appreciate very much your sharing the ratios with me. We will try the dry crumbs first - 100 mg per kilo of ground meat. I will run a number of test batches next month when we do process meat again. We only have lager beers here - there is a dark lager, Cerveza Negra that I will give a try.

Thanks FeChef, that makes sense. I will try some of the patties I already have made with this approach. I'll start with the 145F and see how the appearance comes out.

CatPoet, thanks for sharing that. I may give it a try as I do want a consistent product that hangs together well. Do you have an amount you use per pound or kilo? FeChef, I"ve been freezing them for storage, but thawing and cooking on a griddle with a dome to hold the steam from a healthy splash of water. Flip and and second splash of water. Then top with cheese, etc etc etc. I do have a sous vide setup so I can try the 140F or whatever temp produces the best result in terms of taste and appearance. Manager, I'm not sure about the meaning of "just a data point"? I do my bacon with a dry cure of Prague Powder #`1/Pink Salt #1 - along with salt and sugar proportioned. Original cure recipe was derived from Charcuterie (Ruhlmand & Polcyn, 2005) and a couple of other sources. I cure for a week at 40F, rinse off, soak to remove some of the saltiness, and then warm smoke over charcoal and hickory for 2 hours. I finish in an oven to 150F internal so we can capture the bacon grease for other uses. I serve this to a wide range of folks, but a significant portion are in the older "at risk" population so I want to be sure that I keep it safe. The pink color is a no go due to cultural and culinary history where I am. I need to serve the burgers with at least a brownish interior. I can probably count on one hand the number of folks that would belly up to a medium rare anything here. (Note: I am currently outside the States and in SE Asia) I am so pleased with the flavor of this burger. I will keep at it until I find that balance of presentation and flavor. Thanks everyone. I've been doing some research courtesy of Google. Food safety org recommends a 155F for ground meats and I think that may address the cultural issue with pink meat at the same time. I will try setting up to sous vide at 145F and then at 155F to compare the outcome of the two burgers for appearance and flavor. FoodSafety.org Handout A question for the grinding. I generally grind the meat once and I may try grinding it twice for finer result and better integration of the mix. Do you grind for medium mix (larger discernible pieces) or finer mix (a more consistent appearance throughout)?

I've started experimenting with a bacon burger recipe. I cure and smoke my own pork belly bacon and grind the beef, usually a leaner selection. I've done it twice now and the flavor is exceptional. Some of the best burger I've had in my 60 plus years. It is a 60% lean beef and 40% hickory smoked bacon ground and mixed, a bit of pepper and Worcestershire sauce added. There is some variation but I think it is 70/30 or 75/25 in terms of meat to fat ratio once combined. But there are a couple of problems. 1) The patty tends to fall apart. The burger patty does not have the cohesion a normal burger does. 2) If I cook the to medium well done - due to the bacon - it tends to be a dry. If I back off the temp, it is a bit pink in the interior and I worry about that. With ground beef that would be no problem. But with ground bacon as a significant percentage of the patty, I do. We are currently cooking it on a griddle, with water and cover. Problem #1 puzzles me and i'm not sure how to remedy it. Bread crumbs? I don't want to make meatloaf, so I tend to shy away from that. I could compress the burger more but I don't want to produce a hockey puck. Problem #2 is a temperature thing, so I am guessing I need to be in the 165F/170F area through the burger. Current burger patties are 5 ounces and are thicker so making them thinner might help. I will play with that, but I'm looking for a consensus on what temp I should be aiming for in terms of safety. I serve these to a wide range of folks, many of them in the over 65 (so in the "at risk" category) so I want to keep things safe. Note: I make my own cure mixture, dry cure the pork belly for 7 days, do a warm smoke (charcoal and hickory), and finish it in an oven to an internal temp of 150F before chilling to slice or grind it.

Those look great! I need to learn how to do something with the skin, usually with a bit of fat on it, from making bacon. I tried to dry the skins before, but I don't have a dehydrator. My oven only goes about 215F or so at the lowest setting. I used a Weber kettle that I could keep at the 150F - 165F range, but the skins "cooked" and would not puff at ll when deep fried. They had a pretty oily taste as well. I'd love to be able to do cracklin's, either with skin & fat, or with the smaller pieces of belly still containing meat that are not so suitable for bacon. What is the twice fried approach?

Okay, that is a good point and while I try to keep things cold, sometimes the rush to finish may cause me to let that slide a bit. I am not sure that is what happened, but it might have and I will be more mindful of it in the future. Thanks!

Well, the recipe called for nfdm aka non-fat dry milk, kind of rare in my part of the globe, but I found some low fat dry milk and used that. It also asked for a couple of things I didn't have, sodium erythorbate and celery seeds. I am pretty sure how those two could not effect the loss of fat juiciness. I will go back to vac packing before I finish. I'm just curious why they would lose all their juiciness in a moderately hot water bath. Thanks for the idea, I will keep an eye on my binder.

I just started making my own hotdogs. The first two tries were fairly successful. I use a recipe found in Len Poli's collection of sausage recipes. I adapted it to use lean beef and pork fat. I then smoke them with hickory. Normally until they are 130F or so. Then I vac pack and sous vide to the recommended 151F finish temperature. However, many folks will simply put them in a water bath, no sous vide, and finish that way. Last time I decided to do mix the approach a bit. I used my sous vide setup, but instead of vac packing, I simply put in heavier ziplock style bags, added water, and finished that way. The result was disasterous. The fat leached out of the hotdogs and left me with a very dry product. And this puzzles me greatly. At the 151F temperature, there shouldn't be any serious loss of fat. That is the lower end of what a street vendor should be keeping his hotdogs at in a cart. And those can sit for quite awhile before they are sold. I had expected to lose some flavor to the water in the ziplock, but not all the hotdogs moisture. Any ideas what would be causing that? I have cooked these hotdogs in boiling water, they come out fine. But sit for an hour or more in a bath and they become barely edible. Size of dogs: about a 1 inch "dinner dog" using 26ml or 28ml collagen casing. Photo below is the normal setup, not with water in the ziplock. - and we make sure they are all submerged.

Okay, so let's run a hypothetical with store bought ground beef. I season, form patties and vacuum seal. Then I cook from refrigerated temp of 41F. The patties are 6 ounces, 4 to 4 1/2 inches wide and a bit over 1 inch thick, let us say about 30 millimeter thick. Cook time via sous vide using Mr. Baldwin's guide is about 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours. I cook at 140F to 150F depending on the consumer's preference. They are finished in a deep fryer at 400F. If I want to hold these for a period of time, say up to 2 or 3 hours, a 125F bath would do without undue concern, since the burgers are vacuum packed. In fact, I could cook them (given enough time) and serve as rare. But Mr. Baldwin starts at 131F and that I take that as a good place to start holding my burgers until time to finish and the lowest temperature I would cook them at so they would be medium-rare. Since I am in the Philippines which often does not enforce the same standards of food safety and handling that are common in the USA (though they surely do teach them in their culinary courses here), I tend to preparing burgers medium to medium-well. But I still need to hold them for the above mentioned periods until time to finish. The 131F to 135F range seems to be a safe place to keep them for extended periods without food safety issues or degradition of the finished product?

I think a simple setup would be necessary for the initial interface, but that some users would benefit for programable steps. I did 25 bugers sous vide last night. I would have loved to be able to program it for 1 1/2 hour at 150F (my target temperature for doneness) and the drop to 125F or 130F to hold until we finished. The same is true when a PID/Sous Vide bath used to control a cheese vat. Cheese making often calls for changing temperatures, or slow raises or drops of temperature over a period of time. While the input is often based solely on time, many cheese makers use PH as their guide, which would be outside the PID controllers capability, I'm guessing. Still, being able to set the unit to ramp up or down over a specified period of time would be very desirable. I am also looking at using an accurate controller for higher temperature oils as well. I do Belgian style fries, 320F and 375F. I finish the above mentioned hamburgers at 400F or 420F. A controller that could handle 2200 or 3000 watt heating units (I'm on a 220v Electrical system) and reliably keep the oil from getting to the 450F smoke point would be very handy, providing it was durable.

Thank you both. I apologize for missing the food safety explination on your website, but now I have a pretty good understanding of why the temperatures are specified and how to answer questions about the lower sous vide temperatures confidently.

I will buy your book this month to be sure! But I am confused about cooking sous vide at 131F while I have the FDA saying anything below 140F is in the danger zone. Above that, I understand the effect of temperature and time. But under the 140F I'm faced with "supposedly" unsafe food. I am cooking ground beef burgers sous vide and finishing them in a deep fryer. Since it is ground beef, it is more "temperatmental" about bacteria than a steak, but how do I resolve the difference between 131F (medium rare) and 140F (medium) in terms of food safety, time at temperature and o forth?