2 hours ago, KennethT said:
I've never tried mincing meat by hand, but you have got my curiosity piqued for sure. About how long did it take? You didn't happen to take a video of it did you? What is the general procedure? First slice into smallish dice, then whack away?
I actually used a very sharp (5000 grit) Japanese chef's knife rather than a cleaver. I stuck the meat in the freezer for about an hour to make it easy to cut, then started by cutting the meat in half parallel to the board, then into very thin slices, then those thin slices into about 1/4" dice. Then I sort of just lumped it all up and started chopping as if I was mincing garlic or something. All in all it took about 5 minutes, and I really liked how much control I had over the final texture. If I had stopped at a dice it would've worked really well in some applications (maybe burger, maybe not)
ETA: my initial steps were a lot finer than in that video, in that I was cutting almost cheestesteak-thin slices on the first pass, and once i had done enough pull and push cuts, I rock-chopped, not just whacking the board.
It really helps to have a very sharp knife and very cold meat.
