Why Home-Ground Meat Makes More Tender Burgers

We made three sets of burger patties, one with store-bought 90 percent lean ground chuck and two with flap meat that we ground ourselves in the food processor (we ground one batch to mimic the texture of the store-bought meat; the other we ground moderately coarse in the manner we prefer—see “Getting the Perfect Grind,” below). After cooking all three sets of burgers to medium-rare, we let them rest for five minutes and then dropped a large Dutch oven on each patty from 6 inches above the counter. We repeated the test three times.

Messy—but in a good way. The burgers reacted very differently to the weight of the Dutch oven. The one made from the dense store-bought ground meat remained intact (though somewhat flattened) and did not ooze any liquid at all. The burger made from the beef we ground to mimic the store-bought texture spread a bit but did not release any of its juices. The looser, more coarsely home-ground burger, however, flattened like a pancake, spewing its moist interior all over the board.

One important variable in ground beef is the texture of the grind. Because we could control the texture of the meat we ground ourselves, we were able to construct a looser, more tender burger with our coarse-ground meat. Because we could not control the size of the grind in the burger patty made from store-bought meat, it was much denser, tougher, and ultimately much more resilient when smashed. (In this case, resilience is not a good thing!)

A second variable in ground beef is the choice of cut. Because we could choose to grind flap meat, a cut with more fat and flavor than chuck, both of our home-ground burgers tasted richer and more flavorful (no matter how they smashed) than the store-bought.