Supermarket ground meat: grinding technique?

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Most of the ground meat is delivered in 50lb tubes, chubs. Just like the 1lb or 5lb you see in the display case except larger. Grocer just repackages for appearance sake and/or volume availability.

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Yep. I mentioned this here a year ago and got blasted and called a liar. Same when I mention that most all shrimp is previously frozen.

The amount of ground meat that is shoved out the door, very few places are grinding their own. Calandros does it on a small scale when they sell the chili grind which is the course grind.

Large production facilities with cheap immigrant labor does all the meat processing now. Then it’s packaged and put on a truck to your grocer. Very few butchers in grocery stores anymore.

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The amount of ground meat that is shoved out the door, very few places are grinding their own. Calandros does it on a small scale when they sell the chili grind which is the course grind.

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They all do some minor grinding for whatever scraps and odd bits they generate. They all do that their own way for individual purposes. Like you mention chili meat, another may make their own sausage so grind is different.

I would even suspect the grind has to do with several factors like equipment available, personnel, manager purposes, and always customer demand which can be measured directly or indirectly, maybe even seasonally.

During this pandemic I've seen a couple of local stores, 1 a major chain the other a small regional, put the 50lb chubs in the case for the hoarders to snag up. (remember the meat shortages rumors and stuff?) Pretty sure they did that because of requests for large packages.

Yea, most ground meat is delivered in 10 pound tubes, 50-80 pound cases depending on the company, already ground. Tubes do not weigh exactly 10 pounds, they are catch-weight. Groceries open the tubes and grind it again. As they grind it, they put it on the retail trays you buy.

Ground meat is ground twice. The second grind is to give the appearance you see in the retail trays. It’s all nice and pretty and looks like it’s “in rows”.

As far as a coarse grind and then a fine grind, it just depends on who’s doing it. Ideally, yes, use a larger plate and finish with the smaller plate. What size plate? Just depends on who.

Almost 30?years ago I worked in a grocery store meat market for a summer. All trimmings had to be sold as just ground meat. Ground chuck, ground round m, etc, came from a 10lb tube and were run through the grinder once to package

I worked in a butcher shop in a small local supermarket back in the late 90’s and we still cut up whole cows and grounded fresh ground meat. The same guy still runs the dept, but I think they have swapped to just getting all precut. Would be cool to go in the cooler and they would have a few sides of beef just hanging waiting to be cut.

LINK

This is another good one. He talks about the lost craftsman and how hard the work is. He’s right.

These guys are real butchers. . Watch him process a side of beef with a boning knife and a bandsaw.