Using Hamburger

[Labradorbob]

If I use 80/20 hamburger 10 lbs to make summer sausage or snack sticks,can I add 1 pound pork fat to get the 30 percent fat and will this taste ok?
Also should I grind through small plate?
Or leave as is?

[YooperDog]

Labradorbob you can use the pork fat since it a pretty neutral flavor. I would grind the fat and mix it in the beef. If the beef is already ground I wouldn’t grind it again, it has probably been ground twice. I would make sure of getting a good mix when adding the fat. Normally I add the fat and protein during the initial grind to help with the mix unless I want to see a fat particle definition in the finished product.

[alanburkholder]

The math teacher (a past life a long, long time ago), says watch the percentages. 10 lbs of 80/20 + 1 lb of fat = 27% fat or 9 lbs of 80/20 + 1 lb of fat = 28% fat. Either way a bit short of your 30% goal. Either way more fat is needed, personally I freeze the fat, then grind with my larger plate, and mix with ground beef & seasoning. I like the bigger pieces of piggy goodness.

[lsaule]

This post is deleted!

[lsaule]

alanburkholder
L
lsaule 6 minutes ago

Hi Alanburkholder. can you explain the proper way of calculating percentages you are referring to? I use pork loin to make sausages estimating 16% fat content. I add % fat based on what the pork loin weight is as opposed to calculating the amount of meat and fat in the pork loin, meaning that I simply add 14% of the 5,000 g to the recipe.

I guess maybe I should change that to: if I use 5,000 g pork loin, that would really mean 4,200 lean meat and 800 g fat. To arrive at 30% fat content, I would have to add 14% of the lean meat amount (4,200 g) for 588 g of fat. This would translate to 5,000 g pork loin, 588 g pork fat to equal the 30% fat percentage of pork shoulder. Does that make sense or am I confusing? Am I on the right track?

[alanburkholder]

You need to look at the total meat to determine the percentage of fat. So in your example of 5kg (84/16)loin, you would need to add 1k of fat to bring the total meat to 6k and 30% is fat.

Hope this helps - remember the high school days saying “when would I ever use these ratios in real life?”

[lsaule]

Didn’t really help, because it didn’t explain how you arrived at those figures but thanks anyways. I did some looking around and discovered Pearson’s square, which is the formula used to calculate how to mix two solutions to arrive at a given percentage.

[smokinbubba]

Too much advanced math for this guy…

[cdavis]

smokinbubba don’t worry I’m in the same boat.

[YooperDog]

lsaule I guess how accurate do you want to be in your protein/fat ratio? You can break down your animal muscles into lean and fat and mix back together to get the protein/fat ratio you want. E.g. 5lb meat block with 30% fat is 3.5lbs lean and 1.5 lbs fat (5 X .30 = 1.5). This will get you in the ballpark. If you are looking for dead nuts accurate you are going to buy some really expensive equipment. I like to keep it simple and in the ballpark is good for most of my sausages, seasoning percentages are more of a focus for me. Hope this helps.