I have written about my burgers before (here and here). Today I set out to make another batch. I started with about 8lbs of lean ground beef and 4lbs of medium ground beef.
I like to have enough fat in the burgers both for flavour and to hold them together, but interestingly many grocery stores no longer carry medium ground beef ("we can't sell it; nobody buys it any more" is what I was told). We found a few small packs, and given that the lean doesn't seem quite so lean as it did forty years ago, I am hoping this is a pretty decent mix.
Here are the packages of meat and spices, along with my trusty K-Tel patty-stacker, as I prepared to start the project. Note: the coffee is for personal ingestion.
I had to do the mixing in two different batches in the largest pan we have in the place:
Each mixing batch used half the meat and made two full stacks of patties in the patty-stacker:
I bag them in groups of four and freeze them. On average the patties are 5-6oz each.
Generally my view is that "a kitchen's place is in the restaurant", and indeed we do like to eat out quite a bit. But when it comes to burgers, we like our homemade burgers the best.