I accidentally defrosted stew beef instead of ground beef. Can I grind this kind of beef to make burgers?

I don’t know for sure but I’d give it a shot. Stew beef has great flavor, so it might be good. Look at the texture after the first grind and maybe do it twice if it looks a little tough?
That actually sounds really good flavor wise.

Second thought, check to make sure it’s not too lean. It might need some additional moisture or fat to make a good burger. Maybe some olive oil, milk, butter, or whatever you prefer. Some worcestershire or A-1 might go good too.

This guy used stew beef (chuck), and added in some others in various ratios. Might be useful reading.

You will need fat.

Thank you both!

@Cupcake – I looked at the link you provided and saw that he uses short ribs as part of his burger grind. Interestingly, I have some short ribs in the freezer and it turns out that my husband doesn’t like them. I was worried about wasting them, but now they have a use!

@tedibear What?!?! That’s so awesome. I’m sure they’ll turn out great.

I have never tried it, but I am sure you would get a fairly lean burger from stew beef. Adding the short ribs will probably up the fat content a bit. Less healthy, but tastier. Bon appetit.

If you don’t mind it all falling apart it should be fine.

@_Whitetigress you can overcome that problem by adding some flour, or egg (or both).

Yes you can, what do you think they make ground beef from? It will actually probably be better quality than store bought ground beef as it won’t have the parts most people wouldn’t eat if they knew what it was.

Instead, I’d slow cook the meat & make pulled meat sandwiches, but that’s just me.

Stew meat is usually neck meat and the bits leftover from trimming roasts, steaks, and other cuts of meat so they look nice.

Freezing meat significantly changes its texture and may make the result of grinding less satisfactory. As others pointed out, stew meat is too lean to make ground beef.

@Cupcake Wow! I’m craving burgers big time. :(

Thank you for all of these great answers!

If it wasn’t already fully defrosted I would put it away for beef stew weather. I think i will defrost the short ribs, grind some of that in, and then maybe roast what’s left to use the bones for stock?

If you have not already ground it up, you could try chislic.

I know the recipe calls for lamb, but it works with beef, buffalo and venison as well.

Let us know how it turns out, @tedibear, so we know for the future which of our postulates was correct. When you publish the experimental results, this may be a finding I will wish to verify.

I should have time to do this tomorrow. The last part of the week really got away from me!

Thank you again to everyone for the help!

@tedibear Same thing here. It’s endemic.

I think it’s got something to do with the Moon being in Aquarius, and all Aquarians being mooned.

Here are the results: yum! I had 19 oz. of short rib meat and 12 oz of stew meat. I trimmed some fat from the short rib meat. Then all of it went through the grinder. Were I to do this again, I will add a touch more fat. They weren’t dry, but a little more fat would have given a bit more flavor.

Again, many many thanks for the comments and help!

Update part 2: On Sunday I used the meat that was left to make tacos. Another success!

@tedibear Excellent idea. The moisture from the water and taco seasoning would offset the leanness.