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Home ground pork is essential to juicy & tasty pork buns, dumplings, wontons, meatballs, and more. Finding quality ground pork at grocery stores is not as easy as finding, say, ground beef. However, if you have a Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer with a meat grinder attachment as I do or a standalone meat grinder, it is super easy to make your perfect ground pork at home.
What makes Ground Pork Tastier?
Tip No.1 is to choose the right Cuts of the Pork for a juicy and tasty Home Ground Pork
Belly or bacon is the fatty part, which ultimately gives juiciness. I typically use about 40% pork belly and couple that with 60% of pork shoulder or butt for an optimal balance of health and taste.
Tip No.2 is to chop pork into small pieces, but not overly processed
I used to use a food processor to process pork and learned the hard way that if I break down the pork meat too much; it becomes dry and tasteless. I then recall the old-fashioned way of making ground pork in my hometown Suzhou area, is to chop the pork on a cutting board. People would spend hours cutting & chopping the pork meat into ground pork using a cleaver. The key is to cut the pork into small bits, but leave enough structures to still being pork.
A meat grinder is a productive tool that I resort to for the sake of productivity.
How to do meal prep for all your pork needs at home?
Pork is an important ingredient for Traditional Chinese Cooking. Juicy and flavorful pork, as pork filling, slices, or chunks are satisfyingly delicious.
Every quarter or so, we buy a large package of pork butt and belly and then prep into various uses.
Pork Belly
So many delicious iconic dishes featuring pork belly. Red Braised Pork Belly, Lu Rou Fan, Twice Cooked Pork, just to name a few. I also use about 40% pork belly in the home ground pork for the ultimate juiciness.
Pork Butt or Shoulder
Pork Butt or Shoulder is perfect for dishes like one pot dish Braised Pork Chunks with Potato and Carrot. I also cut them into long strips to make Char Siu. For home ground pork, I use about 60% of pork butt or shoulder besides 40% of pork belly.
How to make perfect Home Ground Pork?
Tip #1 is to prepare about 60% pork butt and 40% pork belly meat
Tip #2 is to cut the meat into long strips that are size-friendly to your meat grinder
Meat Grinder usually has a long chamber for the meat to travel through while grinding. It is best if you can cut the meat into long strips for easy feeding and better looking ground meat. Feed the pork strip vertically into the meat grinder.
Tip #3 is to remember to rotate between pork butt and pork belly meat during the grinding
This way, the final ground pork has a proper ratio of pork butt vs. pork belly meat.
Store home ground pork into a quart size ziplock bag and use in the next three months. They are freezer friendly.
Whenever you are ready to make yummy dishes featuring pork filling, just take out a bag 1 day prior and let it thaw in a container in the refrigerator.
Homemade Ground Pork for Juicy Tasty Dumplings, Buns, Meatballs
Home ground pork is essential to juicy & tasty pork buns, dumplings, wontons, meatballs, and more. If you have a Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer with a meat grinder attachment as I do or a standalone meat grinder, it is super easy to make your perfect ground pork at home.
Ingredients
- 3 lbs of fresh pork butt meat
- 2 lbs of fresh pork belly meat
Instructions
- Gather Pork Belly and Pork Shoulder or Butt.
- Rinse and clean pork thoroughly using cold water, trim off extra fat and/or gristles.
- Cut pork belly and pork shoulder/butt into small long strips, about 2 inches wide and 5 inches long. This dimension works well with the Kitchen Aid meat grinding attachment. Adjust to your meat grinder.
- Turn on the KitchenAid food processor to medium-high, get a big mixing bowl under the grinding tool to catch the ground pork, and start to feed meat strips vertically into the grinder.
- Alternate between pork belly and pork shoulder/butt when feeding the grinder so that the final ground pork has an optimal butt & belly ratio.
- Store the ground pork in quart size freezer ziplock bags in the freezer and use in the next three months.
Notes
- Pork belly is the secret to juiciness because of the fat. In order to achieve a good balance of taste and health, this recipe calls for 40% pork belly and 60% pork shoulder/butt.
- This ground pork is perfect for making delicious pork buns, dumplings, wontons, "Lion Head" meatballs, regular pork meatballs, and so many other Chinese style dishes featuring pork filling.
- Home Ground Pork is freezer friendly. Just put them into quart size freezer ziplock bags, each bag can hold a little over 2lbs of ground pork and store in the freezer until later use.
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Nutrition Information
Yield 12 servings Serving Size 1Amount Per Serving Calories 568Total Fat 40gSaturated Fat 15gTrans Fat 0gUnsaturated Fat 22gCholesterol 178mgSodium 160mgCarbohydrates 0gFiber 0gSugar 0gProtein 49g
Nutrition calculation is provided by Nutritionix to the best knowledge per ingredients description and isn't always accurate.
6 comments
This method seems to make sense. Thank you for the information. Do you put the cut pork back in the refrigerator or freezer before grinding? I just got a grinder so I’m new with the process.
Hi Ellie, I usually just cut the pork and grind immediately. Remember to cut the pork into long strip to make the grinding process easier. Also, the grinder doesn’t work very well for fatty pork, so try to alternate fatty pork and lean pork to smooth out the grinding process. I then package the freshly ground pork in quart-size ziplock bag and freeze. Each quart-size ziplock bag can hold about 2 lb of ground pork.
Should you only use the coarse grinder, or grind through the medium plate after the coarse grinder? I’ve had difficulty with fatty pieces getting stuck in the grinder, so I’m worried about the pork belly.
Use the coarse grinder for meat. The coarse cut makes the ground pork juicier and tasty. Two tips might help the situation: for one, cut the pork into long strips with fat and lean meat together. Feed the long strips vertically directly into the grinder. for two, when feeding the grinder, alternate the pork belly and lean pork and use the lean pork to clean the grinder tube and help move the fatty parts along the way. Hopefully, this helps. Let me know how it goes.
Thank you for sharing this! Gonna give it whirl so I can made some homemade Pork Dumplings! PS – LOVE my Kitchen Aid grinder attachment. ❤️❤️❤️
You are very welcome. Yeah, you can make so many delicious foods featuring pork filling. Besides using the grinding attachment to grind meat, you can also use it to grind cooked adzuki beans and make a delicious iconic red bean paste.