Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Elk Burger Question

Gents, I shot a cow elk in Utah on friday and some of the meat I want to make Elk Burger out of it. My question is this, if you add fat, do you use beef fat or pork fat? Which is best. I assume the ratio would be about 4 or 5 parts elk meat to 1 part fat. Anyone out there make Elk burgers and able to help me?

When we add anything to the elk we usually use lean pork or beef and stay away from the trimmings. 5 parts elk to 1 part pork is usually what we do if we do anything at all.

Pork seems to give the best flavor IMO.

My own preference is for beef fat. 5 to 1 will give you a 20% fat content 5 1/2 to one will give you an 18% fat content, the 18% mixture seems about right for most of my uses.
If I make sausage I'll use pork fat and run about 25% fat content depending on what I'm making.
Hope this is of help to you. Beats the hell out of tag soup.
Z

We eat lots and lots of elk burger. I haven't developed a beef/pork preference. Make sure that it is good/recently cut fat. Sometimes butchers have some skanky fat around, and you don't want that. I call a grocery store that does their own butchering about 8:00 in the morning, and tell them I will pick it up at noon--I get that day's fat.

Tend to run 10% by weight--a leaner mix than you mentioned. If we are doing something that could use more fat, then tend to add a little oil, or maybe an egg depending on use.

I quit adding fat a long time ao,but when I did I used steak trimmings.

Straight lean elk burger makes better spaghetti,tacos, chili,etc.

If you only turn hamburgers once while grilling, they will stay together.

It gets expensive, but I add 1 part pork butt to 3-4 parts elk. I don't buy just plain fat. I think it's delicious and the meat holds together very well. But I also like pork in general. However, I can't serve it to a lot of my friends and neighbors because the the whole biblical "unclean" thing. They all do their elk as straight ground, no suet. And it seems fine. I of course like mine better.

I quit adding any fat to burger about 10 years ago, and haven't missed it a bit. I trim all the deer/elk/antelope/caribou whatever fat off first, then grind the meat as lean as possible. Vacuum-seal and freeze, then when I get ready to cook it I add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil per burger, more or less, and mix it up, along with whatever seasonings I find appealing at the moment. They cook up nicely on my grills, inside or outside, and have no "domestic" flavors.

Dennis

Depends on what I intend to use it for. If you ever want to use it for jerky (sitka deer spare me the sermon) you don't want any fat in it. I agree with making sure you get fresh fat though. Some of my friends add pork as exbiologist does.

Have a butcher save some beef suet and add 10% suet to the elk and you will be golden.

I add no fat to my deer and elk burger. The whole point of venison, for me, is meat that is lean and clean. Toxins concentrate in fat. About the last thing I want is to add that to my wonderful, organic, completely free-range meat!

To each their own, but elk burger is wonderful stuff with no fat added, IMHO.

Beef suet will leave a pasty film on the roof of your mouth if used. Steak trimmings won't ,but adding any type of fat will reduce how long you want to leave it in the freezer.

Adding fat to good elk burger is like adding ketchup to a T-bone steak

We don't add fat. If one had it done at a shop, insist on good clean trimmings. Long ago we had about 70 lbs of meat ruined with the addition of poor quality beef fat.

About two or three strips of good bacon on a pure elk pattie sure makes it hard to beat.

I used to use beef fat until I had it with pork. Now, I just get a pork shoulder and mix that in with it.

beef fat

I used to get a whole pork shoulder or a boston butt to grind with my venison, but 2 of the many reasons I hunt are A) "free" meat and B) good meat. SO I'm not adding any crappy factory farmed mess to that. I add a little olive oil and egg now to burgers and meatloaf, and nothing to chili, tacos, spaghetti sauce etc.

And that's the right time to add it, too. We ground some fat bacon in with some elk burger one year, and I didn't like the fact that all my wonderful elk burger tasted like bacon. YMMV, but I'll not do that again.
Now we use some fat pork meat and everyone's happy...even though we don't use enough to make much difference in the taste of the finished product.

Nothing...Elk is best pure...

I do beef, but some guys swear by pork--pick your poison--either will taste great!



Casey

Guys, I really appreciate all the info and input. My wife and I used Pork butt, and added it at 20 percent. It happened to be on sale, so it wasnt too expensive to add to it. My first elk, for an old fart, I am pooped, I'll tell you guys about it later, but it ended up being a real hunt which made me feel better about it all. And I thought hunting mule deer was exciting.............