Adventures in Meat Grinding

I have reached the point in my life where people stop buying me shots for my birthday and decide I am the kind of girl who would rather have a meat grinder. It's not the fact that I got a meat grinder that means I'm getting older, it's the fact that I was really excited about it.

My brother very wisely decided to help me add on to my fantastic KitchenAid mixer by buying the meat grinding attachment for me for my birthday this month. You can grind a number of different things with the attachment like vegetables, fruit, and bread. I think it's can be quite useful. However, I think it will be most useful to me as a meat grinder. Catch some brisket on sale and make my own burger! Or, like today, make ground meat when ground meat was not available.

As you know, I am a big fan of Cooking Channel and this afternokn's 'The Perfect 3' featured burgers - one being the lamb burger. Ah ha! Just what I decided I was hungry for! I planned to make Greek lamb burger for dinner. At this point, there was no way around it.

Unfortunately, the grocery store did.not carry ground lamb. They have ground turkey, chicken, beef, veal, and pork (I think pork) but no lamb. Crap. But wait! I have a brand new meat grinder waiting to be used! Yes! So I decided to buy the packaged lamb shoulder, bring it home, remove the bone, and make my own burgers. Even better.

So dill, garlic, s&p, and some lemon zest later, I was ready to grill. I live in an apartment and don't have a place for a real grill, but I do have a mini Foreman grill. I made a first attempt at my own tzatziki (which isn't bad but still needs some work), and stuffed a burger half in two pita halves with the tzatziki, cucumber and feta. Not only did I have a delicious dinner but the satisfaction of making it myself!

Let me know if you have any tips on tzatziki and if you have a meat grinder attachment and what you use it for!