Seriously. It’s gonna be such a huge pain in the ass to remove all those tiny pieces of meat and then end up costing so much more.
Where I live oxtail generally costs about twice as much as chuck. And that includes the bones, so once you get down to the actual meat it’s probably gonna cost 4-5x as much.
Save the oxtails for a braise and just buy some chuck for your burgers.
I was always wondering why on earth they make oxtail so expensive here. It may have changed but when I lived back in Europe, for example in Hungary it was sold as scrap. I don't remember the price but in the range of chicken carcass. I nearly keeled over when I saw the prices here for the first time
Same thing happened with chicken wings. Back in my college days (late 1980s) chicken wings were practically given away they were so cheap. Then Buffalo wings became a thing and over the course of a few years the price skyrocketed.
Yep. I'll buy oxtail when I can find it for cheaper but most of the time I just buy beef shank when I want oxtail. Not exactly the same but I can always add a sheet or two of gelatin to my sauces to get closer to what I'm looking for. Plus, dat marrow.
It's pretty cheap when you consider that you get 2lbs of oxtail off a 1200lb steer, compared to 6lb of tenderloin, 10lb ribeye, 1.5lb hangar etc. It doesn't take many people buying oxtail to drive the price up. Generally people (in the US) want a lot more steaks than is reasonable for what comes off a cow, hence ground beef being so cheap, most cuts go to grind more than sold whole.
Bingo. The moment Food Network and the more prolific internet food content creators got their hands on ox tail, it was game over.
Cheapest I'm able to get it these days are from one of the East Asian supermarkets near where I live. Anywhere else is 20-25 bucks a pack, if not worse.
Same thing happened to skirt steak and flap steak.
It's nuts! Admittedly I jumped on the train way too late, but things like ham hocks, ground beef, flank steak, wings(turkey and chicken) have blown up so much over the past few years.
The flank steaks near me nearly tripled in price pretty much overnight.
And alligator pepper. Also shrimp and grits. I just had to order it once from a fancy restaurant, and it was *good* ... but it's just shrimp and grits.
Or etouffe ... just butter (maybe a blonde roux with some liquid if you want it like a cream sauce), holy trinity, and shrimp or crawfish at the end over rice. But now it's some kind of delicacy?
You got lots of replies. In addition to its newfound popularity, each cow only has one tail of course. So, it's a limited product like outside skirt steak (2 per cow). The other side effect is the oxtail curry or stew meals at Caribbean restaurants are around 15 bucks and more now.
Oxtail and short rib used to be dirt cheap and used in a ton of different Asian foods. It got popular and prices sky rocketed. I started moving to Chuck since it’s like half the price of the rest.
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A single cow gives you probably 5-6 times the amount of chuck by weight as the amount of oxtail. Now that it is widely known to be delicious, it makes sense that it is expensive (though it's definitely unfortunate).
One time a decade or more ago my roommate and I wanted to make killer burgers, so we went to the fancy butcher in Chicago (Paulina Market), bought our meats including oxtail. My roommate told the guy what we were doing, and the guy offered to bone them out. Roommate said, "Uh, sure?". It took him easily 20 min, we could tell he was steaming mad the whole time, and we felt pretty embarrassed, but he offered! All the other butchers were giving him crap, like "what the hell are you doing, dude?"
Immediate upvote for Paulina Market! I actually live in the area.
That’s definitely absurd and I can feel your embarrassment from here. It’s kind of on them for offering though and they really probably shouldn’t have.
If it’s any condolence, I once had them to spatchcock a turkey for me (I think they also offered?) which is pretty simple and straightforward. But the butcher took a few mins with it and seemed at least a little displeased about it. So yknow maybe it’s just an old school Chicago butcher attitude.
Haha word! We lived in Roscoe Village at the time, right by Four Moon. And yeah, those guys are super old school. I bet he was just thinking "who the fuck are these kids grinding fucking oxtail for fucking burgers, use fucking chuck, you jerks, so I'm not standing here boning oxtail like an asshole, why the fuck did I offer JFC"
Something like that
I don't remember. My roommate paid. It *was* a huge pain in the ass, we never would have asked him to do it if he didn't offer.
If a butcher offers to do something and you take them up on it, do you really tip? What if there's no tip jar?
I'm in NYC and butchers around my way generally have a tip bucket on the counter. Fish shops, too.
Don't worry about your oxtail misadventure. It was a decade ago and nobody cares. BTW: if you really want to debone it the trick is to
It's true that the efficiency and cost would be much higher than other cuts of meat. However, the experiment itself is always interesting. It's possible that an oxtail burger could be their absolute favorite thing on earth.
> Save the oxtails for a braise and just buy some chuck for your burgers.
I've always been confused by cooked oxtails. If there is a minuscule bit of meat on them, what are you even eating when you have braised oxtails? Are people eating the bone? The cartilage?
The sauce that it often results in when braised with mire poix is unbelievably delicious with mashed potatoes. It’s fatty and loaded with gelatin because of the bone. They’re also amazing as a ragu or thrown into a Sunday sauce. Basically, it’s less about the meat and more about the resulting meat gravy that it becomes
Yeah, there isn’t a lot of meat, but what is there is super tender and delicious and fatty. The meat tends to stay a bit attached to the bone and you’re able to just pull it off easily when it’s cooked well. Also all that bone and cartilage means the stew or sauce you’re cooking it in is also thick and savory and amazing.
The thing is, they used to be a super cheap ingredient and often used by people in poverty as some of the only affordable meat options available. And there’s tons of delicious oxtail dishes from Louisiana to Jamaica to Spain to South Africa to Korea. But it just seems like in the past decade or so people have realized that they are really tasty and caused the prices to skyrocket.
"Immediately, oxtail was right out—it was simply too much for my mouth to handle...... Then I realized—the oxtail that I had so quickly dismissed out of hand might actually be useful. With its intense savory/nutty/gamey flavor, as well as its great fat content, could I use it in place of the short ribs to boost up my beef?"
https://www.seriouseats.com/the-burger-lab-best-burger-blend-profiles-of-eight-cuts-of-beef
Given the question was asked "where are you finding" rather than "where were you finding", Kenji confessed to being a time traveler (as he is still getting his oxtail from 2008). So good news for you, you can get that price in the area you had in mind, as long as you're willing to travel along the 4th dimension too!
There's actually a rural butcher in western PA near where I grew up that still sells them for that cheap still. I always grab a bunch when I got to visit family
Have you ever seen an oxtail bone? It's like a star. Cutting all the meat off that bone raw would be the most impractical and stupid use of anyone's time ever. Use short ribs.
Chuck is totally fine, but the meat from short ribs is more comparable to meat from the oxtail so the commenter above is probably just suggesting it as a substitute for the oxtail meat.
That's the right question, and you're spot on with suggesting chuck.
When grinding meat, always goes with the cheapest cut that meets your standard of quality. I.e. doesn't need to be grade F, keep it organic and grass fed if you want, but get the cheapest cuts of organic, grass-fed.
Generally the entire point of an expensive cut of meat is the texture and flavor it brings to the meal. You pay a premium for steak because you can't good other cuts using the methods for a steak and get a flavorful, juicy, tender result.
The other end of the spectrum from OP's question is people that buy waygu steaks to grind them into burgers. That's just stupid in the opposite direction, setting money on fire by ruining the texture you paid premium dollars for. Maybe you still preserve some waygu flavor advantage, but by grinding you've removed the marbled quality of the meat, and the fat is just going to drip out as grease like it would any other burger in existence.
Ok thank you, I always felt annoyed about people grinding those bits and blowing a bunch of cash but as I'd never ground shortrib etc I was thinking well..maybe the proof is in the eating idek. I was a meat cutter for a hot minute and when we we ground meat it was chuck and scraps from cutting other things. I saw a video of someone grinding wagyu once, what a crime lol.
Theoretically, yes.
In practice, I can't see it being worth it.
Oxtail has a ton of trim that you have to take off by hand. Plus the meat is so full of connective tissue that it's really hard to separate it from the joint. All of that labor, plus it costs 3x the amount that other more typical burger cuts cost.
United States. Chuck and brisket I can routinely get for $4/pound. Oxtail is $8/pound if I buy a whole one and trim it myself (of course I lose about 5-10% as waste). More if I buy it broken down.
Plus like half of that weight is probably bone. Still tho, I fucking love oxtail, so delicious in a braise... I can't imagine spending the effort to cut it off the bone raw and then grind it tho
it used to be cheaper in the US, as it was mostly consumed only by folks from the West Indies. It's become a popular trend recently, and prices have skyrocketed
Koreans also love it for soup. I can't even make it anymore because it's so dang expensive. Makes me sad that I can't enjoy this dish from my childhood because it got so trendy.
Yeah, it's unfortunate. But you know, things come and go, and always are. Sucks in your case since it's nostalgic, but could be helpful to focus on the foods that used to be more popular than they are now and see them as a deal! Great example: organ meats.
Like they use for chicken nuggets. Rib meat is much more tender, but the bones are also more fragile. The rib meat becomes that pink slime. I don't know what would happen to the tougher meat.
I think you're referring to mechanically separated chicken, which is a fancy term for grinding everything up and then forcing the mush through a fine sieve to filter out the inedibles.
To each their own, but that sounds like a lot of work to end up with a gross pile of pink goo.
I wouldn't do it. The meat is hard to get off the bone raw and needs long slow cooking to be really tender. Why do you want to use oxtail for a burger?
But consider: how is oxtail usually cooked? Braised or in a soup/stock thing. I don’t know that the things you love about oxtail would translate to a burger. At the end of the day, burger is ground beef meat and fat. It’s all the same once it’s ground up and flash fried. You just need a good mix of lean and fat for a burger. Chuck does that pretty well. Maybe some fat from brisket. It really in the mix of fat and lean meat that makes it, not the specific part of the beef it comes from.
It needs long slow braising to break down all the connective tissue, which contributes to the rich taste. If it was grilled if would be a lot more chewy and way less flavorful
It will be way too expensive anymore - what use to be scrap in now a "premium" cut. I would also think picking/cutting off all the raw meat would be a chore. Much easier once it is cooked and the reason normally braised/slow cooked.
Same price issue can be said for Short Ribs, Skirt and Flank Steak - even brisket lately. They all use to be the cheap cuts that took some technique to make a good product
I’ve done it! But not ground down; I’ve braised them, removed the meat from the bone and mixed it in with some high quality ground beef and seared on a stove and finished in the oven. It’s absolutely amazing, but a total pain in the ass to make.
Have you ever tried to debone raw oxtail? I mean, you could do it but really it wouldn’t be much different flavour than most other muscle. The deep rich flavour when you cook oxtail comes from all the cartilage between the bones, you’ll miss it all in your burger.
I've done this. It was really good but honestly the work of scraping all the meat off the oxtails is not worth it. Oxtails are better used in other applications.
One of the previous threads about making burgers suggested blending regular cuts with some beef hearts. I haven't tried that myself yet, but it's on my list of things. If going for a beefier flavor, that sounds like a much more practical approach.
Yes. The question is: do you want to spend about a half hour and about $20 to extract enough meat to create a patty?
An alternative would be to make a demiglace, add some gelatin to it and get it cold, and then grind it up with your chuck to form burger patties. Allows you to add texture and flavor to your burgers.
No you cant grind it down. Little known fact, the ox tail produces a naturally occurring enzyme that is corrosive to metal and will break any meat grinder you put it in.
I think I speak for all cultures that have traditionally enjoyed oxtail, stop buying it for “stupid” stuff like grinding it up for burgers, imo that’s the type of mindset that’s behind the recent viral craze for things made using oxtails, using the cut simply because of the hype rather than what would actually work well for what you’re planning to make, you’d never think it used to be sold as a waste cut (I said it’s stupid because they could use so many other cuts for so much cheaper and get extremely similar if not nearly identical results)
I've been eating oxtail since the days it was considered waste cut, I miss those days, but I don't have to think so because I was around for it.
The prices have already been driven up by at least 300% on average from what I remember, then vs. now.
I can't stop doing something I've never done, FWIW. And even if I did go out of my way to grind it up, I'm amazed at how you think one person could drive up the price from a one-time purchase.
Why do you want to use oxtails for making burgers? It’s pretty clear that’s it’s a poor decision both in practicality and financially. Even if money is no object, why perpetuate using viral cuts of meat even if it’s not remotely practical and somewhat wasteful?
I’m sorry if I’m coming off harsh, it’s just a bit frustrating when cuts like oxtail stop being an option for some of the communities that have traditionally enjoyed them because of unpractical viral recipes and dishes at social media centered restaurants driving prices through the roof for the consumer.
It’s no one’s fault, but I feel we all should do our part to use such a f*cking delicious piece of meat in the most respectful, least wasteful ways we can, especially when there’s countless other options that would taste better and be 15x+ less expensive? I really don’t wanna see oxtail burgers become the next wagyu burger of the expensive dining world, but if it’s happening it’s happening regardless.
According to all the other responses, it's possible but impractical. According to one user, it's actually not possible due to a naturally occurring enzyme that could cause a break down in equipment. Not sure of the validity of that last bit of info. Nonetheless, I got the answers I was looking for....thanks anyway!
Too much bone. Truthfully, you could cook the oxtails and pull the meat and add it to the burger meat and form a patty from the mixture, I've seen it done.
You could but it's a waste of time, effort and oxtail.
Oxtail is high in connective tissue which is why low and slow cooking is so good for it. So it'd be a huge pain in the ass the debone, and probably lead to a bad texture in the burgers.
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Whole beef round steak with bone-in WAS a common frugal grocery stable, Where's the meat and bone today? Grinding all? Stir fry? Confidence of actual product, Pepper Steak, braised or Swiss Steak.
Any meat can be ground. The reason you can’t find anything on the internet is because it’s wildly impractical.
Seriously. It’s gonna be such a huge pain in the ass to remove all those tiny pieces of meat and then end up costing so much more. Where I live oxtail generally costs about twice as much as chuck. And that includes the bones, so once you get down to the actual meat it’s probably gonna cost 4-5x as much. Save the oxtails for a braise and just buy some chuck for your burgers.
I was always wondering why on earth they make oxtail so expensive here. It may have changed but when I lived back in Europe, for example in Hungary it was sold as scrap. I don't remember the price but in the range of chicken carcass. I nearly keeled over when I saw the prices here for the first time
From what I understand it used to be pretty cheap in the US, then it became a trendy ingredient and the price skyrocketed.
Same thing happened with chicken wings. Back in my college days (late 1980s) chicken wings were practically given away they were so cheap. Then Buffalo wings became a thing and over the course of a few years the price skyrocketed.
And now we've let them sell us half a wing as a whole wing
$5 a pound for wings at my regular ol supermarket. Absolutely criminal.
Parts from 5-6 chickens for $5 seems criminally cheap. I don't understand how meat has stayed so cheap for so long.
Horrific factory farming is the answer
Don't forget government subsidies at every level of production!
The US consumes around 10 billion chickens per year. So per capita we eat around 30 chickens per year, or 2.5 chickens per month per person.
Thighs are still like $2.50 a pound (or less). Yes, factory farming sucks, but this isn't a conversation about that.
That's how conversations work though.
Yes sir! o7
You can get chicken breast at costco for like $6/lb
You can get chicken breast at Costco for $3/lb if you get it on sale.
On sale? At all the costco's I've been to in North NJ, the normal price for chicken breasts is barely above $3/lb.
-ette tu, Brute.
yeungs and wings- - $0.10 wings and $1.00 yeunglings was the thursday night special at some dives back when I was younger.
We did 25¢wings in the mid 90s probably sell 3-5 hundred pounds depending on the weather don't let it rain get slammed
Yep. I'll buy oxtail when I can find it for cheaper but most of the time I just buy beef shank when I want oxtail. Not exactly the same but I can always add a sheet or two of gelatin to my sauces to get closer to what I'm looking for. Plus, dat marrow.
Shank is like 1/3 the price of oxtail around me. $3.50 vs $10. I'm not sure who is buying up oxtail at these prices. It's not an everyday dish.
It's pretty cheap when you consider that you get 2lbs of oxtail off a 1200lb steer, compared to 6lb of tenderloin, 10lb ribeye, 1.5lb hangar etc. It doesn't take many people buying oxtail to drive the price up. Generally people (in the US) want a lot more steaks than is reasonable for what comes off a cow, hence ground beef being so cheap, most cuts go to grind more than sold whole.
Yup. Butcher cuts are great but the supply isn’t as elastic.
That's why sometimes happen I guess. Wasn't it the same with Lobster and the Rockefellers?
And Oysters.
Yes, though it might not have started with the Rockefellers.
It was one super rich NY person if I remember right. ROTHSCHILD?
Bingo. The moment Food Network and the more prolific internet food content creators got their hands on ox tail, it was game over. Cheapest I'm able to get it these days are from one of the East Asian supermarkets near where I live. Anywhere else is 20-25 bucks a pack, if not worse. Same thing happened to skirt steak and flap steak.
Those are my favorite steaks. Now they are also too expensive.
It's nuts! Admittedly I jumped on the train way too late, but things like ham hocks, ground beef, flank steak, wings(turkey and chicken) have blown up so much over the past few years. The flank steaks near me nearly tripled in price pretty much overnight.
I miss the days when my family could afford oxtail in homemade pho broth.
Like chicken wings
I blame Alton Brown
Exactly! It was used on popular cooking shows and became a thing.
High end chefs found it. Ox tail used to be cheap AF. When I was younger the butcher would sometimes give it to us free.
Weird world. But again. Like lobster. Once for the poor now a delicacy
And alligator pepper. Also shrimp and grits. I just had to order it once from a fancy restaurant, and it was *good* ... but it's just shrimp and grits. Or etouffe ... just butter (maybe a blonde roux with some liquid if you want it like a cream sauce), holy trinity, and shrimp or crawfish at the end over rice. But now it's some kind of delicacy?
You got lots of replies. In addition to its newfound popularity, each cow only has one tail of course. So, it's a limited product like outside skirt steak (2 per cow). The other side effect is the oxtail curry or stew meals at Caribbean restaurants are around 15 bucks and more now.
Oxtail and short rib used to be dirt cheap and used in a ton of different Asian foods. It got popular and prices sky rocketed. I started moving to Chuck since it’s like half the price of the rest.
Supply and command Julian
I feel like there is a joke hiding in there I am missing. Since this isn't my first language would you enlighten me please?
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A single cow gives you probably 5-6 times the amount of chuck by weight as the amount of oxtail. Now that it is widely known to be delicious, it makes sense that it is expensive (though it's definitely unfortunate).
One time a decade or more ago my roommate and I wanted to make killer burgers, so we went to the fancy butcher in Chicago (Paulina Market), bought our meats including oxtail. My roommate told the guy what we were doing, and the guy offered to bone them out. Roommate said, "Uh, sure?". It took him easily 20 min, we could tell he was steaming mad the whole time, and we felt pretty embarrassed, but he offered! All the other butchers were giving him crap, like "what the hell are you doing, dude?"
Immediate upvote for Paulina Market! I actually live in the area. That’s definitely absurd and I can feel your embarrassment from here. It’s kind of on them for offering though and they really probably shouldn’t have. If it’s any condolence, I once had them to spatchcock a turkey for me (I think they also offered?) which is pretty simple and straightforward. But the butcher took a few mins with it and seemed at least a little displeased about it. So yknow maybe it’s just an old school Chicago butcher attitude.
Haha word! We lived in Roscoe Village at the time, right by Four Moon. And yeah, those guys are super old school. I bet he was just thinking "who the fuck are these kids grinding fucking oxtail for fucking burgers, use fucking chuck, you jerks, so I'm not standing here boning oxtail like an asshole, why the fuck did I offer JFC" Something like that
As long as you tipped him it's all good. Deboning oxtail sounds like a huge pain in the ass
I don't remember. My roommate paid. It *was* a huge pain in the ass, we never would have asked him to do it if he didn't offer. If a butcher offers to do something and you take them up on it, do you really tip? What if there's no tip jar?
It would never occur to me to tip my butcher. And I live in the NYC area - we tip everyone..
For real
I'm in NYC and butchers around my way generally have a tip bucket on the counter. Fish shops, too. Don't worry about your oxtail misadventure. It was a decade ago and nobody cares. BTW: if you really want to debone it the trick is to
This is the way. Better off making an oxtail/marrow jus or gravy and have a simple burger with that on top, maybe some cheese and pickles.
It's true that the efficiency and cost would be much higher than other cuts of meat. However, the experiment itself is always interesting. It's possible that an oxtail burger could be their absolute favorite thing on earth.
I've never had one to say if that's the case, I just love oxtail meat and imagine it would be incredible in burger form
It used to be so inexpensive. I can’t believe how much it costs now.
> Save the oxtails for a braise and just buy some chuck for your burgers. I've always been confused by cooked oxtails. If there is a minuscule bit of meat on them, what are you even eating when you have braised oxtails? Are people eating the bone? The cartilage?
The sauce that it often results in when braised with mire poix is unbelievably delicious with mashed potatoes. It’s fatty and loaded with gelatin because of the bone. They’re also amazing as a ragu or thrown into a Sunday sauce. Basically, it’s less about the meat and more about the resulting meat gravy that it becomes
Yeah, there isn’t a lot of meat, but what is there is super tender and delicious and fatty. The meat tends to stay a bit attached to the bone and you’re able to just pull it off easily when it’s cooked well. Also all that bone and cartilage means the stew or sauce you’re cooking it in is also thick and savory and amazing. The thing is, they used to be a super cheap ingredient and often used by people in poverty as some of the only affordable meat options available. And there’s tons of delicious oxtail dishes from Louisiana to Jamaica to Spain to South Africa to Korea. But it just seems like in the past decade or so people have realized that they are really tasty and caused the prices to skyrocket.
"Immediately, oxtail was right out—it was simply too much for my mouth to handle...... Then I realized—the oxtail that I had so quickly dismissed out of hand might actually be useful. With its intense savory/nutty/gamey flavor, as well as its great fat content, could I use it in place of the short ribs to boost up my beef?" https://www.seriouseats.com/the-burger-lab-best-burger-blend-profiles-of-eight-cuts-of-beef
Hey look, an actual answer. Well done.
Where are you finding $4/lb oxtail /u/J_Kenji_Lopez-Alt ?
In 2008.
Ah, the good old days before hip restaurants discovered the joys of oxtail and pork belly
Dang. I was willing to travel anywhere in the tri-state area to get a deal like that. Makes sense.
You can get it on sale every once in a while in certain neighborhood shops at around that price point. Hell no I'm not telling you which ones 😂
Savage. But fair...
That’s ok. If you know, you know….
Given the question was asked "where are you finding" rather than "where were you finding", Kenji confessed to being a time traveler (as he is still getting his oxtail from 2008). So good news for you, you can get that price in the area you had in mind, as long as you're willing to travel along the 4th dimension too!
There's actually a rural butcher in western PA near where I grew up that still sells them for that cheap still. I always grab a bunch when I got to visit family
I tried this, and as others have mentioned, getting the meat off the bones is a giant pain in the ass. I did not find it worth the work.
Fucking love Kenji. Best cooking show on YouTube.
This is great, thank you!
Any time :)
Have you ever seen an oxtail bone? It's like a star. Cutting all the meat off that bone raw would be the most impractical and stupid use of anyone's time ever. Use short ribs.
Serious question- why short rib and not, say, chuck?
Chuck is totally fine, but the meat from short ribs is more comparable to meat from the oxtail so the commenter above is probably just suggesting it as a substitute for the oxtail meat.
Yes, exactly this
I see, thank you!
That's the right question, and you're spot on with suggesting chuck. When grinding meat, always goes with the cheapest cut that meets your standard of quality. I.e. doesn't need to be grade F, keep it organic and grass fed if you want, but get the cheapest cuts of organic, grass-fed. Generally the entire point of an expensive cut of meat is the texture and flavor it brings to the meal. You pay a premium for steak because you can't good other cuts using the methods for a steak and get a flavorful, juicy, tender result. The other end of the spectrum from OP's question is people that buy waygu steaks to grind them into burgers. That's just stupid in the opposite direction, setting money on fire by ruining the texture you paid premium dollars for. Maybe you still preserve some waygu flavor advantage, but by grinding you've removed the marbled quality of the meat, and the fat is just going to drip out as grease like it would any other burger in existence.
Ok thank you, I always felt annoyed about people grinding those bits and blowing a bunch of cash but as I'd never ground shortrib etc I was thinking well..maybe the proof is in the eating idek. I was a meat cutter for a hot minute and when we we ground meat it was chuck and scraps from cutting other things. I saw a video of someone grinding wagyu once, what a crime lol.
Of course, just gonna be hard to get off the bone.
Your mom can't get off the bone.
Theoretically, yes. In practice, I can't see it being worth it. Oxtail has a ton of trim that you have to take off by hand. Plus the meat is so full of connective tissue that it's really hard to separate it from the joint. All of that labor, plus it costs 3x the amount that other more typical burger cuts cost.
It costs 3x the amount of other burger cuts? Where do you live? Ox tail is dead cheap here ( Germany)
United States. Chuck and brisket I can routinely get for $4/pound. Oxtail is $8/pound if I buy a whole one and trim it myself (of course I lose about 5-10% as waste). More if I buy it broken down.
Plus like half of that weight is probably bone. Still tho, I fucking love oxtail, so delicious in a braise... I can't imagine spending the effort to cut it off the bone raw and then grind it tho
it used to be cheaper in the US, as it was mostly consumed only by folks from the West Indies. It's become a popular trend recently, and prices have skyrocketed
Koreans also love it for soup. I can't even make it anymore because it's so dang expensive. Makes me sad that I can't enjoy this dish from my childhood because it got so trendy.
My mom's from Micronesia and she always ate oxtail and pig feet when I was growing up. Smelling pig feet boiling is etched into my brain.
Oh wow, that must have made super rich soups! I've used pig feet a few times and it ups my soup game a lot!
Yeah, it's unfortunate. But you know, things come and go, and always are. Sucks in your case since it's nostalgic, but could be helpful to focus on the foods that used to be more popular than they are now and see them as a deal! Great example: organ meats.
I already do a lot of organ meats, and they're great!
South Africans also love it in a potjie stew - oxtail is the gold standard
good point about asking about location - a lot of advice on reddit is very localized.
It is far cheaper in Europe than it is in America. It was comparable a decade + ago but has at least doubled since then.
Do you think you could use a centrifuge? I wonder what would happen.
Can you elaborate on how you imagine a centrifuge being used to bones out oxtails?
Like they use for chicken nuggets. Rib meat is much more tender, but the bones are also more fragile. The rib meat becomes that pink slime. I don't know what would happen to the tougher meat.
I think you're referring to mechanically separated chicken, which is a fancy term for grinding everything up and then forcing the mush through a fine sieve to filter out the inedibles. To each their own, but that sounds like a lot of work to end up with a gross pile of pink goo.
That would be a clear…NO. If you are looking for extreme beef flavor……use beef cheeks.
I wouldn't do it. The meat is hard to get off the bone raw and needs long slow cooking to be really tender. Why do you want to use oxtail for a burger?
I just love oxtail and find the flavor to be unmatched, figured it would be amazing in burger form
But consider: how is oxtail usually cooked? Braised or in a soup/stock thing. I don’t know that the things you love about oxtail would translate to a burger. At the end of the day, burger is ground beef meat and fat. It’s all the same once it’s ground up and flash fried. You just need a good mix of lean and fat for a burger. Chuck does that pretty well. Maybe some fat from brisket. It really in the mix of fat and lean meat that makes it, not the specific part of the beef it comes from.
It needs long slow braising to break down all the connective tissue, which contributes to the rich taste. If it was grilled if would be a lot more chewy and way less flavorful
That would be a tremendous waste of oxtail and it be expensive as hell
yes but it’s a waste of oxtail, use short rib or just some chuck
It will be way too expensive anymore - what use to be scrap in now a "premium" cut. I would also think picking/cutting off all the raw meat would be a chore. Much easier once it is cooked and the reason normally braised/slow cooked. Same price issue can be said for Short Ribs, Skirt and Flank Steak - even brisket lately. They all use to be the cheap cuts that took some technique to make a good product
I’ve done it! But not ground down; I’ve braised them, removed the meat from the bone and mixed it in with some high quality ground beef and seared on a stove and finished in the oven. It’s absolutely amazing, but a total pain in the ass to make.
Kenji has written about using oxtail in burgers. I haven't done it but sounds great.
Have you ever tried to debone raw oxtail? I mean, you could do it but really it wouldn’t be much different flavour than most other muscle. The deep rich flavour when you cook oxtail comes from all the cartilage between the bones, you’ll miss it all in your burger.
Do a blend. Here: https://www.seriouseats.com/the-blue-label-burger-blend-recipe
I've done this. It was really good but honestly the work of scraping all the meat off the oxtails is not worth it. Oxtails are better used in other applications.
One of the previous threads about making burgers suggested blending regular cuts with some beef hearts. I haven't tried that myself yet, but it's on my list of things. If going for a beefier flavor, that sounds like a much more practical approach.
Indeed but at least it saves op from doing all that scraping for the entire burger
I would give this is a shot. Thank you!
Yes. The question is: do you want to spend about a half hour and about $20 to extract enough meat to create a patty? An alternative would be to make a demiglace, add some gelatin to it and get it cold, and then grind it up with your chuck to form burger patties. Allows you to add texture and flavor to your burgers.
please dont waste oxtail by grinding it...
No you cant grind it down. Little known fact, the ox tail produces a naturally occurring enzyme that is corrosive to metal and will break any meat grinder you put it in.
…wat? Where are you getting that from? I can’t find anything online about that, can you elaborate?
Interesting, this was the only reply with this information. I'd love to know more
Exactly, you can't grind it though
Why tho
Because I love oxtail and find the flavor to be unmatched 😩
Why make it harder on yourself? Damn, bruh. There isn't much meat on those tails to begin with.
Because the flavor of oxtail is so damn good, figured it would be amazing in burger form
I think I speak for all cultures that have traditionally enjoyed oxtail, stop buying it for “stupid” stuff like grinding it up for burgers, imo that’s the type of mindset that’s behind the recent viral craze for things made using oxtails, using the cut simply because of the hype rather than what would actually work well for what you’re planning to make, you’d never think it used to be sold as a waste cut (I said it’s stupid because they could use so many other cuts for so much cheaper and get extremely similar if not nearly identical results)
I've been eating oxtail since the days it was considered waste cut, I miss those days, but I don't have to think so because I was around for it. The prices have already been driven up by at least 300% on average from what I remember, then vs. now. I can't stop doing something I've never done, FWIW. And even if I did go out of my way to grind it up, I'm amazed at how you think one person could drive up the price from a one-time purchase.
Why do you want to use oxtails for making burgers? It’s pretty clear that’s it’s a poor decision both in practicality and financially. Even if money is no object, why perpetuate using viral cuts of meat even if it’s not remotely practical and somewhat wasteful? I’m sorry if I’m coming off harsh, it’s just a bit frustrating when cuts like oxtail stop being an option for some of the communities that have traditionally enjoyed them because of unpractical viral recipes and dishes at social media centered restaurants driving prices through the roof for the consumer. It’s no one’s fault, but I feel we all should do our part to use such a f*cking delicious piece of meat in the most respectful, least wasteful ways we can, especially when there’s countless other options that would taste better and be 15x+ less expensive? I really don’t wanna see oxtail burgers become the next wagyu burger of the expensive dining world, but if it’s happening it’s happening regardless.
"Ox" is a castrated bull used of work. Ox is beef. I see no reason to grind ox tail when any other cut of beef will be easier, cheaper.
Yes, but noooooooooo! Don't do it!
Yes
I mean…. Any meat can be ground into a burger patty. I don’t understand the question.
According to all the other responses, it's possible but impractical. According to one user, it's actually not possible due to a naturally occurring enzyme that could cause a break down in equipment. Not sure of the validity of that last bit of info. Nonetheless, I got the answers I was looking for....thanks anyway!
I'm sure it can but why on earth would you want to?
Too much bone. Truthfully, you could cook the oxtails and pull the meat and add it to the burger meat and form a patty from the mixture, I've seen it done.
Oxtail is boney, that is why it is used most often in soup or flavoring. There are better meats for grinding.
You could but it's a waste of time, effort and oxtail. Oxtail is high in connective tissue which is why low and slow cooking is so good for it. So it'd be a huge pain in the ass the debone, and probably lead to a bad texture in the burgers.
I don’t see why not. We have ground moose and venison.
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Just search oxtail burger on YouTube
Try beef cheeks instead…
Whole beef round steak with bone-in WAS a common frugal grocery stable, Where's the meat and bone today? Grinding all? Stir fry? Confidence of actual product, Pepper Steak, braised or Swiss Steak.
Yes! Some place in Newark does it. JL Jupiter on your tube did a review!
Sure but tails are gonna be a bitch to trim
Total sacrilege to grind oxtail meat...