Minced veal: 5 recipes, cuts and cooking veal burgers
Minced veal is veal put through a grinder, most often shoulder or neck, with a milder flavour and usually leaner meat than minced beef. You cook it like any minced meat: as a burger in the frying pan, as meatballs simmered in tomato sauce, as a stuffing for vegetables, in a bolognese or as keftas. One rule is never up for negotiation: a minced veal burger must be cooked right through, with no pink in the centre.
Because it contains little fat, it dries out quickly if cooked too hot or too long, which is why a binder and controlled cooking matter. This guide covers the cuts to mince, five simple recipes, pan-frying guidelines and the right grinder to prepare it yourself.
Want to control the quality of your minced meat? Discover our manual and electric meat grinders.
Minced veal: a mild meat and the cuts to mince
Veal is a young meat, pale in colour and subtle in flavour. Minced, it has a finer, more tender texture than beef, with less visible fat. That is an advantage for delicate palates and children, but it is also its limit: with no fat to keep it moist, it dries out faster during cooking. Successful recipes make up for this with an egg, a little bread soaked in milk, a sauce or a drizzle of olive oil in the pan.
As for cuts:
- shoulder is the most common base: it stays tender and minces easily;
- neck adds a little more flavour and body;
- flank and breast add a little more fat, useful for meatballs or a stuffing that must not dry out;
- topside and rump are better kept for escalopes and roasts.
Remove thick sinews before mincing, as they clog the plate. To stay in control of what goes into your meat, a model from our manual meat grinders range is enough for family meal quantities.
What to make with minced veal: five simple recipes
Its mild flavour makes minced veal an easy base to pair with herbs, spices or a sauce. Here are five ideas that cover most midweek cravings, with the mincing texture that suits each one best.
| Recipe | Recommended cut | Plate or texture | Cooking guide |
|---|---|---|---|
| Veal meatballs in sauce | Shoulder and breast | Medium, around 5 mm | Browned in the pan, then simmered in the sauce |
| Minced veal burger | Shoulder, possibly neck | Medium, around 5 mm | Frying pan over a medium heat, cooked through |
| Stuffing for vegetables | Shoulder and flank | Fine, around 3 mm | In the oven, inside the vegetable |
| Veal bolognese | Shoulder or neck | Coarse, around 7 mm | Simmered over a low heat |
| Veal keftas | Shoulder and breast | Fine, around 3 mm | Frying pan, grill or tagine |
- Veal meatballs in sauce: mix the mince with an egg, bread soaked in milk, parsley and a finely chopped onion. Shape into walnut-sized balls, brown them, then let them finish cooking in a tomato sauce or a creamy mushroom sauce.
- Minced veal burger: seasoned simply with salt, pepper and a few herbs, it goes well with mash, green beans or in a milder burger than the beef version. How to cook it is explained just below.
- Veal stuffing: finely minced and mixed with bread, an egg, garlic and herbs, veal fills tomatoes, courgettes, peppers or homemade veal paupiettes.
- Veal bolognese: soften onion, carrot and celery, add coarsely minced veal so it keeps some body, then the tomato and a little stock. Let it simmer gently: the sauce is lighter than with beef and often goes down well with children.
- Veal keftas: onion, parsley, coriander, cumin and paprika turn veal into long meatballs to grill, tuck into bread or simmer in a tagine with tomatoes and eggs.
For shaping techniques, our guide to making minced meat meatballs goes through every step, from mixing to cooking.
How to cook a minced veal burger in a frying pan
Minced meat cannot be treated like a whole cut. When meat is minced, its surface, where bacteria are found, ends up mixed right into the centre of the burger. That is why food safety guidance says minced meat should be cooked through, and that you should never serve a rare burger to young children, pregnant women or elderly people.
- Shape burgers of an even thickness, around one and a half centimetres, pressing a slight dent in the centre with your thumb to stop them puffing up.
- Heat a frying pan with a drizzle of oil over a medium-high heat, add the burgers and leave them alone for the first few minutes, until a crust forms.
- Turn them only once, lower to a medium heat and carry on: for this thickness, allow roughly 4 to 5 minutes per side, adjusting to your hob.
- Do not press them with the spatula: you would squeeze out what little juice they have.
The best guide is not the timer but the centre: cut the burger in half, the meat should be evenly pale with no trace of pink, and the juices should run clear. With a probe thermometer, aim for at least 70 °C in the centre, the figure most often given for minced meat. Then let it rest for a minute off the heat. Meatballs and keftas follow the same logic, and our recipe for kefta as meatballs, skewers or tagine covers the grilled and casserole versions.
Mincing veal yourself: which grinder to choose
Mincing your veal at home has three practical advantages:
- you choose the cut and the mix, for example shoulder and breast;
- you choose the plate, and therefore the texture: fine for a stuffing, coarser for a bolognese;
- you mince just before cooking, which limits how long the minced meat sits in the fridge.
Keep the meat very cold and cut into cubes. For occasional use, the No. 8 cast iron meat grinder does the job with its hand crank: its table clamp keeps it steady and its accessories give different textures. If you mince often or in larger quantities, the 750 W electric meat grinder handles about 1.6 kg of meat per minute according to its specifications, with 3, 5 and 7 mm plates that match the textures in the table and a reverse function in case of jams. More models are gathered in our electric meat grinders section.
Can you mix minced veal and minced beef?
Mixing the two meats tackles veal's main drawback, its low fat content.
Yes, it is actually a good way to get a juicier burger or meatballs. The beef brings fat and flavour, while the veal keeps its mildness. Put both meats through the grinder together, alternating the cubes, for an even mix.
Minced veal, a mild meat that needs careful cooking
Minced veal works in almost any minced meat recipe, as long as you make up for its low fat with a binder or a sauce, and always cook it through. Start with shoulder, match the plate to the recipe and mince just before cooking.
To mince veal for a family meal without a plug socket, choosing the cut yourself, our collection of manual meat grinders is the simplest place to start.
All our meat mincing appliances are gathered on Hachoir Cuisine.