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what's the beef?

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califpizza

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Hello! Happy 2013! We are looking at putting ground beef on our menu as a pizza topping. Our question is this… Can we put it on as we do like our raw sausage or does it have to be pre-cooked? Do any of you offer ground beef AND meatballs as a topping? We don’t have a stove (just a double decker oven) so we’d have to cook it that way. Should we cook it all the way or partially? We’re also looking at adding chicken - pre-cooked is what we’re looking at. Any suggestions? Thanks -----
 
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Kibbles are easy to handle but look nasty on pizza. I know a lot of people use them, but I think the same thing of ground sausage. (we used sliced)

I would not care to have raw meats on my makeline. Not ever. No way a crew can be trained to maintain cross-contamination discipline.

We went without for years and it was our most requested item that we did not offer. About 5-6 years ago we added beef meatball as a topping. We get the larger size and break them up into chuncks. Works great and customer acceptance is excellent. Portion controll is also pretty easy i.e. two meatballs for a large!
 
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If you’re already doing raw sausage there probably isn’t a reason you can’t do raw ground beef too.

With that said, we’re a raw sausage place but we still pre-cook our meatballs and dice them. If I was doing ground beef I would probably pre-cook that as well. We’re known for our home-made sausage and I would never do that any other way… but I don’t think I would judge a ground beef topping to be nearly as important as to add in the additional time required to apply it raw to the pizza.

I’d precook it so we could throw it on the pizza fast. If you’re going to pre-cook it, cook it all the way the first time. Not cooking it to a fully safe level the first time could cause a problem when you cook it on the pizza… It may look done on the outside, but the inside still hasn’t hit a full safe temperature.

To answer your question about doing both, we don’t. When people ask for ground beef we just say “we have home-made meatball, will that work?” Considering I’d probably season the ground beef pretty similar to how I season meatballs I don’t think there’s much point in having both on the menu.

For chicken, we use pre-cooked out of a box. We already handle raw chicken with wings so I’m not concerned about handling, but the bought-in stuff just seems to be better than anything I can consistently bake in my oven. If I had a grill I might change my mind on that though.
 
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We use our own meatballs fully cooked. The sausage is cooked about 85% through and left in pretty good size chunks to break up as needed. The burger likewise is 85% or so cooked through, but we mash it up to a pretty small crumble. I personally like to leave a bit of the fats in the meats so that flavor works it’s way into the pie, and I like a small crumb on my burger if it’s on a pizza. One of the perks of being the owner is…I get it my way.
 
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We bought an electric skillet to brown our beef in. We cook it all the way through and put it on under the cheese to prevent any burning. On the few times we put it on top, it didn’t look bad either way. And it tastes great.
 
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Ok, bodegahwy… What exactly is the “larger size”? quote=“bodegahwy”] Portion controll is also pretty easy i.e. two meatballs for a large!
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Do you make them or get them from your distributor? Thanks for all you help!
 
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We buy them. They are fully cooked. I will try to remember to have a look at the box when I am in the store to get the weight.
 
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Mine is 2 5lb bags…

Roma Brand BEEF

If you use GFS its GFS Brand Beef.

if you use others. theres a Tyson Brand out there I name escapes me but its really cheap… little bit bigger chunk then the crumble.

Also Burke has a brand floating around too.

most are 10 lb cases
 
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