How to Choose Your Burger Meat

It's one thing to talk about artisan steaks. It's another to understand artisan burgers.

If I can give you any advice: Do not buy burger meat from your grocer.

The reason cited most often is risk of food poisoning. Please allow me to offer another reason to avoid grocery store ground beef and patties:

They don't actually taste that great! In fact, I'd say they don't taste much at all. Why else would we need to add seasonings to the beef or condiments on top?

At first glance, it doesn't make any sense that commodity burger meat is bland. Most is made from older cows or the steaks and roasts found in the front or back end where the muscles get more exercise. Exercise is one contributor to flavor.

There are two reasons that most grocery beef is bland.

1. Meat processors and grocers grossly oversimplify what drives taste, texture, and quality in beef.

We have been trained to think that USDA Grade (Select, Choice, or Prime) is the key contributor to quality, flavor, and juiciness. This is not true; flavor and texture also vary (a lot) depending on the breed, region, diet, aging techniques, and the relative talent of the grower, slaughterhouse, and butcher. This is as true for burgers as it is for steaks.

2. They are not selecting beef based on how good it’s going to taste in the first place.

To grocery stores and meat processors, beef is all about throughput and efficiency. Both industries have high capital costs but with rare exceptions do little to nothing to differentiate themselves vs. their competitors. As a result, they ultimately compete based on price and operate on very thin profit margins. In retail parlance, they literally calculate a "penny profit" - how many pennies do I make on each sale?

Rather than hand-select beef that will delight the palate, which would take time and money, most grocers select beef based on these criteria:

• How cheap it is (so they can increase penny profit)
• How much they can sell (so they can make an actual profit)
• How quickly they can sell it (so they don’t tie up cash too long in inventory)

Wait, you say, this is no different than any business, the idea is to lower the cost of inputs and sell at a profit.

To which I would respond, a company or brand that wants to say in business over time will also increase the value of what they are selling. In the case of ground beef, this means at minimum they would go out of their way to purposely offer really great tasting meat.

Where does this leave you if you want to enjoy a burger, some tacos, or nice bowl of chili?

Find a source of artisan quality artisan burgers! I use the same criteria as with artisan quality steaks, which you can find listed below.

If you’re a flavor hound, for burgers I would suggest that you look even harder for a good source of grass fed beef (just make sure you know what you’re getting, some misuse this terminology). When raised and aged properly, you’ll often find it to have a far more adventurous flavor. You will likely have also done a good thing for animal welfare and the environment while you were at it. That’s a win-win-win if I’ve ever heard one!

Finally, this post is part of Food Renegade's Fight Back Friday initiative meant to help individuals take control over what is on our plates. Every week I enjoy reading the posts of others who participate in the FBF carnival. I suggest that you take a look, too, and add your own post while you're at it!

Artisan Beef Institute® - Minimum Criteria For Artisan Quality Beef

• Specific farm or producer group (source-verified).
• Single breed or cross-breed.
• Known growing region.
  
• No added growth hormones (steroids, yuck!).
• No preventative antibiotics (if they can't keep healthy without 'em...).
• All vegetable diet, no funky stuff in there like stale chewing gum.
• Low stress conditions on farm, in truck, at yard (if relevant), & at slaughterhouse.
• Dry-aged or wet-aged for at least 14 days
• Bonus points: certified organic, humane, grass-only diet, holistic.

© All Rights Reserved. The Oliver Ranch Company®. The Artisan Beef Institute®

All Beef Is Grass-Fed

Thanks to Caron Golden, a San Diego based food writer and radio host (@carondg on Twitter), on December 29, I was alerted to a news story covering a taste test in a Portland, Oregon-area elementary school comparing burgers from grass-fed vs. grain-fed cattle.

I found the story disheartening, so much that I’ve spent the last week trying to track down the author or other participants in the study to clarify what I saw as significant flaws. Today I spoke with Cory Schreiber of the Oregon Department of Agriculture – what a great person - who confirmed some of my fears.

The two-part study, funded by the USDA but managed by Oregon State University, had two key findings. The first was that the school children could tell the difference between the grass-fed and grain-fed patties. The second was that about half (45 of 91) preferred the grass-fed burgers.

Based on these results, the school district elected to stick with commodity beef, with a representative explaining, “For now, since there was not a strong preference for the grass-fed patty, and it is more expensive, we will not be able to afford to serve the grass-fed patty on a regular basis."

So what’s wrong with this picture? Too many things to count but let’s just focus on the big one.

These kids were NOT, I repeat, NOT comparing grass-fed with grain-fed beef.

Actually, the burgers were both created using grain-fed beef. The article even says this up front, citing the "grass-fed" beef supplier as saying: “[The patties are] made from Angus steers in Oregon and Washington that are raised on grass, but for the last four months of their lives are fed grain and corn to fatten them up.”

How could the journalist get this wrong?

Oh wait, it gets worse.

The study was not set up to determine the relative merits of grass-fed vs. grain-fed hamburgers in the first place. The grant program that funded it was created to help interested parties evaluate the merits and costs of investing more into locally produced food.

It’s simple and unfortunate. This is a complicated category of food and there are a heck of a lot of fuzzy definitions floating around out there (and frankly, a fair amount of obsfucation, too, but that’s a whole other conversation). However, if you’re a reporter covering this news, I think it’s worth taking the time to ask questions, to clarify and confirm. And then keep an eye out for any editing that might inadvertantly change the meaning of the story.

Unfortunately, this story is being widely circulated. Not only is this hurting the prospects of those who do produce grass-fed or naturally raised beef, but it also underminessupport of the promotion of locally sourced products in our nation’s schools.

How can you help? Help others understand the differences between grass-fed and grain-fed beef. Here's something easy to remember:

ALL Beef Is Grass-Fed.

Yes, all. It’s just that some beef is fed only grass right up to their last day. The other 98 percent or more may be fed grass early in life but are finished on a diet of grasses and grains. This is an important distinction as the diet has a huge affect on taste and texture. In addition, a grass-only diet is a more natural diet for cattle and a proper grass-only program can keep land healthy and even help fight global warming.

If you know me at all, you know that I am a strong proponent of grass-fed beef. But I take a practical view, knowing that it will take years, even decades, to transition the industry to a grass-fed only system. So, I’m willing to support top-notch grain-finishers who meet or exceed my company’s minimum (and quite high) standards, thinking of it as like supporting a farm in transition to organic. But, there is a difference and consumers (as well as journalists) should know and understand this.

If you want the benefits of grass-fed beef -- Eat Wild is an excellent reference -- ask your butcher or grocer or farmer or online purveyor if it is GRASS-ONLY beef.

Don’t be surprised if the seller doesn’t know what you’re talking about but ask anyway. We need to create transparency in this category. Consumers have a right to know what exactly they’re eating and sellers should be more interested in providing consumers what they want, as well as educating themselves. It’s their business after all.

ps Sorry for the more strident tone. Perhaps I'll be smart enough to come back and edit this at a later date ;-)

When The Beef Crumbles

Sorry, it's been a while since my last update. But then today I see this headline in Meating Place: "Chatel Farms launches new beef crumbles." (free subscription required)

Apparently, "beef crumbles" are flash frozen ground beef pieces that come in resealable packages. They are ready-to-use, you don't need to thaw them before using the crumbles in your favorite dish.

At first pass, my thought was, are we really that pushed for time that we can't crumble our own ground beef when making, say, Hamburger Helper or even a scratch recipe?

Wearing my industry hat, I also thought, are these simply the scraps left over in the machinery when ground beef bricks or patties are made? An efficient use of otherwise unusable beef? Or yet another potential food safety hazard from mixing together meat from many different cattle?

I dunno, one would certainly save time using these "crumbles." (Cute name, BTW.) Defrosting ground beef can take some time. Also, unless it was professional blast frozen before it made it to your freezer, ground beef doesn't freeze particularly well at home; ice can form during the slow freezing process and lead to watery meat when thawed.

A quick search shows beef crumbles have been around for a few years (Tyson had them in 2004, proving I still have a lot to learn about beef!). Will have to reach out to others and learn the scoop as to how these came about. Intriguing.

Chatel Farms is a brand name for a privately held beef processor in Augusta, Georgia (the company's site says it's the largest privately held fully-integrated beef processing facility in the Southeast.)

What In The World Is Pasteurized Beef?

My husband and I were at a burger chain the other day in Toronto and noticed that the menu claimed their hamburgers were made of "lean pasteurized ground steaks." Neither of us had ever heard of pasteurized steaks and so asked the wait staff. Poor hapless fellow didn't have a clue (indeed, he didn't seem to be aware of the boast in the first place).

When working at Labatt (mmmm, beer) I learned that pasteurization is a process in which foods and beverages are heated to high temperatures in order to reduce the number of pathogens, such as bacteria, in the food. But with burgers, it was my impression that cooking the meat until it is well done would serve the same purpose.

Anyway, I wrote an email to the company but it's been a few weeks with no response so I couldn't resist using a trusty search engine to do a little research. It seems that a few years back, a US Senator from Iowa inserted language into a bill allowing irradiated beef to be labeled as (cold) pasteurized. According to a posting on CommonDreams.org the regulations at the time required irradiated food to be labeled as such in both text and with this symbol (which by the way doesn't look too scary to me and in fact suggests the opposite: green and natural).

Does anyone know whether the Harkin amendment was enacted or what "pasteurized" beef means in Canada?