Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
the ungraded is often called no-roll … (carcass not rolled with a grade stamp)
a lot of Mexican beef has entered some retail stores and its tempting because its so cheap...its inspected by usda...but it is not graded.....most is called sukarne…(brand)
and for those that want very lean and cheap.... this is it......but with little marbling...its not choice.grade..it lacks flavor and tenderness.. also you can buy no-roll American beef ….its cheap....but its not consistent.....sometimes its pretty good marbling and sometimes...its very lean..
here's the difference.....say boneless choice grade rib eyes.. market price for wholesalers in the u.s...is 7.50lb … the ungraded/noroll/Mexican beef may cost 4.15lb for bnls rib eye ..
(the top 3 grades go prime, choice, and select...select being the leanest (and usually the cheapest) in the usa ... Canada grades are AAA AA and A triple A being the best
European conglomerates..... my old grocery store chain is now owned my European conglomerates... del haize/Ahold
they now own Hannaford, Food Lion and Stopnshop amongst others.....there's been a huge amount of consolidation in the last 15 years......on the retail and wholesale sides.
look around for any butcher shops or smaller iga's independents in the area …..
im sorry to hear the new owners....went with lower prices and compromised quality..
you can give them this valuable feedback to the new operators/owners they should listen to you ...or they will lose business ..
That's one of them. A small chain of about thirty stores that had real butchers at every location and choice beef will be Stop and Shops soon largely using ungraded prepackaged everything. For some reason the takeover was supposed to be complete in the first quarter and we're at the end of the second with no news; hopefully the regulators are having problems with further diminishing competition.
I have noticed that burger from Fred Meyer (Kroger owned) fries up with a lot more water than local burger. I don't know if it's not hung long enough to dry, or if they add water during the grind, but it's really irritating.
There is a local USDA slaughterhouse, so we get a lot of local beef that's pretty competitive with the Midwest feedlots. 4-H and FFA livestock is purchased by local markets, cut and packaged locally, and sold for premium prices because it really is USDA Prime. The pleasures of living in a rural community.
A couple comments. I remember as a kid going with my mom to the local IGA, where she would ask the butcher to grind round for hamburger. No added fat, she had overweight sisters and was fat phobic. Her hamburgers were fresh but absolutely horrible - overcooked shoe leather that steak sauce could barely mask. Even the 8/1 portion control frozen burgers at the drive in theatre concession had more taste. Those experiences did make me appreciate good burgers.
My mom has some weird hangups with meat too. I remember her buying 95/5 to make hamburgers at the beach once, then pressing down on the meat as it cooked on the grill to squeeze out all the fat she could. She also thinks any trace of anything approaching pink in cooked meat might kill you, so she cooks things to an internal temp approaching 200 degrees (not that she measures, but I have a pretty good feel after using a Thermapen for years).
We buy most of our meat at Costco. It's consistently good and well priced.
She also thinks any trace of anything approaching pink in cooked meat might kill you, so she cooks things to an internal temp approaching 200 degrees (not that she measures, but I have a pretty good feel after using a Thermapen for years).
My mother was a good cook but in Home Ec (late 1940s) it was drilled into her that you could kill your family by trichinosis if you didn't thoroughly cook pork chops. She cooked them to the texture of shoe leather but we never got trichinosis. I think she was a little more relaxed about beef, but not much.
I tend to cook meat according to its age . the older the more heat it gets.
Personally I like a steak medium rare. the reason is ,our bodies live on living tissue, and dead tissue is like a sludge our bodies do not process well, as a result so many health issues among us .mostly due to poor circulation due to this sludge.
This due to a doctors study for the government 30 years ago on stale foods.
Long before that as a kid I discovered that eating oat meal like cold cereal in stead of cooking it gave me more energy through the day, and in those days I was playing foot ball in high school in the mountains (7000 ft elevation) where I lived .
Cooking the life out of food is not your friend .
Do some research on the Fresh Food Diet.
I too am disappointed with modern grocery stores watering down the meat. If I knew it had a legitimate reason it would not bother me so much, but it seems as though it is just a way of cheating the public. But another reason I prefer unprocessed meat is you don't know how much sludge has been added to water ground meat down as well.
It pays to have one's own meat grinder and for that matter raise your own meat if you can.
I raise chickens for eggs and meat ,but if I had the acreage I'd have a cow or 2 .
here's the beef on burger at the grocery stores....coming from a guy that worked 12 years at a chain supermarket 7 yrs as meat manager and the past 25 years as a meat supervisor for over 40 independent stores
40 yrs ago ….and beyond....the stores would receive hanging beef sides or quarters...
and burger was made all from beef trimmings right on site..keep in mind....the stores would have up to ten bone barrels that had to be hauled away weekly because of the bone and fat ….1/2 a critter is bone fat and waste ..
in the late 70's the big packing plants said we can break down the critters here in our processing plants vacuum seal .. the boneless and some bone in sub primals…. these will last up to 30-40 days in refrigeration ...and they stopped sending the sides because of shipping billions of pounds and the stores had a huge amount of bone/waste at store level..
so the primals started coming to the stores in boxes.....this is 20x more sanitary and safer...also it allowed a store to put on sale a rib eye or sirloin strip steak...because you now could just buy the rib eyes...or strips....before with the whole carcass.....you pluck out the rib eye...you still have to sell the rest of the critter …
because of the less trimmings of shipping sub primals and now the media screaming for lean and low fat in the late 70's the stores started selling more % based burger than … being called ground chuck or ground round..... so the stores started buying the pretested burger from out west ..nicknamed "tube burger" came in ten pound tubes...all preprocessed and fat/lean ratio predetermined …. the supermarkets jumped on this tube burger ...but the smaller iga's independent stores and butcher shops did not....being a chain and multiple stores they have strict policies for all their stores and these tube burger was easier than testing bench trimmings.. (fat/lean ratio testing is done with a small contraption cooking an ounce and measuring the fat on the juice that runs out in a test tube)
so, from the early 80's most large chain supermarkets selling a fat/lean ratio burger 85/15 90/10 was coming from these preprocessed tube burger -you still had to grind twice thru the grinder ..
most of us old time butchers did not like using this stuff...we don't know whats in it and it tasted a little gamey like grass fed beef...….we much preferred the trimmings made on site and ground fresh … the taste is better and we know exactly whats in it....and incidentally ...while "they" the big packers promoted a safer source of this burger - most all the ecoli outbreaks were of this huge batches of tube burgers they make out west and shipped to the stores..
again why the need for this tube burger?? because the public demanded lean and low fat beef and wanted a % of fat on their burger - also because the stores weren't breaking down the whole critter anymore the stores had less trimmings...and because the big plants were doing the boning and breaking ...they had excess trimmings they made into this tube burger
lets talk about today ……. burger is not all the same ...depends where you buy it..
and you wont know unless you ask,,,
the biggest grocery retailer in America...Walmart sells case-ready meats....no steaks or burger is ground fresh on site......this saves lots of labor from having meatcutters in the stores but you also compromise quality ..
I don't recommend anyone buying meats from Walmart...particularly their burger parts of million pound batches...you don't know whats in it ..
now many grocery store chains have also started case-ready pre-packaged meats ..and burger ...how would you know????? you ask ….I have a trained eye I can tell ….but if it had any "distributed" statements on the bottom of the package then its shipped in...
the independent store.....and butcher shops still sell the real bench trimmings that taste the best..many call it ground chuck or ground round and may not have a % lean
so its a great question...…. I recommend to call and ask if the store sells "real bench trimmings" to make their burger or is it shipped in...…..some grocery stores have 5 levels of % burger 73 % - 90% lean but only grind one level (80/20) in their store...so they may say they still do but be specific to the burger you like if you like lean burger ask if their 90/10 or 95% lean is ground fresh in the store or is it shipped in??
this is a big divide in the retail meat industry ...that's why many of us got upset from all the pink slime years ago the media broad brushed the whole industry …..and it was only the stores that sold the tube burger ...not the stores that sold real bench trimmings on site.
simply put go to butcher shops and smaller iga stores … most have the real burger ..
if you want to grind your own like some of us do on this forum.....you can buy a small grinder off ebay ..around 100 dollars and buy the chuck steaks and roasts on sale for 2.99lb or buy the whole primal yourself called a chuck roll or chuck shoulder clod.....the butcher shops and smaller independents will sell you these at a discount ..
I hope this helps
the bench/steak trimmings are ground 3 times thru a big grinder in a store ..
and talking burger if you get this fresh burger and it gets dark in the middle its because of oxidation....the outside is red because of oxygen....without oxygen (the middle) it reverts back to its original color) looks dark/purplish......no different than pricking a vein and the purple blood turns red (blooms) when it hits the air/oxygen
Fascinating, as always!
Ps: We have a cheap but sturdy hand grinder that cost all of three bucks. The kind Grandma used, if she was a linebacker. Got it at a yard sale.
We also have a KitchenAid attachment, but it doesn't do near as well. $2.99/pound chuck roasts are an unobtainable dream here.
Do grocery stores use relatively inferior meat to make ground meat? I suspect so because the best quality meat would be sold as it is, yes? After being ground, it's hard to tell the difference...
Well, yes, of course! Before you grind meat you can cut out the tumors and cysts and la de da that would be deal-breakers if people saw it peeking up at them from a roast or a package of chops.
Or, worse, you can NOT cut out the tumors and cysts. Guh.
Well, yes, of course! Before you grind meat you can cut out the tumors and cysts and la de da that would be deal-breakers if people saw it peeking up at them from a roast or a package of chops.
Or, worse, you can NOT cut out the tumors and cysts. Guh.
tumors and cysts..... humans get them ...dogs get them and yes cows get them..
everyone complains about anti-biotics being used in meats....but its for safer animals..
for years I cut up local....farm /pasture raised beef...grass fed organic...
everyone wants to demonize the big packing plants....but I have seen less tumors and cysts from the big packing plants...than from grass fed locally raised animals...
but yes...if there are any cysts or tumors...in animals.....they are thrown out the whole primal......I see 95% less of them than I did 40 yrs ago...
no one will grind or hide or sell a cyst....
all it takes is one ugly iPhone picture from a disgruntled employee and it would shut the store down...
and who-ever mentioned water down beef...not sure what that is..
and while on the subject..... ive been to over 150 stores/meat departments over 5 states....and ive never seen meat glue...or red dye...in close to 40 yrs....
and for the folks that thinks the stores grind the old gray steaks..... while it was common practice 40 yrs ago very very few stores do any of that …… the retail meatcutting of today is 100x more sanitary today than 40 yrs.... I still remember butcher placing a cigarette at the edge of an old wood cutting block and if you do see an old genuine butcher block that was used 100..or 50 yrs ago you will see cigarette burns on the side edges..
I can only tell you what ive seen.....and yes I have fired over 20 old butchers thru the yrs for trying to advance the date or grind something they shouldn't..... all over 10 yrs ago.....
A friend of mine, who lived in a rural area, used to buy a "half a cow" from a local farm... i always got a kick out of it... they basically would deliver it however she wanted, some steaks, some roasts, some ground....
About 20 years ago, my company had a lot of 4-H parents employed. Every year, the president would send a couple of us with #3k and purchase steers, hogs and the like from the employee's kids. Most of the meat would head off to the food bank but as many of us had large families, some would head home with us.
The problem with buying half a steer is that 90% of modern cooks have no idea as to how to cook a lot of the parts of the steer. For example, one lady was really upset with the toughness of the meat. She had taken a couple of beef shanks and had broiled them like a steak.
Personally, I loved it. A couple of times a year, I would get all of the "less tender" cuts and i would be making soups with them. Great for me as I got these bones for free. Not so good for the people who paid good money for them.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I think she was a little more relaxed about beef, but not much.
