A couple of months ago, in yet another attempt to eat healthier, I got an air fryer. The last thing that I thought would be my favorite thing to cook in it was burgers. But it is great, make the patties, for me 1/3 of a pound, 13 minutes and then 1 minute to melt the cheese. Perfect every time, a true “set it and forget it” thing.
Love these burgers - a good cheeseburger is still the King of Foods. Best burgers I have ever made, and I have been making burgers for over 40 years. But it occurred to me, tonight when I made a burger - at the same time I got the air fryer, I started to buy, at my grocery store, grass-fed beef. I didn’t plan to, I just picked up a 1 pound package and then I got used to getting my ground beef at that spot in the aisle.
So tonight I did a test. Made burgers in the air fryer and in the frying pan, both with regular ground beef and grass-fed beef.
The air fryer has nothing to do with the taste of my burgers. It is the grass-fed beef.
I will never buy anything else, for burgers or bolognese or anything.
not much. I don’t know exactly because I don’t pay that much attention to prices in small quantities. I’m far from rich, but a pound of ground beef is at least 2 meals, sometimes 3. Maybe a pound is a couple of dollars more.
Make sure you get GRASS FINISHED. All beef is grass fed, until it’s time to fatten those suckers up for slaughter and they are force fed hormones and antibiotics with the grain.
Grass finished beeves eat grass (or hay) right up until they meat their maker.
Well fuck, thank you for ruining my enjoyment of burgers forever. I knew about the
meat industry in general and have so far chosen to not think much about “how the sausages are made.”
I’m getting serious here, we humans are fucking savages, exploiting and torturing animals (how else would you describe force feeding?) to feed ourselves. I can’t imagine life as a vegetarian, vegetarian food sucks, but I may have to rethink that.
Impossible food, anyone? I had an Impossible Whopper, it was good.
May I suggest that you given bison a try? Heck I’ve seen ground bison even at Aldi. It makes a tasty burger (I also use it for tacos). Very, very lean though - you may need to add some sort of fat to keep it from being too dry.
Decades ago when beefalo was about 1/4 buffalo I served some to my parents. When I mentioned what it was, Mom said, “It tastes like beef used to taste.” I suspected it was because they were finished on grass – it was a big selling point.
Look into buying a half side or side of beef from a local farmer who finishes on grass. You get a lot of ground beef when you have it butchered but if you’re fine with that (and it sounds like you are!) then it might be worth it to you. A side of beef will about fill up a good sized freezer but you’re getting better quality beef that hasn’t been mistreated–it’s CAFO beef that’s the stuff that’s been tortured to death. Local farmer calls the butcher, steer gets a bullet in the head and off to be cut into delicious chunks. Price per pound is usually fairly competitive but the difference in the Omega 3/Omega 6 ratio makes ALL the difference healthwise and tastewise too.
Basically, jamming cattle together in pens, feeding them as much as they’ll eat on corn/other stuff (but mostly corn) along with antibiotics because basically they’re standing in knee-deep cowshit instead of dirt, as well as being crowded together, which is not a healthy situation.
I must be one of the few who prefer non-grass-fed/finished beef. It’s weird, as I generally enjoy stronger flavors, but the grass-fed beef has a minerally edge to it that I either don’t like or am not used to yet.
I’ve found a lot of variation in the flavor of “grass finished beef”. They don’t just eat “grass” they eat whatever is growing in their pasture. I had one very expensive hunk of beef that tasted really nasty, especially the fat. I’m sure that was due to something the cow ate in its last few weeks. But I’ve also had really delicious grass-finished beef.
That’s kind of the thing about grass fed vs agri-biz cattle. People like what they like and the argument doesn’t need to get much more complicated than that. I’m skeptical of any “research” that shows broad preferences one way or another. Mass produced beef may be a bit boring but it’s also a remarkably consistent product. Make your choice and take your chances.