In Maine, the hamburger you buy in supermarkets has no taste. Is this the norm everywhere or just here?
I think that’s fairly common with mass-produced supermarket beef in the US. Probably not universal, but common.
I’ve never experienced it myself but I’ve heard that Argentine beef (where cattle are fed grass) has a different taste than US beef (where cattle are predominantly fed corn).
What percentage of fat are you buying? A lot of the flavor in meat comes from the fat. You can buy ground beef in stores which range from 30% to down around 5% fat.
I’ve tried every form they sell, from the fresh ground to the frozen patties. I even paid $2 a burger for frozen, grass fed beef and it all is like chewing up pasteboard. Where did the flavor go? Are they radiating the meat and if so, does it still have any nutritional value?
Lean and extra lean ground beef is generally tasteless without something added to it; that has always been the case. It’s the fat that makes beef tastes as good as it does
:DIt depends largely on the cow’s diet. The first time I went to Europe and had spaghetti or a hamburger, I couldn’t believe how different the meat tasted. Cooked in something with spices or sauces added, you may not tell, but a burger is a burger, and a steak is a steak. They’re different everywhere you roam.
EU cows eat more grass than USA cows, which eat more corn. African cows eat monkeys or sand or something. They’re not good.
I don’t know what Kobe cows eat. It could be just the tears of orphans who are beaten with switches. I don’t care.
I want some right now!
Chops in Atlantais the only place I know that has real Kobe steaks. Sadly, my daughter has acquired a penchant for it, and often.
Pampas may even be better. Best steak I’ve had in my life, and I been everywhere, including Argentina!
The web is full of great burger recipes to add some punch to your patties!
The term Kobe has no legal meaning in the US. I can but streaks from Jewel and call them Kobe in my restaurant if I want to.
It’s extremely unlikely you get true Kobe beef in the US when you pay for it. It’s possible but the odds are vanishingly slim.
Nothing makes a steak taste better than knowing it’s mommy’s name 
I’ve had plenty of burgers purchased in supermarkets in Maine that tasted just fine. Not sure where you are buying your ground beef but I’d switch.
I’ve had beef in every place in the house except the bathroom. It’s pretty much the same.
Compared to the usual stuff from my butcher or supermarket (Sydney, Australia), I found that when I went to the US some years ago the meat was simultaneously both bland and very fatty. That went for beef and lamb. The chicken wasn’t noticeably fatty, but was pretty tasteless too.
Wow, it looks like you had part of the same heifer as this criticin Miami. Oh the word ‘Kobe’ doesn’t actually appear on that certificate anyway.
I do notice the Argentine beef has a distinctly better taste. Hard to explain the difference but easy to notice it when eating.
So, if the beef in those high-end restaurants are what all the food critics rave about, and you’re getting the same beef the food critics did, is it actually relevant that it didn’t come from Kobe, Japan? For all any American knows, maybe the real Kobe beef isn’t actually as good as the fake stuff anyway.
To the OP, I will say that all of the beef I ever had in Montana was far better than any beef I’ve had back East. I don’t know why, though it might be the difference between grass-fed and corn-fed.
The pork, though, in my experience, tends to be a lot leaner in the US than its European brethren (I can’t remember what the pork was like in Australia, or even if I ate any there). I miss Euro pork. I miss the chicken, too. Most American chicken tastes like generic protein. However, the beef I prefer here, for the most part, although the UK had some very good beef.
We eat a lot of fish since that is always fresh off the boat. The beef we get comes from South Africa and Brasil, and to be honest both are quite tasty. We do get a yearly shipment of foodstuffs which we can get other specialty meat products - sausage, pork chops, etc - that we can put in the freezer, and we have a grinder ( grounder ?? ) that we can use for hamburgers and such.
It may be how you’re cooking it; a lot of the flavor of a steak or a hamburger is actually from the crust formed by grilling/searing and the Maillard reactions that go on while that crust is being formed. Appropriate salting is important as well.
If you were to boil just about any piece of beef in unsalted water, you’d probably say the same thing about it being flavorless, but salt it and sear it well, and you’ll have a different experience.
Irradiation wouldn’t change much; it’s ionizing radiation, so the idea is that it ionizes molecules. Not much of a big deal for food, but deadly to living things.