It works really well with smashburger style hamburger. But you have to be aware of how much it’s going to shrink. Use enough meat so when you smash it down, it’s like, I dunno, 50% bigger than the bun. One guy surmised that In N Out is like 60-40. I once was at a meatpacking house that had a bin of really cheap meat that looked barely more than red than white, and it made for fantastic burgers. I’m guessing it was around 60-40.
Who adds extra fat to meat loaf? Ground beef is most often sold as 80/20, which is what the recipes call for. 90/10 is much more expensive and wouldn’t typically be used unless one was on a diet.
Unless you mean commercial meat loaf, to stretch it?
I live in a tony area. 85%, 90%, and 93% are the grades of hamburger meat i usually see.
That was going to be my comment.
And that I (unlike you, a grocery non-expert) suspect a lot of the factory packaged cheapest of the cheap beef has been shot full of water to make less meat weigh more. That’s certainly done with chicken & turkey. Disclosed on the label in small print double-talk, but done is done.
I heard of a technique that makes ground beef hold onto its water content while cooking. It’s supposed to result in much juicier, more delicious ground beef- mix in a small amount of baking soda (I think a 1/2 teaspoon per lb. of beef). Mix in thoroughly, and let sit for 15 minutes before cooking.
I tried it once or twice- it does get the ground beef to hold on to its water content and only the fat is rendered out. But I didn’t like the resulting texture- to me it was kind of weird and rubbery. It’s possible I’m just not used to “good” ground beef, but I never do the baking soda technique any more.
I buy 20% fat minced beef and I never drain off the fat after browning if I am making a meat based sauce - I just bulk it out with loads of diced vegetables, grains and lentils and the fat carries the flavour through. I can get 4 or 5 meals out of a 500g pack of mince.
Ugh, that sucks. You mean they don’t have chuck? Ground chuck is generally 80:20. 85 is usually round of some type, 93 is usually sirloin, don’t know what 90 typically is. I feel that’s usually sirloin, too, but could easily be a round cut. Even in the toniest areas of Chicago or suburbs, you’ll find 80:20, but we’re kind of a meat-and-potatoes town. I can’t imagine not having easy access to 80:20.
As I was reading your post I was thinking, that’s gonna fuck your texture. It makes it more springy and sausage-like. This technique I use for stuff like Balkan cevapi where you want that texture, but for hamburger? No, that screws it all up.
Same with Seattle.
I just searched for Ground Beef on Instacart in Boston (Market Basket), Atlanta (Publix), San Diego (Albertsons) and Rochester NY (Wegmans).
80/20 was the first or second item listed on all four.
Even at The Fresh Market (more upscale than Whole Foods) the first item that pops up is ground chuck, which is almost certainly 80/20 unless they’ve gone to extraordinary and counterproductive lengths to trim the input.
I looked online at my local market, and they did list 80%, but it was the sixth ground beef item listed, after something called “Kobe crafted”, which probably has a lot of fat. And which I’ve never actually seen in the store.
Certainly, the one they display most prominently is 85%. But i don’t buy a ton of ground meat. Maybe they have some packs of 80% hidden in the back of the shelf. I prefer 80%, too.
At the grocery store I work at (which is anything but fancy) we sell 73/27, 80/20 chuck, 85/15, and 93/7 sirloin in prepackaged chubs. We also have the stuff we grind in-house from assorted beef trimmings, which comes in 73/27, 85/15, and 95/5, and a couple kinds of specialty beef (grass-fed, organic, etc.) that are also vacuum-packed. For awhile we were selling American wagyu ground beef in vacuum packs, which was pretty tasty stuff, but it didn’t sell so we got rid of it.
And also @puzzlegal - without wishing to sound overly stupid, you are talking about actual chicken hearts here, right? Or is it something American called a “chicken heart” that I’m unfamiliar with?
The reason I ask is that I only ever knew one place that sold them - chicken hearts, I mean - a store (Chinese maybe?) in an indoor market in Burgess Hill, which is just about as regular a place as you could get. This store always had a biiig refrigerated case of chicken hearts - I guess for people to buy them by the kilo.
Firstly, I was always mystified that someone would go to the bother of harvesting them - they were so small and (I guess) fiddly that it didn’t seem commercially viable to me*. Second, I couldn’t figure out what you were supposed to do with them - upmarket pet food, maybe?
But your exchange suggests otherwise. I would love to be enlightened.
j
* - the store is long gone…
Yes, actual chicken hearts. When I buy a hole chicken, they usually come with the heart, liver, and gizzard. I sauté them or deep fry them for a snack. (I don’t like gizzards though, because they’re too chewy.)
The two main groceries I go to — one caters towards Polish, the higher Mexican, but I would t call them specifically of that ethnicity, they just know their clientele — carry hearts, gizzards, and livers, packaged there with a typical one being 1-1.5 lbs. Usually they’re around $2-4/lb depending on the organ and which store.
Same. I snack on the liver. I toss the heart and gizzard and neck into the freezer to eventually make soup, unless I’m making gravy (usually, I’m not.)
The farm stand i go to sometimes sells pounds of hearts or gizzards, but I’ve never bought those.
OK, thanks guys. Evidently chicken hearts are more of a thing in the US than they are in the UK.
We have plenty of Polish shops round here but I’m sure I’ve never seen chicken hearts in them.
Still, what does one do with a pound of chicken hearts?
j
I snack on them all. Not much in one chicken, so that’s all there is to do with them. Turkey’s different. Use the neck and innards to make stock. Cooked gizzard and heart go into the stuffing, liver goes into the gravy.
I think it’s still a pretty niche thing in the US. I’ve only seen them in grocery stores that cater to different ethnicities.
Finding a container of chicken hearts for sale is pretty niche in the US, but having the heart included with the “giblets” in a whole chicken is fairly common, i think.