Hamburgers NA

Skip Miller

Skip Miller

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Skip Miller
The New York Times has an absolutely sickening article on ground beef. A quote from the article:

The frozen hamburgers that the Smiths ate, which were made by the food giant Cargill, were labeled “American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties.” Yet confidential grinding logs and other Cargill records show that the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria.
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:vomit:

Please read the whole article... if you have the stomach for it. :vomit:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/health/04meat.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=ground beef&st=cse

As for me, I am buying a food processor capable of grinding my own beef.

-Skip
 
Skip Miller said:
The New York Times has an absolutely sickening article on ground beef. A quote from the article:

:vomit:

Please read the whole article... if you have the stomach for it. :vomit:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/health/04meat.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=ground beef&st=cse

As for me, I am buying a food processor capable of grinding my own beef.

-Skip
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You can also go to an independent local butcher (as opposed to most supermarkets, where everything is pre-packaged from heaven-knows-where), select your cut of meat, and have the butcher grind it for you. I never came across a butcher who charged extra for doing that.

-Rich
 
Would cooking the meat to med-well or well have prevented this?
 
So that's what happens to the trimmings we throw away!
(note the state)





<-------------
 
For some reason that article reminded me of this book

jungle-732997.jpg


Seems that things really don't change all that much over time.
 
jhausch said:
Would cooking the meat to med-well or well have prevented this?
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Probably. I think the internal temp has to get to 175 degrees, if my memory serves me correctly.

-Rich

EDIT: The article says 160 degrees.
 
I listened to a piece on NPR that said the majority of e-coli outbreaks are caused by leafy vegetables like lettuce and spinach.

I'm not sure what percentage is from meat but it's less than 50%.

Joe
 
jhausch said:
Would cooking the meat to med-well or well have prevented this?
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Maybe. From the same article, near the end:

In the wake of the outbreak, the U.S.D.A. reminded consumers on its Web site that hamburgers had to be cooked to 160 degrees to be sure any E. coli is killed and urged them to use a thermometer to check the temperature. This reinforced Sharon Smith’s concern that she had sickened her daughter by not cooking the hamburger thoroughly.

But the pathogen is so powerful that her illness could have started with just a few cells left on a counter. “In a warm kitchen, E. coli cells will double every 45 minutes,” said Dr. Mansour Samadpour, a microbiologist who runs IEH Laboratories in Seattle, one of the meat industry’s largest testing firms.

With help from his laboratories, The Times prepared three pounds of ground beef dosed with a strain of E. coli that is nonharmful but acts in many ways like O157:H7. Although the safety instructions on the package were followed, E. coli remained on the cutting board even after it was washed with soap. A towel picked up large amounts of bacteria from the meat.
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With help from his laboratories, The Times prepared three pounds of ground beef dosed with a strain of E. coli that is nonharmful but acts in many ways like O157:H7. Although the safety instructions on the package were followed, E. coli remained on the cutting board even after it was washed with soap. A towel picked up large amounts of bacteria from the meat.
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That's also a good reason to use plastic or acrylic cutting boards, rather than wood ones. They're much easier to clean and sanitize. Wood ones have to be thoroughly cleaned and treated with mineral oil, preferably after every use, to be really safe.

I took some courses in nutrition, food safety, and so forth in college as electives, mainly out of personal interest. Man, once you look at the stuff living on most kitchen surfaces (not to mention sponges, dishrags, kitchen towels, and other fomites), it makes you almost not want to eat any more.

-Rich
 
I will never eat ground-beef that isn't well done. After a freshman high school biology lab, where we cooked ground beef to various levels of being done (rare, medium-rare, medium, medium-well, and well). The amount of bacteria colony's that grew out of the medium-well and lesser cooked beef was amazing. In 24 hours, we had petri dishes that were covered in bacteria.
 
RJM62 said:
You can also go to an independent local butcher (as opposed to most supermarkets, where everything is pre-packaged from heaven-knows-where), select your cut of meat, and have the butcher grind it for you. I never came across a butcher who charged extra for doing that.

-Rich
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We're fortunate to have a local, 5th generation beef producer that has the lineage of all their cattle traced back to the early 1960s. Good stuff, and not much more than what you'd pay for the scary stuff from Tyson/IBP.


Trapper John
 
Skip Miller said:
As for me, I am buying a food processor capable of grinding my own beef.

-Skip
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Beat you to it - we've got about 5 lbs of venison thawing in the fridge right now that we will be using to make snack sticks (think Slim-Jim without 10,000 preservatives and lord-knows what cuts of meat) this evening.

Earlier this year we made venison brats - better than anything you can get at the store and much more healthy because you can control the fat content exactly by how much fat you actually put into the mix.
 
CJones said:
Earlier this year we made venison brats - better than anything you can get at the store and much more healthy because you can control the fat content exactly by how much fat you actually put into the mix.
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Chris,

What fat content do you target? I've been reading up on making different kinds of sausages and have been warned not to make it too low, otherwise they come out dry and tasteless.

I've also read commercial sausages often contain way more fat than needed.

Joe
 
My son-in-law and I just put 50lbs of ground WY antelope in the freezer for stuffing and smoking this weekend. I usually shoot for between 25-50% pork in my sausage, with the pork being maybe 20-30% fat. This year I think we're going for a 20% pork (a pork shoulder) and add in 5% bacon ends and pieces.

I saw a few hints to use powdered milk as a binder to keep the sausages from getting too dry - may have to play with that one a little and see how it turns out.

2 weeks until elk and deer hunting for us - hope to add a bunch more to the freezer. Then the buffalo should be done at the processer and freezers should be full for another year.
 
Areeda said:
Chris,

What fat content do you target? I've been reading up on making different kinds of sausages and have been warned not to make it too low, otherwise they come out dry and tasteless.

I've also read commercial sausages often contain way more fat than needed.

Joe
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We usually shoot for around 15%. We usually use straight beef fat (tallow) in the brats. When we made breakfast sausage a couple of years ago, we used pork, which worked well.

Venison is very lean, so don't be afraid to put the fat to it - like you said, compared to commercial sausages, you're still way below the curve at 15% by weight. It's a bit of a head-game when you see a mound of fat that almost equals the mound of meat because the meat is so much more dense than the fat.
 
gkainz said:
My son-in-law and I just put 50lbs of ground WY antelope in the freezer for stuffing and smoking this weekend. I usually shoot for between 25-50% pork in my sausage, with the pork being maybe 20-30% fat. This year I think we're going for a 20% pork (a pork shoulder) and add in 5% bacon ends and pieces.

I saw a few hints to use powdered milk as a binder to keep the sausages from getting too dry - may have to play with that one a little and see how it turns out.

2 weeks until elk and deer hunting for us - hope to add a bunch more to the freezer. Then the buffalo should be done at the processer and freezers should be full for another year.
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My father-in-law and bro-in-law are going out to WY next weekend to hunt antelope. They said they're going to have it processed into 'specialty' meats - family isn't a fan of antelope steaks apparently.
 
CJones said:
My father-in-law and bro-in-law are going out to WY next weekend to hunt antelope. They said they're going to have it processed into 'specialty' meats - family isn't a fan of antelope steaks apparently.
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The antelope are as thick as ticks on a hound dog this year (heck, every year?) in WY. I'm not a fan of antelope steaks, either (hence all ground and destined for sausage, salami and jerky) but some folks swear they love it.
 
gkainz said:
The antelope are as thick as ticks on a hound dog this year (heck, every year?) in WY. I'm not a fan of antelope steaks, either (hence all ground and destined for sausage, salami and jerky) but some folks swear they love it.
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I agree. Every time I try to land at my private runway on my ranch here in Wyoming I have to make at least two low passes to scare off those pesky antelopes. :yikes::mad3: I am not a hunter but anyone who wants to "thin the herd" is more then welcome to have at it.

Ben
airport id... 2WY3.
 
N801BH said:
I agree. Every time I try to land at my private runway on my ranch here in Wyoming I have to make at least two low passes to scare off those pesky antelopes. :yikes::mad3: I am not a hunter but anyone who wants to "thin the herd" is more then welcome to have at it.

Ben
airport id... 2WY3.
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Don't tempt me or there will be a 182 loaded with guns and trigger pullers headed your way. ;)
 
CJones said:
Beat you to it - we've got about 5 lbs of venison thawing in the fridge right now that we will be using to make snack sticks (think Slim-Jim without 10,000 preservatives and lord-knows what cuts of meat) this evening.

Earlier this year we made venison brats - better than anything you can get at the store and much more healthy because you can control the fat content exactly by how much fat you actually put into the mix.
Click to expand...

Mmm... Those snack sticks sound fabulous!!
<rummages through desk for meat treats>
 
N801BH said:
I agree. Every time I try to land at my private runway on my ranch here in Wyoming I have to make at least two low passes to scare off those pesky antelopes. :yikes::mad3: I am not a hunter but anyone who wants to "thin the herd" is more then welcome to have at it.

Ben
airport id... 2WY3.
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Excellent - we need to talk about next year's season?
 
gkainz said:
Excellent - we need to talk about next year's season?
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I am not too hip on the details of this but..... Several friends have said that since I am the landowner and these antelopes are becoming a problem I can just go down to the local game and fish office and obtain a "owners tag"... Is this BS or true ???:rolleyes:
 
hmmm, I responded to the above post last night - where did my post go? Anyway, not sure about WY laws, but a number of years ago I believe this was true.

I just searched thru the WY Game and Fish page, and the only thing I see pertaining to Landowners is the Landowner coupon ($16) that is purchased along with the animal tag. If given to the landowner by the hunter, the landowner can then submit it to the state for payment.

I don't see anything on the site regarding landowner animal tags.
 
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