Gound meaat

Tin-bender wrote:
Local Butcher Shops??
Is there such a thing anymore? Everything I have seen in recent years from Costco/WalMart on down to the small local grocery with a meat department brings in kryovac packaged portions from the process packing houses and cuts the chunks into steaks, chops, etc.

As a teenager working as an apprentice meat cutter in my fathers butcher shop everything was brought in in quarters and halves. Beef, hogs, mutton/lamb everything was bought in quarters or halves and "broken down" right in the shop and displayed in the case. All the lefts (beef only) were boned out by hand and thrown in the grind tub to make burger.

Everybody now days wants 100 percent lean burger, supposed to be so much better for us, but the fact is flavor in beef comes from the fat not from the lean, period. Why do you think they wrap fillets in bacon? trying to give the ultra lean cut some flavor that's why.

Speaking of which, if you want really good cooked flavor in your ground beef grind super lean cuts and add hog back fat for the fat content, 80/20 or even 90/10.

While I am at it another gripe about modern day meat processing is the lack of aging. Back in the day a half or quarter was brought into the shop and hung in the walk-in for 5-7 days before a knife was ever applied. The meat aged for flavor and also dried up the excess water content so you ended up with a dry firm cut not the soft squishey steaks you get today.

Water equals weight, guess why meat isn't aged now days. Just try to "brown" a pound of ground beef in a skillet, yea right, boil it maybe.

Later
Tinbender

When we were kid we raised our own beef. "Grass fed" meant staked out on our lush front lawn with an old boat anchor. We took care of the steers but they were "food" to us and we never made friends. We knew Herman was going on the table.
When it was time, Herman was driven to a butcher (not a storefront, just a processor) and the beef hung for a while.
on "cutting and wrapping day" our whole family- grandparents, aunts and uncles, would go. Mom would supervise the cuts she wanted, and all of us would wrap and label (cost less if you provided your own labor for this). Then load up the cars and head home and fill the freezer. Pass out meat to the helpers to take home, and several steaks were grilled up right away for all to enjoy. Grandma got the tongue. i wan't interested in that, having taken care of Herman, i regularly saw that long tongue lick out his own nose, as cows do, and had no interest in a boiled tongue sandwich.
Kids on the school bus used to tease us about the cow on the lawn but we weren't rich, we already had land and a barn (horses), it wasn't hard to raise the calf, and it filled our freezer. We knew exactly what went into the beef and where and how it had been handled.