Ground Beef Stinks

[taxlady]

Finally, here is the picture of walmart ground beef on the left and butcher ground beef on the right. Pink slime, who knows.

ewwwww

 

[Andy M.]

Finally, here is the picture of walmart ground beef on the left and butcher ground beef on the right. Pink slime, who knows.

The stuff on the left could have been slimed. Clearly the stuff on the right is quite lean. Fatty beef is naturally a lighter color than lean beef and could have been made lighter with slime.

 

[Greg Who Cooks]

Finally, here is the picture of walmart ground beef on the left and butcher ground beef on the right. Pink slime, who knows.

The stuff on the left could have been slimed. Clearly the stuff on the right is quite lean. Fatty beef is naturally a lighter color than lean beef and could have been made lighter with slime.

Blissful nor you nor I have any way to tell if Walmart slimed their beef. Nor the butcher either. The one on the left is lighter, on the right as darker and more red, but who can tell if their GB got slimed? They don't even have to list it in ingredients because pink slime is technically the same as beef. It is beef!

It's yucky beef...

 

[blissful]

Blissful nor you nor I have any way to tell if Walmart slimed their beef. Nor the butcher either. The one on the left is lighter, on the right as darker and more red, but who can tell if their GB got slimed? They don't even have to list it in ingredients because pink slime is technically the same as beef. It is beef!

It's yucky beef...

I quite agree. When I cooked the Walmart burger, I added no fat, when I cooked the butcher ground beef I HAD to add fat.........in either case, I have no idea if pink slime was added.

 

[Greg Who Cooks]

As far as I can perceive "pink slime" has little or nothing to do with how much fat the GB has. Depending on the fat concentration of the slime it might either increase or reduce the fat content of the GB.

As far as my long time but little depth cooking experience tells me, hamburgers probably taste better with higher fat content GB. I think the public's first perception of any hamburger has more to do with fat content than anything else. The second perception probably has more to do with the accoutrements than the hamburger patty.

Whether or not your hamburger got slimed probably has little to do with how it tastes, or even IMO how good or bad it is for your health. I think it has a lot more to do with your comprehension of exactly what you are eating. If you don't know about pink slime you'll either accept or reject the hamburger based upon the taste. If you know it got slimed then you probably will be inclined to reject it.

I think that's silly about the "slime" being treated with a bit of ammonia gas. I think this issue is all about the public not liking the idea that beef waste products are being recycled into their hamburger meat.

Whatever the heck happened to the dog food market? I thought all this stuff went into dog food. Maybe they've been introducing vegetables into our dog's diet so that they an sell the meat at better profit elsewhere. Maybe they want us all to have vegetarian dogs so that they can slime our hamburgers and get more money...

 

[Addie]

I think the public is turned off by the term "slime". It certainly doesn't sound very appetizing. And then add to that 'left over bits and pieces' doesn't help the image any. But the final blow is the word "ammonia." That is a cleaning agent and poison at that. We don't hear the word 'gas.'

I doubt the public will ever accept it. The plants that produces the pink slime has shut down its processing plants (there are three of them) in the hopes that they can open again within the next 60 days. Their employees will receive a full salary during those 60 days.

If they took these pieces of meat and made giant vats of gravy to sell to the pet food industry, they could still operate and keep their employees working for a paycheck. That would be the sensible thing to do. Silly dreamer that I am. Large supermarkets use the trimmings from their different cuts for ground beef. The fat goes into one bucket and the pieces of meat into another And the bones into another bucket. At the end of the day, a certain percentage of the fat is added to the pieces of beef and sold as ground beef. If it says ground chuck, it is ground chuck. The same for ground sirloin. The rest of the fat and bones along with the beef is sold to a company that sells slop to pig farms. Farmers mix it with ground grain. The company grinds up the bones, fat and beef and package it in buckets. Nothing goes to waste.

(Son #1's godfather was a meatcutter supervisor for many years for Stop and Shop. He used to tell me some hair raising stories about what went on in the cutting room.)

Oddly enough, in the wild, pigs eat plant material, not meat.

 

[Greg Who Cooks]

Oddly enough, in the wild, pigs eat plant material, not meat.

Oddly enough, in the commercial environment, pigs not only get fed meat but probably get fed pig meat too. Which means that the public is being fed cannibal pigs.

 

[FrankZ]

I think the public is turned off by the term "slime". It certainly doesn't sound very appetizing. And then add to that 'left over bits and pieces' doesn't help the image any. But the final blow is the word "ammonia." That is a cleaning agent and poison at that. We don't hear the word 'gas.'

I doubt the public will ever accept it. The plants that produces the pink slime has shut down its processing plants (there are three of them) in the hopes that they can open again within the next 60 days. Their employees will receive a full salary during those 60 days.

And oddly the term "slime" wasn't used by Beef Productions Inc to describe their product. People are unhappy that more of the animal is being used and prices are lower. What most people want is only the choicest bits to be used and prices to be lower, it doesn't work that way.

The 60 day thing is likely the Federal WARN act kicking in.

 

[Greg Who Cooks]

I think they call it LFTB, "lean finely textured beef."

 

[FrankZ]

I think they call it LFTB, "lean finely textured beef."

Which doesn't sound anywhere near as negative (and sounds like it might be made of something out of a cow) as pink slime, which sounds like it was just concocted on a Nickelodeon set.

It is all about the spin I suppose.

 

[Greg Who Cooks]

Would you eat it? I'd avoid it if possible. I'd rather buy unground meat cuts and run them through my food processor to get ground meat.

It's like the old adage "better to not look too closely at what goes into sausage, or politics." Now that I know what's going into ground meat I'm reluctant to accept it.

 

[FrankZ]

For home use I do grind my own, but for the most part it saves me money. I like my ground meat pretty lean and the really lean at the store is absolutely criminal in pricing at times.

When I have a burger out I can eat a McDonalds or Burger King on the go and not have a complaint. I find I can enjoy food, good or bad, without being a snob about it. Some people hear the word McDonalds and they will put their nose in the sky.

I think too many people get too caught up in making sure they only eat the most organic, free range, unprocessed blah blah blah that the forget to try and just enjoy things... or mayhaps it is just me.

 

[Greg Who Cooks]

I want a free range cow-burger served on free range buns, and with free range cheese and mayonnaise and onions and relish, oh and free range mushrooms and free range bacon...

 

[FrankZ]

Are you going to season it with organic free range salt?

 

[Greg Who Cooks]

I make my own sea salt by capturing wild free range seawater and drying it under natural free range solar sun...

 

[Addie]

For home use I do grind my own, but for the most part it saves me money. I like my ground meat pretty lean and the really lean at the store is absolutely criminal in pricing at times.

When I have a burger out I can eat a McDonalds or Burger King on the go and not have a complaint. I find I can enjoy food, good or bad, without being a snob about it. Some people hear the word McDonalds and they will put their nose in the sky.

I think too many people get too caught up in making sure they only eat the most organic, free range, unprocessed blah blah blah that the forget to try and just enjoy things... or mayhaps it is just me.

I often go right past a BK. And in the summer months, I go up to the beach just a few minutes from my home. The BK is located right across the street from the entrance. And I, along with the rest of the multitude make my pilgrimage to the shrine of the burger. No fries. Just a cheeseburger and a small soda. I also am near a Dunkin' Donut. I sometime stop in there and get a large lemon iced drink in the summer. Then there is the Royal Roast Beef place. I will order a small RB with sauce and then go to BK or DD for my drink. I don't believe in showing favorites. All of these establishments are right near the entrance to the beach. During the rest of the year, I continue to show my loyalty to my local businesses. I often get a coupon in the mail from BK for a free breakfast. I take advantage of it. A FREE meal. Not everytime. Sometimes it is just too cold for me to take a trip on my scooter. Just for giggles I have gone up to the drive-thru window and ordered. I love to see the person inside stretch to reach me to hand me my order.

 

[taxlady]

...

I think too many people get too caught up in making sure they only eat the most organic, free range, unprocessed blah blah blah that the forget to try and just enjoy things... or mayhaps it is just me.

I think it tastes better when it's made of food.

 

[Greg Who Cooks]

Pink slime is food! It just took a few detours after getting cut off the side of beef, and sniffed some ammonia gas ("Wheeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!") before getting back together with its ground cousins. Just think of it as part of your hamburger getting high on ammonia before jumping in your plate.

Really. I think the idea of this thing is the real controversy, not the healthfulness of it. It's still beef, it still has whatever fat content your product has on the label. If anybody could taste or measure the ammonia they would have already said so.

And here's another question for you pink slime objectors. (I'll admit I'm one of them.) If you really don't like the idea of pink slime, why are you eating sausage? (If you are...) I'll bet whatever goes into your sausage is far worse than a pink slimed hamburger.

 

[bakechef]

Pink slime is food! It just took a few detours after getting cut off the side of beef, and sniffed some ammonia gas ("Wheeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!") before getting back together with its ground cousins. Just think of it as part of your hamburger getting high on ammonia before jumping in your plate.

Really. I think the idea of this thing is the real controversy, not the healthfulness of it. It's still beef, it still has whatever fat content your product has on the label. If anybody could taste or measure the ammonia they would have already said so.

And here's another question for you pink slime objectors. (I'll admit I'm one of them.) If you really don't like the idea of pink slime, why are you eating sausage? (If you are...) I'll bet whatever goes into your sausage is far worse than a pink slimed hamburger.

I almost never eat sausage or other processed meat, maybe a hot dog or two a year.

I don't want pink slime in my ground beef simply because it is processed meat and that fact has been hidden to us until recently. I don't think that it is dangerous, but if I buy ground meat, I just want raw meat, the type indicated on the package, ground. If I want byproducts I'll buy processed meat. I buy mostly ground chuck, or round, and expect the package to contain just that.

In my store (large chain) "ground beef" is made from grinding up scraps, "chuck" and all others come to the meat department as "chunks" in big packages, ready to grind, pre-measured for fat content. I think that the cheaper "ground beef" is actually the one least likely to contain pink slime.

 

[Greg Who Cooks]

Well I agree with you there BC, that neither of us wants to each much processed meat. I'll process it myself from whole cuts if I want processed meat.

Interesting your comment: " I think that the cheaper 'ground beef' is actually the one least likely to contain pink slime. It's obvious that sliming more expensive cuts is more profitable, just considering the final price per pound. However the slime issue came up regarding cheap ground beef sold to schools. I don't know.