Un-Wimpy Burgers

One day I had a yen for hamburgers so I ventured to my local supermarket. I detest the supermarket pre-made patties. First, their quality is always suspect and second, they're too darn thin.

I like forming my own patties from ground chuck with a few secret ingredients, (which we'll get to shortly). Sometimes however, I also mix in some ground sirloin, which was my intention on this particular day.

Anyway, I approach the seedy looking "butcher" behind the counter and ask him for some ground sirloin. He replied that it is illegal to sell ground sirloin in NJ. I was flabbergasted. This is an absolute falsehood.

What he was really saying is he didn't want to be bothered with having to fetch a piece of sirloin and grind it. Not being in the mood to confront his blatant prevarication and laziness, I simply left, went to a butcher shop, (which I should have done in the first place), and procured my ground sirloin.

Supermarket hamburger patties are a gamble. Unless the package declares them to be chuck, (a tasty cut from the shoulder section), they are simply ground beef. Ground beef is a hodgepodge of the store's meat scraps, which can include cuts not appropriate for hamburger.

Ground beef is also known as hamburger meat simply because it is routinely employed for that purpose. Ground beef is graded by its degree of leanness. Thus, 90% ground beef contains 10% fat.

Generic ground beef can contain as much as 30% fat. The higher the fat content, the more the meat will shrink when cooked. But fat is where the flavor is. If you must use ground beef, I recommend the 80 or 85% grade for hamburgers. This provides the optimum level of flavor without excessive shrinkage.

Chuck is the meat of choice for hamburgers because it is high in flavor, contains 15-20% fat which is right in the zone, and is not composed of miscellaneous scraps. If you want to cut down on the fat and still maintain decent flavor, then mix in some ground sirloin.

And if you really want to push the quality curve to the max, buy whole chuck and/or sirloin and grind it yourself in your food processor. Freshly ground meat will definitely taste better than the mystery-mix patties that have been sitting on the supermarket shelf.

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