Ground Beef Buying Tip

market ground beef? Do you mean the greenwise ground chuck?

How does that work? If they are taking it off the shelf because of the date, then they grind it up and re-label it? Isn't it to old in the first place?

Better meat does not necessarily make better burgers.  You need fat in the burgers for both flavour and  that juicy burger.  That said I am sure they have a formulae that balances the fat content to a predetermined goal.  With burgers we avoid the preformed burgers absolutely never purchase the frozen variety made in factories, that type seems to be recalled frequently.  Not a snob about meat but we have a local butcher we trust and like so buy most of our meat from him even if it costs a little more at times.

All meat must be assumed to have surface bacteria when it is ground into hamburger, whether steaks or primals.  

That said, it is incorrect that the sell by date refers to safety/bacteria. No sell by or best by date refers to food safety. No food may be sold which may be unhealthy. The sell-by dates and use-by or best-by dates ONLY refer to the last date on which the food is PERFECT, or in peak condition. It is not an indication that the food is less safe the next day. It is a date determined solely by the seller.

People have been throwing out food on sell by dates for years. This is ill informed behavior, and not at all based on food safety standards.

 I am not at all concerned about ground meat being made from steaks, but do have qualms considering that the meat is passing thru a machine which handles hundreds of pounds of raw meat every day but which is only sanitized quite possibly by an apathetic teenager

if you want safe superior ground meat, grind your own

 

what i am saying is that shelf life has nothing (literally nothing) to do with food safety.

no store may keep a steak in the case up to the point where it becomes 'dangerous'.  they don't pull these out the day before death visitis upon them.

a sell by date is WEEKS away from the date when a steak might be unsafe.

they may pull them off because most americans are total pansies about food, and prefer pretty red steaks that just went into the case.  and the manager is thinking 'well, this steak is a little brown, we better grind it before the sheeple decide it is dangerous'.

but that's a different thing.  sure, they yank it because it is close to the sell by date, because it isn't pretty.  but it is completely incorrect to equate that with a less-safe steak.  no grocer may sell any food that is possibly unhealthy or unwholesome. that includes any which may be on the cusp of being 'unsafe'.

they may grind them for cosmetic reasons, but itdoesn not logically follow that an older steak is less safe than a 'fresh' one.

next someone is going to trot out the idea that they secretly put brown beef INSIDE fresh red ground beef, just because there's brown beef inside when you split open the ground beef.

we deserve to pay what we pay for meat.  we waste so much of it.  no one has a right to complain that food is so expensive... we did it to ourselves

no sh!t.

i should just cut and paste this crap.

)

you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it understand simple frigging concepts of food safety.

My father in law was a meat cutter for 25 years at Winn Dixie.

He says they grind the steaks when they are close to their sell by date for cosmetic reasons. I think he said there are different rules for "sell by dates" for ground beef. I'll ask him and get back.

I worked at Hungry Howies (pizza delivery place) one summer in high school. For fun, they guys would slide the pies across the floor before boxing them up.

The manager smoked pot and had several sexual liaisons in the walk in freezer.

Stike.....I was born and raised in NY...so no knowledge of Kealey Farms.

Along those lines however, I did work at a fast food burger joint, a well known Steak house, and a Country Club as well. Some of the things I have seen done to food just amaze me....and not for the good. Food on the floor....five second rule was a bit longer back then. Greenish steaks being marinated and served. Plenty of walk in cooler and freezer action too!

Ahhh....the good old days!.....some good memories too!

*threads LIKE this. Damn iPhone.

Little Steven said:

Right in the gutter eh CT?

Just where I like it (shocking, I know)