Country Style Spare Ribs

Some years ago, "Country Style Spare Ribs" were taken only from the rib end of the pork loin. That end of the pork loin was attached to the Shoulder Butt, and contains much of the shoulder blade.

The beef equivalent of the rib-end of the pork loin is the large end of the beef rib, where it was attached to the Blade Cut Chuck Roast.

There is more bone and fat per lb. of meat on those rib-end cuts, but the marbling-subsequently the flavor, is superior to any other cut, in my opinion.

The so-called "Country Style Spare-Ribs" from that end of the pork loin was a marketing effort to sell the bony pork chops. We had to sell them for less per lb., so that people would buy them. If we cut that end of pork loin down the middle, sawed through the bones, displayed them nicely in a meat tray and called them "Country Style Spare Ribs," they sold more quickly and at a higher price than we could get for the rib-end pork chops.

We rarely see the rib-end of the pork loin in the counter any more. Mostly what we see called "Country Style Spare Ribs" today is not from rib, and not even from the rib end of the pork loin. Today, "Country Style Spare Ribs" are made from the fattest and hardest part of the pig to sell--the "Pork Shoulder Butt," a.k.a. "Boston Butt."

Yesterday I bought a 6 lb. package of "Country Style Spare Ribs" on sale for $1.27 lb. I often buy them when they're on sale to use in making various sausages. The shoulder butt has the ideal fat content for perfect sausage, be it Breakfast Sausage, Polish Sausage, Bratwurst, or almost any other.

As usual, I wondered who or what had hacked up what had been a perfectly good shoulder butt. And why? Honestly, every package that I've bought has been simply a randomly hacked up Shoulder Butt.

You can't get much further away from the "Ribs" of an animal than the butt of the shoulder, which is adjacent to the neck of the beast. But they sell the shoulder butt under the guise of "Ribs" that way. By whatever name they call it, if the price is right, I'm buying. I cut the package that I bought into pieces about 2 inches by 2 inches, marinated it all in a Teriyaki sauce that I had made, grilled them over charcoal, and they received rave reviews from my guests.

I'm not complaining about the price. I just wish the "Meat Experts" knew how to handle the plastic wrapped package they take out of the cardboard box.

Or maybe I don't! If they knew, the price might be higher!

Having read this, I assure you that you now know more about it than the "Meat Expert" behind the counter.

Hot Wings

Most restaurant menus have them in the “Appetizer” section. They’re very popular. For a while, they also featured “Boneless'' Hot Wings for the same price. They weren’t boneless wings at all; they were strips of chicken breast. Now they mostly call that "Chicken Tenders"; perhaps a more honest moniker than "Boneless Wings"?

As we occasionally like “Hot Wings,” or "Buffalo Wings," I sometimes buy the 10 lb. bag when they’re on sale for $1.69 per lb.

Currently, chicken wings usually sell for around $3.79, and up, per lb. Chicken breasts usually sells for about $2.79 per lb., or about 1/3 less than wings. You can often buy “boneless, skinless chicken breast” on sale for about $1.99.

Today I finally did what I’ve wanted to do for a long time—I did a “test” on a lb. of chicken wings with my gram scale.

Five of the wings weighed exactly 16 ounces. They were on sale for $1.99. Of course that was an unknown brand and the regular premium brand was the usual $3.79 for wings.

Here’s what you get in 16 ounces of chicken wings:

• 7 ounces of bones
• 3.5 ounces of fat and skin
• 5.5 ounces of meat

That means that in buying the $1.99 per lb. of wings, I paid $5.85 per lb. for the skinless, fat-less, boneless chicken wing meat.

If you pay $3.98 lb. for your wings, the meat will cost you $11.70 per lb.

The 3.5 ounces of skin and fat doesn’t sound so bad, until you consider that it’s equal to a ¼ lb. stick of butter, minus just enough to butter your toast.

Rule of thumb: About 1/3 of the weight of wings is boneless, fat-less, skinless meat, meaning you're paying 3 times the price per lb. of wings for the meat alone.

I'll consider my options a little more thoughtfully next time I get a hankering for "Hot Wings."

Meat Tip of the Week
13 September 2010


Anyone who read the NY Times article of October 4, 2009, entitled "E. Coli Path Shows Beef Inspection Flaws", probably hasn't bought or eaten much ground beef or hamburgers since then. And that's too bad, because most of us love a great hamburger now and then.

It's easy to make ground beef safely, if you have a way to grind your own. You can buy a chuck roast, bone-in or boneless, or some portion of beef round if you want it completely fat free.

Simply unwrap the beef, rinse it under cold water to remove most of any surface bacteria that might be there, cut it into strips and refrigerate it for a few hours or overnight. Of course, if you get a bone-in roast, you have to remove them, but that's not very intimidating for anyone who cooks. Most food processors have an attachment for grinding and that is all you need. You can also buy an excellent stainless steel grinder for about $100 that should last a lifetime.

Once it's been ground through the medium grinding plate, you can grind it again through the fine plate, if you like. I never do that. I like it just coarsely ground; and nobody has ever even noticed that it wasn't finely ground-they just rave about how it's incredibly good stuff.

However you like it, the next thing to do is dissolve about a half teaspoon of salt per pound of meat in 1/4 cup of ice cold water per 2 lbs. of meat. Pour the salty ice water evenly over the ground beef, thoroughly mix it with a long handled fork or spoon and refrigerate for at least a half an hour. When you make patties, you'll find they form up rather easily. That's because the salt has broken down enough of the cell walls that the meat adheres to itself better.

What's the advantage of grinding your own? You know: it's clean; it's been under refrigeration constantly since you bought it and any bacteria that might have been on the meat were on the surface only. The difference is that after the meat has been ground, it has an infinate number of surfaces for bacteria to multiply on. In one large piece, the meat has only a relatively small surface area for breeding bacteria. Bacteria don't multiply at temperatures below 40 F. If you've kept your beef below that, (most refrigerators are set at 38 F) taken it out of the package and rinsed off the surface as soon as you got it home, you have almost no chance of ever making anyone sick. In 52 years, I've yet to make anyone sick through my mishandling of meat and if you follow the above, you won't either.

Meat Tip of the Week
16 August 2010

"Oh, honey, that's waaaay too much food!"

I always hear that when I'm cooking for company. If we're having 4 guests, I cook for 10; if we're having 8, I cook for 15-20. I simply won't have anyone at my table not getting all they want. We always have loads of leftovers.

What could be more un-appetizing than re-heated meat? It depends on how you re-heat it.

The next time you have left-over beef, pork or chicken, try putting it in a steamer basket and steaming it for a few minutes, just until it's heated through. Whether it's left-over barbecued spare ribs, beef roast, pork roast or your half eaten steak, you'll be happily surprised at how the full, untainted original flavor is fully restored, if not further enhanced.

We've been tempted to actually barbecue spare-ribs the day before we intend to serve them. The full flavor is even more intensified the next day. Steamed, spare ribs are more tender, and we always think they're better a day or two later than when they first came off the grill.

Give it a try the next time you have left-over meat. You're going to like it!

Meat Tip of the Week
09 August 2010

You'll be amazed at the flavor difference in your chicken if you brine it first. You have no doubt heard of brining (immersing in salt water) a turkey before cooking it. The brine (salty water) has the affect of breaking down the cell walls, which makes the meat more tender and juicy.

You've also no doubt had boneless, skinless chicken breast, which is generally so dry you've nearly choked on it. Apply the same logic to boneless, skinless chicken breast and you'll find it's moist and juicy - and much more flavorful every time. Chicken breasts should be brined at least 6 hours.

Whether we are going to roast a whole chicken, cut one up for frying or baking, I always brine it first. If I'm going to make "Hot wings" or fried chicken, I'll put the parts in the brine either the night before or in the morning. If I'm going to smoke, roast or barbecue a whole chicken, I brine it for at least 24 hours.

The formula is one cup of salt per gallon of water. The kind of salt you use is important. I use either kosher salt, which has no anti-caking agents, pickling salt or purified salt. You don't want any additives at all, just pure salt. Some brands of kosher salt have additives, so you'll want to find one that doesn't, such as "Diamond Crystal". Pickling salt is also free of additives.

Meat Tip of the Week
02 August 2010

One of the major grocery chains has an ad on the first page, “Whole Tri-Tip” for $2.47 lb. The finer print says they’re “Untrimmed USDA Select, Beef Loin.” I usually buy a few when they’re in that price range, age and then freeze some for later use.

When this chain has had Tri-Tips on sale in the past, they have always been very large, usually about double the normal 1.5 to 2.25 lbs., and weigh from 3 to 4.5 lbs. each. They usually require some trimming of excess fat, but I don’t do that until after I’ve aged them.

The large size invariably means they came from very large steers, which is even more apparent when you cut into them and see much more internal fat, or marbling, interspersed throughout the muscle fibers. That means they’re going to have great flavor and be nice and juicy when grilled or broiled.

On page 2 of this store’s ad, you find the same USDA Select, Tri-Tip steaks for $3.49 lb. These would be sliced and trimmed of excess fat. Except for the little bit of fat you might want to trim off, why not simply buy a whole one, slice whatever steaks you want to use for dinner? Why not age the rest of the Tri-Tip, or slice it all into steaks, double wrap them tightly in plastic food wrap, put them in a self-sealing freezer bag, and have them another time?

If you do slice them you’ll have some small steaks left over toward the small end of the Tri-Tip.

Now the competing grocery chain store down the street has “Beef Petite Tenders” for $5.99 lb. In the finer print it says, “Or Beef Tri Tip Roast, Selected varieties.” The photo of those “Beef Petite Tenders” is exactly what you’ll wind up with if you slice one of those, probably better, $2.47 lb. Tri-Tips.

Apparently those little steaks you’ll have at the end of that Tri-Tip are very valuable!

Salt

I eat way too much salt. I’ve always eaten too much salt. People have always told me that—except my Dr. My blood pressure is normal, no cholesterol problems, and I’ve never been on a prescription drug other than an anti-biotic of some kind.

We use only “purified salt.” You can buy it from various sources; I buy it in 20 lb. containers because I use a lot of it in curing meats and sausage making. Kosher Salt and Pickling salt are also “purified,” that is, it is 100% salt. It doesn’t contain fructose, iodine, anti-caking agents, sand, heavy metals or anything other than pure salt.

If you haven’t read the Ingredients on your salt container, you might be surprised.

Sea Salt? I’ve seen ads for very expensive, exotic sea salt from the China Sea. I have to wonder what kind of heavy metals salt from the China Sea might contain. Or what heavy metals are in any sea salt? I’m not saying there are, I just believe they must be there.

My daughter served eggs a few weeks ago, and of course she passed the saltshaker. It was an expensive sea salt she had proudly purchased. It was pink, and I had to wonder what made it pink, but that wasn’t the main problem. She hadn’t noticed that it also contained tiny grains of sand that made chewing the salted food very annoying, even if there were only minute amounts of heavy metals present.

Some salt is necessary for a properly functioning body. Fructose, anti-caking, agents and heavy metals are not. Adequate amounts of iodine should be present in a well-rounded diet that includes organically grown vegetables.

I’ll keep eating all the pure salt I want. If I want sugar, sand, sand, anti-caking agents or heavy metals, I’ll have them as a side dish.

Home Made Sausage?

Sausage making is an ancient art. The word “sausage” originally meant, “salted meat.” In the 1400’s, the German Sausage Makers Guild formulated regulations to ensure that sausages were made from decent meat. I won’t quote every item that was banned from use, but typical items on the list included “rotted meat,” and “pustulated meat.” In reading those banned items, one can’t help being disgusted to think that laws had to be passed to preclude such things.

Because it can be highly seasoned and run through a grinder, sausage is susceptible to any number of man-made outrages.

But I love pork sausage and I’m very particular about what my family eats.

There are hundreds of recipes available on-line, from Andouille and Bangers, to Irish Sausage and Weisswurst. Traditional “sausages” are simply sausage meat stuffed into casings. Casings are either natural-usually pork or lamb intestine, or made of emulsified beef hide, called “collagen casings.” Collagen casings are much easier to work with, exactly uniform in size, and can be purchased for hanging in a smoke house, or very thin, to be used only as “fresh,” meaning not smoked. Not everyone has a sausage stuffer. One isn’t needed to be able to enjoy premium quality pork sausage.

The sausage meat is exactly the same, whether stuffed into a casing, or simply made into patties, like hamburger. Any recipe you can find for any sausage you can name is available.

You certainly can make your own recipe according to your own tastes. Whether your sausage is tubular or in a patty, the flavor is the same.
If you buy a pork shoulder butt, grind and season it according to any recipe you like, you’ll never again be satisfied with commercially made sausage.

Slow Cooking:

At the other end of the “burn and serve” spectrum is the slow cooking method. If I’m doing a roast, I usually start cooking early in the morning, and sometimes even the day before. I did a whole Brisket last week that was cooking for 27 hours at 160 F. It was very tender, very tasty, and perfectly cooked.

Before thinking about trying it out, be very sure your oven temperature is what the control dial says it is. It usually isn’t. Oven thermometers are easy to find, cheap, and may just save you from thinking you just can’t cook.

I slow cook in my electric smokehouse, which is outside on a covered patio. I usually want to give it a few hours of smoke, and then just let it cook the rest of the day. Once meat starts cooking-that is, once it reaches an internal temperature of about 115-120 F., it has absorbed all the smoke flavor it’s going to absorb and there’s no point in keeping the smoke going after that.

I often cook a large beef roast, such as a Chuck, whole or half Top Sirloin, or whole or half Rib Eye. (“Boneless” Rib Eye is like saying “round circle.” There’s never been a bone in an Eye of the Rib.) Those will usually weigh from 6 to 15 lbs.

If I’ve aged it, I trim off the very thin and dried outer layer before I rub it down with a pasty mix of Worcestershire, soy sauce, brown sugar, freshly crushed garlic, ground horseradish, and maybe a little balsamic vinegar.

I let it rest for an hour or two at room temperature, insert the meat thermometer, put it in the pre-heated to about 200 F. smoker, and put the hickory or alder chips on the burner. I always put a pot of hot water in the smoker on a shelf below the meat, which keeps the meat from drying out too much. The temperature inside the smoker will drop back to about 110 F., and very slowly creep back up to 160-170 F., where I try to keep it for the next 5-10 hours. A couple hours before serving, if the internal temperature of the beef is about 120-130 F. I’ll take off the wood chip pan and replace it with a pot of boiling water and just let it slowly steam for the last hour or two, until the internal temperature of the meat is about 142 F. If you like your beef well done, you probably want to take the internal temperature up to 150 F. With steam, the internal temperature will go up much more quickly, as much as 10 degrees in an hour. Let it rest at least a half an hour, slice and serve.

You can bow as your guests taste it, swoon and applaud.

I just say, “Aw shucks, nothin' to it.”

Burn and Serve:

An older man commented the other day that he didn’t want to read my book, as he was a “burn and serve” cook--- when he cooked at all.

I think a lot of people fit that category of home cooking in our current society. So many people just didn’t learn enough about cooking at home so that now they’re all but dependent on prepared meals from the grocery store, restaurants and take out restaurants.

Cooking is not part of what many people saw every day while growing up. Now they just don’t think of it as being a part of their daily routine. I remember actually eating in restaurants exactly 3 times before I was 18 and left home. Mom didn’t allow any of the kids in the kitchen while she was cooking, so I knew nothing at all about cooking. Didn’t take me long to learn enough to know I could make better food than I could ever get in a restaurant—unless it was a restaurant I couldn’t afford.

I hear a lot about burn and serve kinds of cooks; “when you smell smoke, it’s done.” If you like burned food, that’s all you need to know. For me, I like my vegetables lightly steamed and I like my meat to be tasty and juicy. I’ll have my steak or roast medium rare, my pork cooked just to 160 F., internal temperature, and my chicken crispy, juicy and well done.

And that’s the first step-knowing what you like, and how you like it. Once you know what you like and how you like it, learning how to prepare it that way is easy.

“Baby steps,” as Bill Murray made famous in the movie, “What about Bob?” is the best way to learn, I think. If you’ve never cooked much, are of the “burn and serve,” persuasion, here’s an easy approach: 1) pick your favorite meat dish 2) Google search a recipe for that dish 3) cook nothing else at all. Just cook that one dish, be it a broiled or fried burger, a beer steamed hot dog, or a breaded and fried pork chop. That will build a little confidence, you’ll want to improve on your first effort, learn how to make it so that it suits you perfectly, and from there you can add another dish to your repertoire. Just keep it simple and easy. Taking on a full 5 course, “Gourmet's Delight,” before knowing how to steam a carrot, is a sure recipe for returning to a “Burn and Serve” kind of cook that prefers a take-out place.

You can always trust what you cook at home.

How To Grind Your Own Meat:

Anyone who read the NY Times article of October 4, 2009, entitled, “E. coli path shows beef inspection flaws,” (click here to read) probably hasn’t bought or eaten much ground beef or hamburgers since then.And that’s too bad, because most of us love a great hamburger now and then.

It’s easy to make ground beef safely, if you have a way to grind your own. You can buy a chuck roast, bone-in or boneless, or some portion of beef round if you want it completely fat free. Simply un-wrap the beef, rinse it under cold water to remove most of any surface bacteria that might be there, cut it into strips and refrigerate it for a few hours or overnight. Of course if you get a bone-in roast, you have to remove them, but that’s not very intimidating for anyone who cooks. Most food processors have an attachment for grinding, and that’s all you need. You can also buy an excellent electric stainless steel grinder for about $100 that should last a lifetime.

Once it’s been ground through the medium grinding plate, you can grind it again through the fine plate, if you like. I never do that. I like it just coarsely ground; and nobody has ever even noticed that it wasn’t finely ground---they just rave about how it’s incredibly good stuff. However you like it, the next thing to do is dissolve about half teaspoon of salt per pound of meat in ¼ cup of ice cold water per 2 lbs. of meat. Pour the salty ice water evenly over the ground beef, thoroughly mix it with a long handled fork or spoon, and refrigerate it for at least an hour. When you make patties, you’ll find they form up rather easily. That’s because the salt has broken down enough of the cell walls that the meat adheres to itself better.

What’s the advantage of grinding your own? You know: it’s clean; it’s been under refrigeration constantly since you bought it; and any bacteria that might have been on the meat were on the surface only. The difference is that after the meat has been ground, it has an infinite number of surfaces for bacteria to multiply on. In one large piece, the meat has only a relatively small surface area for breeding bacteria. Bacteria don’t multiply at temperatures below 40 F. If you’ve kept your beef below that, (most refrigerators are set at 38 F.) taken it out of the package and rinsed off the surface as soon as you got it home, you have no chance of ever making anyone sick. In 52 years, I’ve yet to make anyone sick through my mishandling of meat. If you follow the above, you won’t either.

Now you can have a Happy Hamburger!

(And if you’ve followed safe meat handling practices, you can have it rare or medium rare without the threat of death as a side dish.)

Grandma's Fried Chicken Recipe:

When grandma poured a pot of almost boiling water in a bucket under the elm tree in the backyard, picked up her hatchet and went toward the chicken coop, it meant two things:
1) I was going to help her pluck its feathers after it was dipped in the bucket of almost boiling water, and 2) we were having Fried Chicken for dinner!

Today I just buy them, not as good, certainly, but still a gourmet treat!

Chicken can be over-cooked, especially the breast, which is more often dried out than not in the frying of it.

Moist, Tender and Well Done

Sometimes I buy and cut up a whole fryer, sometimes I buy nothing but boneless, skinless breasts for frying. It’s always moist and tender.

1) Cut off any excess fat and excess skin.
2) In a large pot or bowl, add ½ cup of Kosher salt to 1 ½ cups water and stir to dissolve.
3) Place the chicken parts in the water and refrigerate for 8-10 hours, or overnight.
4) Rinse the chicken part under running water.
5) Mix 2 teaspoons of ground black pepper and 1 cup All Purpose flour in a large plastic bag while the chicken parts are still wet, add 2 or 3 pieces at a time and shake to thoroughly coat each piece.
6) Coarsely crush 2 sleeves of saltine crackers with a rolling pin.
7) Place the crumbs into a shallow pan or large plate, and sprinkle with your favorite dry seasonings: basil, oregano, garlic powder and onion powder are my favorites. Add 1 to 2 teaspoons of each and mix them all well into the crumbs. (You don’t have to add any seasonings at all, or you may prefer some other seasonings-suit yourself.)
8) With a fork, in a shallow pan or plate, beat 2 eggs with ¼ cup of water.
9) Dip the floured chicken parts one at a time into the egg wash. The floured chicken will now adhere the egg wash to the chicken parts.
10) Dredge the parts, 2 or 3 at a time, in the saltine crumbs and place the breaded pieces on a large plate. No need to have space between them, as they won’t stick together. You can even stack 2 or 3 layers on top of each other, and refrigerate for at least an hour, or even the day before you intend to fry them.
11) Using a thermometer in a deep heavy pot, heat corn oil to 375 F.
12) Place 2 or 3 pieces at a time in the heated oil, being careful not to splash the oil.
13) When the pieces are browned, place them on a cooling rack, with space between each piece that you’ve placed inside a shallow sided baking sheet.
14) Place the chicken in a pre-heated 350 F. oven for 45 minutes.

Let the chicken cool for a few minutes, and enjoy!

Tips on Grilling and Barbecuing:

Today in the US, the word “Barbecue,” simply means cooking meat over an open flame or charcoal. The very first meat our cave dwelling ancestors cooked was of course, Barbecued!
In the “Old South,” Barbecue means long, slow cooking with low heat. Commonly, meat is cooked at 200-250 F. for 12 hours, and often up to 24 hours, depending on what they’re cooking of course.

Most of the rest of the country thinks of “Barbecue,” as what southerners would call “grilled” over charcoal.

If you’re going to barbecue in the southern style, you’re going to be using a large piece of beef or pork, probably at least 8 lbs. or more. You’ll rub it down with the seasonings of your choice, put it on a rack, cover it, and try to hold the temperature as close to about 225 F. as you can, and look forward to letting your carnivorous genes run wild in about 12 hours.
Any connective tissues within the meat, those annoying things we call “gristle” will have turned to a gelatin when the meat has reached an internal temperature of about 215 F.
Cooked that way, almost any cut of beef you’ve “barbecued” will be very tender. The more marbling and exterior fat in and on the meat, the juicer it will be. When cooking this way, you’ll want to keep a pan of water on the grill along with the meat, to prevent the exterior of the meat from drying out.

Probably most often, the “Brisket” or “Whole Brisket” is barbecued. The “Point” of the Brisket contains a large pocket of fat, which should be removed, but the remainder is very well marbled—and very sinewy. The “Plate” of the Brisket, the long flat remainder of the Brisket contains almost no marbling, but has a thick layer of fat on the outer side. People generally cut nearly all the fat off, so that it’s a very lean slab of meat.

A “Blade Cut Chuck Roast,” or an actual “7 Bone Chuck Roast,” bone-in or boneless, would also be superb cooked in this way. There’s no need to cook the better and more expensive cuts of beef, such as a “Rib Roast,” or “Whole Beef Loin,” with this Barbecue method, as they’ll be naturally tender without going to that extreme. Top Round, Bottom Round, Rump Roast, and Sirloin Tip Roast could be cooked in this style Barbecue, but they would all produce very dry meat because of the almost complete lack of marbling.

When cooking pork this way, generally the “pork shoulder butt” is preferred. There’s plenty of internal fat on the butt of the shoulder and the meat is very moist, tender and juicy. “Pulled pork” is made from the shoulder butt in just this way.

When we’re talking about grilling meat over charcoal, we have a whole different set of standards to work with. Beef is going to be cooked much faster, and most people prefer it to be in the range of “medium rare.” Left on the grill until the internal temperature reaches 160 F., any steak will be much drier and tougher to chew. Some people prefer their steaks that way, but it’s good to find out before you start cooking exactly what any guest might prefer. Rib Steak, Eye of Rib Steak, New York Steak, Fillet, and USDA Choice Top Sirloin Steak are all ideal for fast grilling on the barbecue grill. As no bacteria are on the inside of the meat, only the exterior needs to reach a temperature of 160 F. to kill any bacteria, including the worst strain of e-coli. As soon as the steak hits the hot grill those bacteria are dead.

Ground Beef today is another story. What you might buy as “Fresh Ground” was probably pre-ground somewhere in the mid-west, of beef trimmings from several processing plants in at least 2 states and 1 or more foreign countries. Bacteria were on every surface of all that collection of trimmings. The fat that was added to make the “78% (or whatever) lean” requirement was probably cleaned with ammonia at the plant of its origination. As there are an infinite number of surfaces on the meat after it’s ground, and there were certainly bacteria on the exterior of the meat before it was ground, to not cook store bought ground beef to 160 F., internal temperature, is indeed risky.Personally, I’d rather have a peanut butter sandwich than a hamburger cooked to 160 F., and I do love a great hamburger—medium rare! But I’ve never ever bought ground beef out of a meat counter. Even in the “old days” when we cut whole quarters of beef and ground only the trimmings from that beef I didn’t buy it out of the counter. I’ve always had a small grinder at home, and when we want Hamburgers for parties, they don’t have to be turned into something resembling a hockey puck. Nobody is going to get sick on ground beef at my house-even if they eat it raw. There’s just nothing in the world like a great, “grilled to medium rare’ on the barbie,” Hamburger!