I hope you have been watching Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution program on ABC. Sadly many people haven’t so they have moved the show to Friday nights and pretty much killed it. Which is such a shame. I suppose that is what happens when you try and tell the truth and it impacts big business. Thankfully they are showing more episodes starting tonight which I personally am looking forward to.
Jamie Oliver is a hero of mine. I totally agree with him that the more food we make ourselves, the healthier we will be. Well imagine my shock when he told me about pink slime! (See video above.) Here I was thinking I was being healthy by buying extra lean ground beef. Now I do not know for sure what the grocery stores do here but I did ask two meat departments if they made their own ground beef in house. No, they don’t. They get it in a tube and package it up.
I even called one of the store’s head office to find out if ammonia was used as a means of sanitizing the beef and they said it was not listed in the list of ingredients. Um, well, no… It isn’t a flavouring…
This all kind of freaked me out. I am far from being a vegetarian like I used to be but I do care about what I eat! I got all upset and did not know what to do.
One day we were visiting my mother-in-law and she wanted to get rid of a lot of stuff and I burst out, Lorraine, do you have an old meat grinder? Sure enough, she did! And she was happy to give it to me. What a sweetheart! I found out that her and my husband used to use it to make pickles when he was a boy. How sweet is that?! A real family heirloom and a potential solution to my foodie problem.
I took my Dremel tool
I invested in an oven roast and removed what I thought was all the skin and cut it into chunks. Turns out that even the tiniest piece of that silvery skin can make your life hell. Which happened to me immediately. Nothing came out of the grinder at all at first. I thought it was broken until I removed the cap and got rid of the tiniest piece of fat. I began again.
Then it was smooth sailing. Well, sort of. This is not easy to do by hand at all!
I cleaned out the last of the meat using by putting of bread through the grinder which worked pretty well. I found out later from online friends that it is much easier to grind meat that has been in the freezer a while.
After washing it and drying it completely, I lightly oiled it and put it in a bag with some brown rice for storage (thanks Alton Brown).
I used the meat to make Chuck Hughes’ Super Burger. It was one of the best and most tender burgers I have ever had!
The only problem? Not only did grinding the meat hurt my shoulder, my hands killed for DAYS!!! I was in agony. I think I am going to have to blindfold my husband and get him to do the manual labour next time because there is no way I can do it again and he is a tad more squeamish than I am about meat.
I love Jamie Oliver’s passion for helping kids, I do. But I care about YOU! I care about us adults and what we are eating too. I hope you watch his show tonight and keep in mind that it is so important to learn as much as you can about your food and make it yourself if you can. I feel so bad for Jamie, he is trying so hard and the world is not listening.
Well I am Jamie! And I will be watching and listening tonight.
You can grind meat in the food processor. Mark Bittman has a nice piece http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/23/dining/23mini.html?_r=1
Thanks for commenting Dan! In that video I linked to with Alton Brown, he says that the texture and consistency is just not the same in a food processor. I wish! Would make my life a lot easier!
I’m not sure if you have a Kitchen Aide mixer or not but they have an attachment kit available that you can put on it. It works fantastic!! Though I’ve only done it once or twice.
One of our local grocery stores does grind the meat in house which is my preferred place to buy it when I can.
I do Ellie but the attachment is well over $100 which I just can’t bear to spend and now I don’t have to although my husband might buy me one after I get him to do the grinding.
Oh that is so cool! I would totally buy from them too if I had that as an option.
came here via octoberfarm…i love jamie too… and i watched the video…i have been on the fence regarding ground meat for a while…and this pushed me over…
i am off of ground meat in the store…i love how you ground your own…the burger looks great
happy to stop by today
kary and teddy
It’s hard to ignore, isn’t it?! I will sure be eating less of it by having to grind it myself but that’s OK and thanks! That burger really was so tender and delicious, it was crazy. Nice to meet you! 🙂
Maybe if you attached the grinder to something lower, like your kitchen table, it would be less arm/shoulder strain using it?
Eeeeewwww! Leave it to Jamie to make me super hungry one minute and want to toss my cookies the next…lol. LOVE what he’s doing, he’s the best! My dad apparently has a meat grinder, but keeps forgetting to look for it. Going to have to bug him about it again, I would really be much more comfortable with home ground meat.
My Mom had a meat grinder just like that when I was a kid. She used it once in a while to make sausage meat from game like deer and moose. It’s tough, tough work to grind meat, I know.
A good recipe that captures the way home to prepare a good beef!
Kiss!
http://hubpages.com/hub/Does-Canadian-Ground-Beef-Use-Ammonia
I found this article, it says Canada does not use it.
What do you think?
Thanks for posting about this topic, it is very important to us all!
I often buy halal meat to be honest (not strictly for faith purposes) but I know usually a halal animal is treated kind of separate from the others so it’s not all mixed in with meats from all over. I know there is less blood in it and it’s not dyed (can’t see the reason) and it’s cheaper.
A local halal butcher too will grind the pieces of sirloin steaks meat in front of me into ground beef if I ask.
If anyone wants to know what halal means it just means they mentioned “in the name of God…” before killing the animal and it is left to drain the blood out of the veins quickly before it seizes up so the meat is generally less bloody.
No other differences.
Please let us know if you find more info about out meat practices.
Well that is a relief! Still, who knows what part of the animal the beef is coming from but thank you for that link! If Halal meat were available to me here, I would absolutely buy some. Sadly I only have major grocery chains here but that is fascinating, thank you! I am glad you have that available to you. Sounds much better to me!
Ooohhhhhhhh you have a grinder???? That means you can make Falafel… Mmmmmmmmm….
I am now drooling with envy.
*quietly cleaning up puddle of drool*
It’s all rather impressive, but I just stick my fingers in my ears when Jamie Oliver starts talking because I don’t really want to know!
He’d convince me to make my own ground beef and mayonnaise and whatnot, maybe even raise my own cow in the back yard, but life is too short!
I totally get behind the idea, just too lazy/busy to follow through.