Pre-ground v. fresh-ground beef for hamburgers

[paulraphael]

while i take a break from circulating petitions against dihydrogen monoxide, can someone fill me in on ozone activated water? is this for real? i'm intrigued.

[sjemac]

while i take a break from circulating petitions against dihydrogen monoxide, can someone fill me in on ozone activated water? is this for real? i'm intrigued.

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Ozonation does treat the water and kill off microorganisms in it. It is already used in the food processing industry on meats and poultry. To use ozonated water at home to sterilize something though, it would have to be used within a few minutes of being ozonated since ozone has a very short half life in water.

It is used in the medical community also to sterilize items that are difficult to sterilize through normal means.

[scubadoo97]

I'm quite curious about the lotus ozone generator. Low cost and seems to use a ray generator of some sort to produce ozone.

I have antique violet ray generators and tried to see if I could create the same effect but it didn't work. There is another product called nature kleen but it's more expensive. I had not really thought of ozonated water as a means of disinfection before. mmmmmm

[pounce]

....can someone fill me in on ozone activated water? is this for real? i'm intrigued.

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You can see it here:

http://www.tersano.com/

There are some test results here:

http://www.tersano.com/testresults.php

Yes, you need to use the water immediately after creating it. You get about 90 cycles with one of the cartridges. I'm very pleased with the unit I got from Costco online. I use it for some laundry and don't even use soap. It's been really useful for getting the stink out of quick dry gym cloths. This makes me think it HAS to work on meat

[project]

Apparently significantly often in practice there is a third option:

Once when I was trying yet again to do a brown beef stock much like in Escoffier (I know; I know; it's mostly hopeless), I called around and tried to find shin bones of mature cattle. Escoffier claims that mature cattle yield a better stock. I discovered that, especially here in NY, there are mature cattle available, especially 'retired' dairy cows. With some more calls, I discovered that there is a packing plant in PA that gets a large fraction of such retired NY cattle, called them, and discussed. They could sell boxes of 50 pounds or so.

Dairy cattle lead relatively good lives: If the food they eat is not good, then the flavor of the milk suffers. So, if want ground beef or stew beef that has been feed well, try retired dairy cattle!

To explain what happens to much of such meat, I was told to "think fast food".

Also that packing house has another outlet: They coarsely 'pre-grind' the meat, package it, and sell it to retail grocery stores to be 'freshly ground' again, appropriately finely, daily for sale as ground beef.

This ground beef may be among the best tasting beef readily available in the US market, e.g., better tasting than nearly anything from the 'beef cattle' part of the industry.

[deltadoc]

Old cattle are tough. Like I said, in Iowa they retire milk cows and old breeding pigs to the pizza factory.

Anyway, grinding is just a mechanical form of tenderizing. So that may be why most hamburger is ground out of tougher cuts of meat including tough old cows.

I just finished mixing up 10 lbs of ground sirloin, 7.6 lbs of tenderloin strap, and 10.4 lbs of ground chuck and vacuum sealing it in 2-lb packages.

They last a long time in the freezer, and without much if any air in the packages, they taste pretty much like they did when I first ground them.

Also bought 10 more 1-lb packages of Kobe burgers from Venison America in Hudson wisconsin. They're having a year-end reduction sale until Jan 31, 2009. These are Certified Black Angus burgers @ 4.25 a lb, two 1/2lb burgers per sealed package.

Very tasty, but I still think my blend is just a little better and definitely more expensive than $4.25/lb.

doc

[JimH]

It also raises a question that has kept me wondering for years: When you buy preground hamburger that is labeled, say 90% lean. How is that determination made? I could see if the starting materials were strictly fat and lean, they could be weighed out for an accurate number, but that is not the norm. It is more often trimmings that have some fat in them to begin with. Is it done by volume and weight or by cooking and weighing? Just curious.

HC

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They test that as they grind. They take a sample, weigh it then cook and weigh again. I know there's more to than that but that was what I was told by the guy doing the testing at the Blue Ribbon packing plant years ago.

[Heartsurgeon]

i add this link

The Blumeburger

only to establish the outer-limit of the "best" hamburger envelope...

and no, i have not tried it (although i am looking into grinding the recommended selection of meats, to make the burger patty)