Saturday, April 23, 2011

My Own Contribution to the Food Revolution

I watched the premier of Jaime Oliver's Food Revolution -- did you see it?  There was a segment on his show that honestly made me sick.  It was all about hamburger and "pink slime".

Pink slime is the leftover bits of the cow that isn't even fit for hot dogs.  It used to be made into animal food but not any more.  Nope!  There's a wonderful process where the last bits of meat are extracted, washed with ammonia, and ground up.  It looks like hamburger but is considered a filler, and it's been approved by the FDA to be added to hamburger meat  for up to 15%!

Luckily we have a Kitchen Aid mixer and the grinder attachment (which I've never used...until today!), but before I started I found this article on how to grind your own meat -- don't you just love the Internet?  Then we bought some stew meat that was already cubed, popped it into the freezer with the grinder attachment for about a half hour, and then starting grinding.  Really quick and easy!

I cooked up a bit for everyone to sample and we all loved it.  I'm not sure how about the fat content but based on the grease left in the pan (which was none) and the taste of the meat I'd say it's equivalent to the extra lean meat you'd find in the store.  We started with 2.96 pounds of stew meat and ended up with 2.15 pounds of hamburger.  It's probably because my kitchen scale isn't accurate or maybe the store is, hmm...

It'll be fun to do some experimenting by adding spices to the meat, or even grinding chicken or pork.  Regardless, you won't see ground beef in my food cart again!

1 comment: