- 10 minutes ago
Butcher Jake Dickson (Dickson’s Farmstand Meats) breaks down everything you need to know before buying ground beef, from the best fat ratios and grass-fed vs. grain-fed beef to packaging, labels, and grind size. Learn how to spot red flags like too much fat or too lean, why frozen burgers might be better than fresh, and what actually signals better quality. From taste tests to cooking results, this guide will change how you shop for ground beef forever.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00When you go to buy ground beef, there are so many options.
00:02Here are my pro tips for buying the best.
00:05I'm Jake Dixon, owner and operator
00:06of Dixon's Farmstead Meats in New York City.
00:08Here's my ultimate ground beef buying guide.
00:15First things first, what is ground beef?
00:17We're doing ground beef, we're taking either a whole mussel
00:20or trim from the animal and we're sending it through a die
00:23with set amounts of holes and a blade that cuts it.
00:26So essentially we're breaking up the muscle fiber
00:28to create a uniform product that we know as ground beef.
00:32In your package of ground beef,
00:33you could have meat coming from all different places,
00:35different cuts, different animals, even different countries.
00:39So it's really important to know
00:41what is going into the package when you buy it.
00:43How the animal was raised and what it was fed
00:45makes a real difference in your burger.
00:47We've got a lot of packages here
00:48and they're all making different claims
00:50or no claims depending on which one.
00:52You can see here from the key foods package,
00:54so this is the freshly ground beef.
00:55This was ground at the supermarket,
00:57so you don't see a USDA label on it and they're making no claims.
01:00It means that it was fed antibiotics and hormones and growth promoters.
01:05That's just the fact of how beef in our country is raised.
01:08So if they make no claims,
01:09you should believe there are things that are not great going on with that beef.
01:13This next one here, which is the all natural,
01:15that's the only claim they're making.
01:17You'll always see all natural with an asterisk.
01:19When it comes to meat,
01:20when it says all natural and nothing else,
01:22it just means minimally processed.
01:24There are some things on here that matter and some things that don't for me.
01:27You'll see they're saying it's USDA prime beef.
01:30Prime is mostly about marbling.
01:32With ground beef, we can add or take away as much fat as we want.
01:35So marbling is irrelevant.
01:37So I don't really care about this USDA prime.
01:39The things that matter to me though are the no antibiotics ever and no hormones ever.
01:44This one certified animal welfare, which I think is a good thing.
01:47It means a third party has certified that these animals were raised to a specific standard.
01:51And there's all different standards for animal welfare, but it's better than nothing.
01:55So this one is making a claim of pasture raise.
01:57Pasture raise could mean a lot of things,
01:59depending on how each farm defines it or each company defines it.
02:02It could mean happy animal out in a field on a small farm,
02:05which is what we would hope it would be.
02:07But it could also be in a pen with access to outdoors.
02:10Do they mean, you know, it's a one cow for every acre?
02:14Is it a smaller pen with access to outdoors?
02:16Double check what the claim means if it's something that matters to you.
02:19Generally, I would say the more claims that they're making
02:22and registering with the USDA, the better.
02:25You can see the USDA organic label,
02:27and that's going to implicitly cover a number of different claims.
02:30So that will mean no hormones, no antibiotics or growth promoters.
02:34It also means that the animal ate non-GMO feed through its entire life cycle.
02:38Regenerative agriculture is a big buzzword right now.
02:42They're essentially saying that raising these animals,
02:44instead of taking away from the land, they're bringing back to the land.
02:46So through the way they manage the cattle,
02:48they're improving the soil health and the grasslands.
02:51So it's trying to mitigate the environmental impact of cattle on the land.
02:55So we're bringing large herbivores back to the land,
02:58and their hooves can aerate it and their manure can fertilize it.
03:01Some people believe this is realistic.
03:04Some people believe it's a load of BS.
03:06But if you're someone who eats beef,
03:08but you also care about beef's environmental impact,
03:10looking for a regenerative tag or label claim could be important to you.
03:14Over the last 10 years, you've seen a lot of grass-fed beef hitting the shelves.
03:17It does not mean that the animal is out on pasture all the time.
03:21It means that they are eating grass, no grains for their entire life cycle.
03:25But it could be eating baleage, which is like a fermented hay,
03:29or it could be hay that's brought to it.
03:31It doesn't mean that it's a happy cow living in a field.
03:34A huge amount of the grass-fed beef coming into our country is from Australia,
03:38raised on massive farms, huge farms, because they have a big land mass.
03:42I would always rather buy from a small farmer,
03:44whether it be grass-fed or grain-finished, that raises a few cattle or 100 cattle,
03:50as opposed to a large operation that might raise 10,000 cattle,
03:53even though they're raised on grass.
03:55Grass-fed and grain-finished beef does taste different.
03:58Let's have a little taste test.
04:13Feels like a burger.
04:16I took a big bite.
04:18It's pretty juicy.
04:19It's not dry.
04:20The texture is pretty good.
04:21Sometimes I find with grass-fed beef that's a little bit too dry,
04:24or you'll get like a granular texture in your mouth, and I didn't get that.
04:28It doesn't have like a big beefy or irony flavor I would expect from the grass-fed beef.
04:32My guess on this one is grain-finished beef.
04:38All right, going for burger number two.
04:40Is this burger number two?
04:43Not entirely dissimilar to the first one.
04:46Maybe like a little bit more juicy?
04:48It's like running down my hand.
04:50I'm not sure that means anything.
04:52I think like a little bit less flavorful this one.
04:54I'm going to wait.
04:55I'm going to hold off until the final burger to make my call of which one I think.
04:59All right, I'm going in for burger number three.
05:02I think I know my verdict.
05:03My belief is it is one and three are grain-finished, and two is the grass-fed burger.
05:10I think number two, slightly more flavorful.
05:13I think sometimes not always with grass-fed beef.
05:16The animal takes longer to grow.
05:17It works a little bit harder in its life, so you can get like a bigger beefiness to it.
05:21Whereas one and three are a little bit more like generic like burger flavor.
05:25I hope I don't look like a fool.
05:26I'm completely wrong.
05:30I nailed it.
05:31I feel pretty good about that.
05:32But this one is like a little bit bigger beefiness to it.
05:34I thought it was like a little bit more appealing.
05:36And these weren't bad, just like a little bit more generic flavor-wise.
05:40Like if someone handed me a barbecue, I'd be equally excited about them.
05:43You know, if I'm nitpicking here, I think the flavor was like a little bit better on this grass-fed
05:47one.
05:47Now, I'm not saying that universally grass-fed beef has a better flavor.
05:50Grass-fed beef doesn't mean better.
05:52It just means different.
05:54Next up is fat content.
05:55The ratio of lean to fat in the package is going to change everything
05:59about how your beef looks, tastes, and cooks up.
06:02This is a high fat blend here, so it's 73-27.
06:05Really fatty ground beef you'll probably have a hard time finding these days.
06:08It's much less popular.
06:10I don't use anything this fatty.
06:11You often hear people say fat is flavor,
06:13but the problem with this is most of that fat is going to render out,
06:16and you're just going to get a lot of shrinkage,
06:18and you'll be paying for meat that you're not eating.
06:20Next up, we've got kind of my favorite all-purpose ratio, which is an 80-20.
06:24It's good for meatballs and burgers.
06:26It's not overly fatty.
06:28You're going to have good flavor to it, so it'll stay nice and juicy.
06:31I use this for pretty much everything,
06:33and it's what we sell in our store in Chelsea Market.
06:35With this one here, we've got a 93-7 ratio, so it's very, very lean.
06:39I don't use this for many things.
06:41I find that you're just not getting enough fat for flavor.
06:44We experience juiciness as a ratio of water to fat,
06:47and so if there's no fat, it's going to eat dry even if there's a lot of water.
06:51This last one here, we're getting to the really ultra lean, so it's 95-5.
06:55Kind of almost no fat at all in this product.
06:57I wouldn't really use it for anything,
06:59unless you have somebody who has an issue with fat in their diet.
07:02It's going to not taste like a lot without the fat
07:05to deliver those flavors to our palate.
07:07Fat ratio is really going to affect how these cook.
07:09Let's take a look.
07:16Okay, so we sauteed up two pounds of each of those three fat ratios,
07:20and really, you're seeing pretty much exactly as you'd expect.
07:23Right here, we've got the 73-27, and it rendered out a tremendous amount of fat.
07:28Unless you're a homesteader who's going to capture that fat
07:31and fry up your eggs in the morning,
07:32you've paid for something that you're probably not going to eat.
07:34That being said, you can see, as it rendered out,
07:37then kind of fried up bits of the ground beef in it.
07:40So you do get some nice browning on it that you might not see with the other one.
07:43Next up is our 80-20.
07:45You'll see there's some nice fat in there,
07:47but it's not even close to how much you'd see in the other one.
07:50It looks pretty good.
07:51It's what I would expect.
07:52I would say it's probably going to eat pretty juicy if I was using this for chili,
07:55but I'm not going to be pouring off tons of fat
07:57to keep it from being an unpleasant eating experience for my guests.
08:00And then last up here, we've got our super lean.
08:03The pan is almost completely dry.
08:05It's got a little bit of oil on the bottom,
08:07but it's rendered out almost nothing.
08:08So I guess from a protein to purchased ratio, you're very high,
08:13but from an eating experience, it does not look very appealing at all.
08:17Let's do a pour-off test.
08:18All right, I'm going to pour off this 73-27 and try not to make a giant mess.
08:24All right, wow, look at all that.
08:25That is all the fat that rendered out that 73-27 blend.
08:30It's quite a bit.
08:31Now we're going to get into the 80-20 blend.
08:37That's a decent amount of fat, but not a ton.
08:41Last but not least, our lean, the 93-7.
08:44I don't think anything's coming out of this pan.
08:49There's definitely no fat to render here.
08:51I think it's a fail on the render test.
08:53Nothing's coming out of this one that's dry as a bone.
08:56There's just not enough excess fat for it to be poured off.
08:59You're looking at these here.
09:00You'll see the lean there just wasn't enough fat to really get nice browning.
09:04And then on the fatty stuff, you're just losing a tremendous amount.
09:07So there's a lot of extra meat that you've paid for that you're just pouring off and putting in the
09:11trash.
09:12You've kind of got a nice amount of extra here that came off because you've exceeded what amount of fat
09:16that this meat on the 80-20 could hold, but not so much that it's excessive.
09:19So I would just go with the 80-20 every time.
09:21Your fat ratio is really going to affect how your burger cooks up.
09:24So we're going to add them from fattiest to leanest to the pan and see what happens.
09:33You can see that the fatty one is like already rendering like crazy.
09:36So there's good and bad things that we're seeing, right?
09:38The meat's going to get an awesome caramelization.
09:40It's basically frying itself, which I like.
09:42The downside is that it's probably going to shrink a lot.
09:46My prediction is that this one's going to shrink almost not at all.
09:48This one's going to be like a little hockey puck when we're at the end.
09:51And then this one here is going to be a nice burger in the middle.
09:54And the Maillard reaction is we're seeing the process of browning
09:57as the meat comes into contact with fat and heat.
09:59Took a little bit longer, but we got a little bit of caramelization on the 80-20.
10:03That's a nice browning on that one.
10:07I'm going to flip this one.
10:08I don't think we're going to get much color on it.
10:10I was wrong.
10:11It actually has some of the best color of all.
10:13We're cooking these on a griddle right now.
10:15If this was on a grill,
10:16I'm pretty sure the left side of my grill would be on fire.
10:20Because all of this fat would have rendered, hit the flames, and caught on fire.
10:24Just like with the saute test, they're basically doing exactly as you'd expect them to do.
10:28We're getting a lot of shrinkage and a ton of fat coming out of this guy.
10:3180-20 is getting a little bit of rendering, but not excessively.
10:34And then we're just seeing like nothing on that 93-7.
10:37There's some sort of like weird pink ooze coming out of the 93% lean that we're not seeing on
10:43the others.
10:44And there's just like no fat really at all that's rendered out of that.
10:48And that's like a totally different texture than the other one.
10:50So I'm going to pull these guys and let them rest.
10:57So we've got maximum shrinkage, medium shrinkage, zero shrinkage over here from fatty to lean.
11:03Really nice color on this one that fried in its own fat.
11:06Surprisingly good color on the lean.
11:08It does surprise me a little bit that we didn't get as much caramelization on the 80-20.
11:12But let's see how they all taste.
11:13So this right here is our 73-27.
11:16It's got some nice fat in there.
11:18Like it looks pretty juicy, even though I did overcook it a little bit.
11:22It needs salt, but aside from that, texture's all right.
11:25It is a little greasy.
11:26There's a residual rendered fat that stayed in there.
11:29It's coating my mouth a little bit in a way that I'm not really loving.
11:32Let's try the 80-20.
11:35It's got good texture to it.
11:36I don't get that same coating in my mouth that I did with the other one.
11:39It's pretty juicy.
11:40It's a tasty burger.
11:41Now we're going into the 93-7.
11:43The texture is not awful, but it has almost no flavor.
11:47The difference in flavor between bun and meat is very minimal.
11:50Almost like an empty protein from a flavor perspective.
11:53A lot of people are buying this 93% over the 80-20 because they're trying to maximize protein.
11:58But the truth is the difference in protein levels between these two products is extremely minimal.
12:03And the eating experience of the 80-20 is going to be far superior.
12:06So I recommend you get the 80-20, enjoy that burger, and still get almost the same nutritional value.
12:12When buying ground beef, even the packaging matters.
12:14We've got a number of different ways that ground beef is being packaged and stored for the supermarket.
12:19This package from Empire is known as MAP or Modified Atmospheric Packaging.
12:23There's a little bubble, high pressure in there, because they've removed the oxygen and inserted an inert gas,
12:29like argon gas or nitrogen gas, that will prevent spoilage.
12:32But they're still going for the look of a freshly packed product.
12:35One thing I don't really like about all the MAP gas products you see is that you won't usually see
12:39a pack by date,
12:40only a sell-by or use-by date. If this has been in here for, let's say, two weeks, which
12:46is totally possible,
12:47yes, it might not be spoiled in the sense that it will make you sick, but it might not be
12:52delicious either.
12:53Meat will change and not necessarily be good quality over time.
12:58This under vacuum seal, you'll see it kind of can squeeze the meat a little bit and change the texture,
13:03but at the same time, it will maintain the freshness really well for a long period of time.
13:07It's also really good if you're going to freeze it because you won't get freezer burn.
13:09One way to tell if vacuum sealed meat is freshly packaged is you can see how much purge is there.
13:14The pressure of the package will actually squeeze some of the liquid out of the meat,
13:18and just over time, it will generally come out.
13:20I like to have as little purge as possible because you can tell that the time between
13:24when you're buying it and when this was actually packaged has to be pretty short.
13:28So over here, we've got the freshly ground in the supermarket.
13:31So typically, the supermarket, they would grind every morning.
13:33In this case, they are putting it in their classic styrofoam tray, covering in saran wrap.
13:37This will have a very short shelf life on it.
13:39They're not doing anything to preserve it, which is not a bad thing.
13:42It just means you have to know when you bring it home, you got to use it right away.
13:45My recommendation would be if you're going to use it in the next 24 hours,
13:49buy the freshly ground and package.
13:50If it's going to be in the next five days or so, buy something vacuum sealed.
13:53And my preference is to skip the gas packed product altogether.
13:57When shopping for ground beef, color really matters, but sometimes it can be a bit misleading.
14:01So for instance, this was ground this morning and vacuum sealed, but it looks really dark.
14:06That's because redness you see from meat is exposure to oxygen.
14:10This meat was so freshly packaged, it never had a chance to bloom or become red.
14:15So it's been about 10 minutes here.
14:16You'll see it's getting a nice rosy red color to it.
14:18Basically, if meat goes from dark to redder, it's fresh.
14:22If it doesn't, it's past this prime.
14:24You may be tempted to buy pre-made patties to save time, but this is what I recommend.
14:28All commercial pre-made patties are done in a patty machine, which works by essentially
14:33putting meat in a large drum and an auger smears it into a mold that then pops it out.
14:39The problem with this is that it can overwork the meat and draw out proteins that then bind
14:43together to make a tough burger.
14:45So when you look at this patty, you can see that it's almost like the meat is homogeneous
14:49because it's been smeared into a mold and that's how it's formed.
14:53You can pull out a protein called myosin that can bind it up and give it a tough texture.
14:57Now the Bubba's patties here or all your frozen patties are made in the same way,
15:02but I actually think it's a little bit better almost if you're going to get a pre-made patty
15:05to have it frozen because they make the patty and then they immediately freeze it,
15:09kind of stopping the process of binding.
15:11But what happens when you have meat that's kind of mixed up too much,
15:15those proteins come out and they form bonds.
15:18And so as it sits in the refrigerator, it's going to be tougher.
15:20So on day one when this is made, it might be kind of a tender patty,
15:24but on day three, four or five, it actually could be tough when you go to buy it.
15:28I would stay away from a fresh pre-made patty,
15:30unless you're in the supermarket and you know that it was made there that day.
15:34These are the Bubba Burger.
15:35They're a really popular frozen patty.
15:37You'll find them in supermarkets all over the place.
15:39I think they're all right.
15:40I don't like the sourcing that much that you'll find in the freezer aisle,
15:43but from a quality standpoint, they're pretty good burgers.
15:45They cook up well.
15:46The thing I don't like about them is that they're trying to look more natural by being irregular.
15:50I would rather a symmetrical product that's not trying to be looking handmade
15:55when it came out of a machine than like this weird shape that was stamped from a mold.
15:59But that's my personal preference.
16:01It won't really affect the cooking in any different way.
16:03When you go to the supermarket and you buy a pre-made patty,
16:06you're going to pay a premium for it.
16:08You're much better off buying freshly ground meat and making it yourself.
16:12This is about a pound of meat.
16:14Most people like a bout of a third pound burger.
16:17I don't want to overwork it because if I work it too much,
16:20then I'm going to pull out too much myosin and proteins and create too much bind,
16:24I'll eat tough.
16:24So I kind of like form a ball and toss it a little back and forth,
16:28squeezing it with each hand just to get a little bit of bind so it doesn't fall apart.
16:32And then I like to use my hand as my mold instead of using like a pre-made mold.
16:37So I basically form a C with my fingers and I just rotate right with my thumb,
16:40pressing it in to form a mold.
16:42You get a nice symmetrical so it cooks evenly.
16:45So this is kind of like my favorite style of burger
16:47because I like it to be more on the medium rare or rare side in the middle.
16:50If you look at these two different products, they're completely different.
16:53I think it's pretty obvious which one you'd rather eat.
16:55This one, you can actually see the pieces of meat.
16:57You can tell that it's a freshly ground product.
17:00Whereas on this side, it's got like a weird smear.
17:02You can actually see where it's been kind of like dragged over,
17:05pulling at the fibers of the meat as it's been smeared into the mold.
17:08I would always eat something like this before I eat something like this.
17:11Here we cooked a pre-made, the frozen Bubba patty and a handmade one.
17:16And they're pretty obvious, you know, which one's which,
17:19but also like which one's kind of more appealing looking.
17:22Some strange things happen with this pre-made patty.
17:25It cupped a little bit, had some strange things going on texturally.
17:29So here's the frozen Bubba burger.
17:31It's a bit gray inside.
17:32Sometimes you see that with frozen meat.
17:34It loses that color, but doesn't necessarily mean it's going to affect the flavor so much.
17:38This is the hand-formed burger that we made from freshly ground beef.
17:41It's got a little bit more of a crumbly texture, looser packed, maybe a little bit juicier.
17:46Sometimes with pre-formed patties, you get something called persistent pinking.
17:50So this was that fresh pre-made patty.
17:52Even though this one was cooked to the same temperature as the others,
17:55because it was pre-formed and sat, it stays pinker.
17:58It's important that you use a thermometer when testing for temperature and done this,
18:02because you can't go by color alone.
18:04When it comes to patties, always better to buy fresh meat, make your own.
18:07You'll get a better result and you'll save a bit of money.
18:10When it comes to ground beef, breed doesn't really matter.
18:13Breed mostly affects the quality of the overall animal,
18:16how fast it grows and how it marbles.
18:18But that's only really relevant when we're talking about steaks.
18:21With ground beef, we can create a fat to lean ratio just what we want.
18:25We're crafting it.
18:26So in these packages, you'll see things like certified Angus, which is a breed of cattle.
18:31You see Wagyu, which is a Japanese breed of cattle.
18:34Wagyu is a breed of cattle that originates in Japan.
18:37Prized for its extreme marbling capabilities.
18:40Now here in the United States, we have crossbreed of Angus with that Wagyu cattle,
18:44but it's not the same thing.
18:45Sometimes it's amazing, really, really great beef.
18:48And other times it doesn't mean much of anything.
18:50For ground beef, I just don't care that much.
18:52Truthfully, marbling is irrelevant for ground beef.
18:54This package that says American Kobe beef is really confusing,
18:58and I'm not sure what it means.
18:59Kobe beef would be Wagyu beef raised in Kobe, Japan.
19:02This doesn't even say that it's Wagyu beef and Kobe is on another continent.
19:07So I'm not really sure what this package means.
19:09My guess is it's just marketing.
19:11When it comes to ground beef, breed really doesn't matter.
19:13I look for other claims on the package.
19:15If you see dry age listed along with ground beef, I would definitely buy it.
19:19You'd really only see it in small butcher shops like ours.
19:21Essentially dry aging, we are hanging the meat and exposed to the elements in a temperature,
19:26humidity, and air velocity controlled environment.
19:28A lot of things happen during this process, but the main thing as it pertains to ground beef
19:32is a concentration of flavors by evaporation.
19:35It's going to make it seem like a juicier, more concentrated flavor
19:37by having a lower percentage of water to fat ratio.
19:41So if you see dry aged ground beef, I would definitely buy it.
19:43It would be a superior eating experience.
19:47One thing you'll see denoting quality in a lot of supermarkets is something saying
19:51ground sirloin for high quality and ground chuck as low quality.
19:54But I would argue in some ways it's reversed.
19:56Chuck is seen as low quality because it's tough, but by grinding it,
20:00we are rendering it tender and it has really a lot of flavor and good fat.
20:04So I think ground chuck makes some of the best ground beef.
20:06Whereas sirloin, which is a tender cut for a steak,
20:08is kind of irrelevant for a ground beef or burger.
20:12Because we're going to grind it up, we don't care about the tenderness of the whole muscle.
20:15All we care about is the end product.
20:17You're better off getting that chuck at a cheaper price that's going to end up with a better burger
20:21than the sirloin that's going to cost you a premium.
20:23Here are my thoughts on food safety as pertains to ground beef.
20:27Almost all recalls for fresh meat in our country are from ground beef.
20:31This is because mass-produced ground beef is pulling from lots and lots of sources.
20:36In one package, you could have 50 different animals represented
20:39from different farms all over the world.
20:41Mostly when we look at recalls, we're talking about E. coli.
20:43That's essentially a bacteria that's in the stomach that during the slaughter process ends up
20:48on the hide of the animal and then on the meat.
20:50When you cook a steak, it's killed because it's on the outside of the steak.
20:53But with ground meat, what we're doing is we are folding that exterior surface into the middle.
20:58That's why they're recommending you cook ground meat to 160 degrees,
21:01because they want to cook it all the way through.
21:03So your ideal circumstances is you buy from a single farmer or a small butcher shop like mine,
21:09where you know it came from one, two, maybe three animals.
21:12And then you can trust that meat and you can cook it to medium rare.
21:15But the less confidence you have in the sourcing, from a food safety perspective,
21:19I would recommend cooking it all the way through to be safe.
21:21All right, let's talk about grinds and how they are made.
21:24Ground beef is not made in a food processor type environment.
21:28It's made with a specific meat grinder that works in a different way.
21:31So essentially, you have this auger here that's going to force meat pushing into the holes
21:36and then a blade spins behind it and cuts it.
21:38Typically, we'll do multiple passes when we make ground beef through a large one
21:42to break up the bigger muscle fibers, and you'll do a second pass through
21:46or even a third in successfully smaller holes.
21:49Most of what you find in the supermarket is going to be a really fine grind.
21:52So this is the fine grind that you'd find pretty much in every supermarket in America.
21:56And this is kind of a more artisanal product like you'd find in our shop in Chelsea Market,
22:01which is a coarser grind.
22:02It has a bigger particle size, so the pieces of meat are larger.
22:05It's less smeared into each other, so it's more distinct pieces.
22:09If you go to a butcher shop or even ask the person behind the meat counter at your supermarket,
22:12you can request a coarser grind, and I recommend you give it a try.
22:15You might find it's a little bit more of an elevated kind of steakhouse experience
22:18that you'll really like.
22:20All right, we're going to make my steakhouse burger.
22:22We're going to make a big one using our coarsely ground beef, about a half pound.
22:26I am going to eyeball it, so I'm going to work it a little bit
22:28just to pull out some of those proteins, get a good bind on it.
22:33I like to heavily salt because you're going to leave quite a bit in the pan.
22:39This burger, which I brought from my store and I know all about where this was sourced from,
22:43I'll cook to rare or medium rare.
22:45But if I was buying beef from a place that I didn't know anything about,
22:48for food safety I would cook a totally different style burger and I would cook it well done.
22:57All right, so this is a perfectly cooked steakhouse burger from our store in Chelsea Market.
23:02I like it. It's nice and juicy. I like that.
23:07It's pretty damn good.
23:08With this big burger and the coarser texture, it's going to eat a little bit juicier.
23:12It's really tender, but it's got like a little bit of texture to the meat and I really like.
23:16It's kind of like an elevated steakhouse experience.
23:18I definitely recommend you seek out a coarser grind, ask your butcher,
23:22ask the guys at the meat counter at your supermarket.
23:25Definitely worth giving a try.
23:26Well, there you have it.
23:27Everything you need to know to buy the best ground beef you can find.
23:30Know how it was raised, pick your fat ratio, check your packaging, hand form those patties,
23:36don't worry about the breed, and if you can find it, try a coarser grind.
23:39And when you're shopping, take a pick of this chart and bring it along so you can
23:43help decide what to buy. And go make yourself a good burger. Cheers.
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