It’s the Fourth of July and I have the day off. That doesn’t happen very often. A lot of people buy a lot of meat for their picnics, and barbecues and such, and someone needs to be down at the store cutting it up. That’s usually me. But this year I will be joining you all. I’ll be flipping burgers and hot dogs and going for a swim with the kids. I love steak and brats and ribs and chicken but nothing says the Fourth of July to me like a nice big juicy burger.
Nothing fancy or exciting about burgers, they’re just good. I’ve got about four pounds of day old burger, purchased at a ridiculously cheap price, thawing out as I speak or I should say type. That reminds me. I have to watch the fibbing. Sometimes I stretch the truth or even change it completely to make it sound better. I like to call it artistic license. I usually however only use that term when I get caught.
For some reason I feel like being totally honest today. I think it being the Fourth of July has something to do with my sudden change in behavior. Not that I’m not an honest person but just don’t get me started telling you about the catfish I caught over in Boise.
Anyhow since I’m on this honesty kick I might as well get a few things off my chest that have been weighing me down for some time now. You see as a retail butcher I have been a part of a scam that relieves you, the consumer, of the extra dollars in your pocket. In fact I have contributed in not only setting the well healed traps of our fore butchers but coming up with a few of my own.
What we have done is quite simple. We take one of the four or five large sections of beef and cut it into all the wonderful and different cuts you see displayed in your local supermarket meat case. Other than loin and rib meat, rounds and chucks there really isn’t a whole lot of difference in all the cuts. They just look different because we, the butchers of America, have made them look that way.
Take boneless chuck steak for example. A boneless chuck steak is nothing more than a thin chuck roast. We like to charge extra for cutting things thin and or changing the name. Porterhouse steak is a good example of getting more money with a simple name change. You see the porterhouse steaks are nothing more than the first four large T-bone steaks off the shortloin which is where the T-bones come from. So another words the porterhouse is a large T-bone and some of the butchers out there will charge extra for them. Cutlets are another example of us getting more money for a simple name change. Cutlets sounds kind of special like something you might find on the menu in one of those high class diners in a big city with the word cuisine somewhere in the name and plastered all over the cover of the menu. The truth is though that a cutlet is a fancy way of saying that your portion of meat just got cut in half. You ever see a big cutlet? No, a cutlet is either a small thin slice of meat or a small cube steak. In a restaurant you get one and you go home hungry. The cutlets in the meat case are going to cost you extra.
Another example of our creativity can be found in the boneless beef rib section. Here you will find beautiful extra lean boneless country style ribs. These little guys look very nice but they are nothing more than a rump roast which in most cases is a bottom round roast which is about the driest cut of beef in existence. They can be quite tough as well. So why pay the extra money for boneless beef ribs when rump roasts are quite often on sale dirt cheap. Then again why go with something dry and tough when you can get something good, and cheap, like hamburger?
I like to add a few shakes of soy sauce and a couple shakes of Worcestershire sauce, onion powder, garlic powder and pepper to my hamburger. Mix it all thoroughly and patty them up for the grill. I cook them on high heat for a minute or two on each side then I turn the heat down as low as it will go until the pink is all gone. There you have it! Juicy delicious burgers!