Pink Slime: The Case For Grinding Your Own Meat
“Dude, it’s Beef.”
That’s the slogan the beef industry is going with in response to the ongoing “pink slime” controversy, and it’s just so remarkably telling in so many ways. First, it’s completely dismissive of all the legitimate concerns that the issue has raised about the content of the food sold in our stores. Second, it assumes this is all just a PR problem that will go away w/ an equally catchy slogan. And third, it actually celebrates the systemic ignorance that most of us have over the food we buy, because the beef industry doesn’t want an informed public. It just wants our cash.
Now I’m no vegetarian. I like beef. I like steaks, burgers, veal, you name it. I don’t even have a problem with corn-fed beef, because it’s fattier and as such tastes better. But I do believe in choice, and choice requires knowing what you’re buying and eating. And that’s really the heart of this whole “pink slime” controversy. What the beef industry doesn’t understand, nor cares to address, is that this issue is about far more than a sensationalistic nickname for a beef additive. It’s about transparency, disclosure and truth in what is being sold to consumers.
So what is “pink slime?” The official term is “lean finely textured beef.” It’s basically just the leftover scraps of meat left around after the butchering process that’s been finely ground, treated with ammonium hydroxide to rid it of bacteria, and then added to ground beef as a filling agent.
And this is where the industry bullshit comes in. The beef lobby defends pink slime as helpful because:
- It makes the ground meat served leaner
- It’s more “sustainable, because it uses all parts of the cow rather than wasting it
Both are technically true, yet equally bullshit. Sure, the scraps of meat used to create pink slime are leaner than the meat it’s being added to, so overall it lowers the fat content of the beef. And yes, using all parts of slaughtered cow is better than wasting bits.
But here’s the reality:
- Leaner ground beef is not better. Ground beef used for burgers need fat in order to remain moist while grilling. Try grilling lean beef and you wind up with an overcooked hockey puck (ever try grilling pork or chicken?Both are leaner than beef and both are very hard to grill). If you’re concerned about the fat content of ground beef, EAT LESS OF IT! Fat’s not a bad thing in moderation.
- The beef industry was already using all parts of the cow before making it into pink slime and adding it to ground beef. It’s used for hot dogs (which nobody seems to care about), pet food, cooking oil and other products
No, what this is really about is, of course, profits. The meat used in pink slime is of lower quality and therefore less expensive than your more recognizable cuts of chuck, sirloin, etc. Simply put, adding cheaper pink slime to more expensive ground beef as filler makes it more profitable. Imagine buying a bag of potato chips that rather than being half empty due to “settling,” the chip company added non-chip “filler” to make the bag seem fuller rather than just adding more chips. That’s the situation with pink slime.
Which is why in addition to the “it’s leaner” and “Dude, it’s beef” bullshit the industry spins in defense of pink slime, it also uses the “it’s cheaper” tack. The argument is that if they eliminate pink slime from ground beef, then the unaltered ground beef they ship will be more expensive. That’s true, but so what? Beef SHOULD be expensive. We eat too much of it and it’s killing us slowly. A higher price would lead to more moderation and a thinner/healthier population (not to mention, BETTER BEEF!). But that gets into issues of social engineering and opens a whole other can of worms, so consider this radical thought—if they clearly label the cheaper ground beef that includes pink slime vs. the more expensive ground beef that doesn’t, that would give consumers A CHOICE.
But the beef industry doesn’t want to do that because pink slime is truly fucking disgusting stuff, and I’m not talking just about the use of assholes and lips and the like. A key element of pink slime is the ammonium hydroxide treatment. Because the meat used in pink slime is so unbelievably over processed, it requires a chemical agent to mitigate the higher risk of bacteria like E. coli and Salmonella. Now that alone should be a red flag, but it gets better. After years of doing this, some consumers began to complain about the smell the treatment left in their beef, which led to the brilliant decision to use less ammonium hydroxide. Naturally, less treatment led to less-effective bacteria killing, which led to more cases of E coli and Salmonella.
All this from an industry hell bent on obfuscating every element of their production process. This is an industry that wants to ban photos from being taken of their feed lots, that wants laws passed to let them sue journalists for simply telling the public what they’re eating, and that resists any government regulation over how their products are labeled.
They want the sole power to choose what to disclose and what not to disclose based on what’s best for their bottom line, rather than allowing the consumer to choose based on their palate and their health. Forget about the government intervening in a meaningful way, as the beef lobby has the Dept. of Agriculture deep in their pocket. This is a $75 billion industry in the U.S. alone.
No labeling laws/standards will help, because the semantic wizards at the food company marketing departments will inevitably spin out new bullshit. Look at today’s food labeling: “no fat/low fat” products sell well, but contain loads of sugar; “no trans fat” is a popular marketing phrase, but the products have tons of sodium or salt; “sugar free” products contain sweeteners that trick the brain into thinking it’s not hungry and eating more.
That’s why I recommend not buying ground beef at all, and particularly not ground beef already formed into patties and frozen. Most meat-based E. Coli or Salmonella outbreaks are usually traced back to hamburger patties, typically due to unsanitary conditions in the process of the meat.
The alternative—grind your own beef! Whole beef steaks are far safer than processed ground beef, contains no pink slime, and keeps longer in the fridge/freezer. Meat grinders are relatively cheap. If you have a Kitchen Aid already, you can get a meat-grinder attachment for about $50. Or you can get standalone, hand-cranked grinder for about half that.
The rest is easy. Simply buy whole chuck roasts and grind it with top sirloin (equal parts) and freeze what you’re not immediately using. It tastes better, moister and it’s fun too. (Video pending).
As both a gardener and a skier, spring is a confusing time. Early spring is when we get a sudden 60 degree weekend, and invariably I struggle with what passion to pursue: slushy bumps at the Basin or getting the garden ready. Having spent the last two weekends in the mountains, this week the weather and my schedule coincided fortuitously for the garden to win out. The timing couldn’t be better. While a late frost may still strike, all my early spring planting focuses on hardy, cold tolerant plants. And now that the seeds are in the ground, I can still get up to the mountains to make turns while they germinate.
But with weekends like this, it’s tough. We had 60+ degree days, light breeze, perfect weather for finally getting into the yard again after a winter of harsh neglect. Bulbs just starting to peek through the ground. Buds forming on the trees. Water running through the hose again without fear of bursting pipes. And the deep, throaty cacophony of The Neighbor’s Goddamn Barking Dog occasionally breaking the peaceful meditation of getting my hands dirty in the finally workable soil.
Ted Allen’s “Pretentious Foodie Bullshit Meal”
This. Is. Awesome.
Stuffed Red Peppers
Ever wonder why red peppers cost $5 and green peppers $1? Start growing your own and you’ll quickly find out. I actually didn’t realize this but red peppers are just really ripe green peppers. They’re not two different plants. And growing them for the first time this year I discovered just how long it takes a green pepper to ripen into a red pepper. Months.
So, back to that $4 price swing between green and red peppers. The answer is—patience.
And the payoff is taste. Red peppers are far sweeter, and therefore versatile than green ones. The shot above is from the first red pepper I picked this year, Sept. 27, after planting the damn things back in July. The photo doesn’t do it justice, but the thing was friggin’ huge. Like almost the size of my daughter’s head huge.
So the only logical way to take advantage was stuffed bell peppers. No original recipe here. Instead I’ll refer you to this one from Epicurious. (Sorry, no shot of the finished dish). Most stuffed peppers recipes include ground beef, but I was trying to do this as a side dish for fish, so wanted a more vegetarian version. Big mistake because while it tasted awesome, the fish was totally lost. Easily could have been a main dish at these portions.
Got me thinking about other ways to stuff peppers… with couscous, or with chopped dried apricots, etc. Sky’s the limit and I’ll definitely be experimenting with it again soon.
Foraging for Chanterelles in Sweden
My family and I recently spent a week in Sweden visiting my relatives on my mom’s side in an areas of the country called Varmland. The family home is in a small village called Glava, which is just on the edge of a beautiful nature preserve/national forest called Glaskogen.
The absolute highlight of the trip for me, other than getting to see Aly meet her great-grandmother and namesake, was a very unexpected opportunity to go foraging for chanterelle mushrooms. I say unexpected because I had thought the culinary highlight of the trip would be the moose meat meal that I only get on my few-and-far-between visits to Sweden. (Separate post on that to follow later).
It all began one evening when we took a hike with my aunt Yvonne and her husband Lars for a lakeside picnic dinner. Not steps away from our parked car, barely three feet into the trail I came inches away from stomping through a massive cluster of chanterelle mushrooms before Lars warned me off.
