Burgers and Horsemeat

[Hoofy]

rohrl said:

You need to force your meat into a mincer.

Are you hitting on me, big boy?

[Hoofy]

IroningMan said:

Hoofy said:

Presumably when making your own, you use a food mixer of some kind to grind the steaks down?

Hand-powered mincer. We have cooking days where we make burgers and mince to freeze, or turn it straight into chilli or whatever. Ditto stews, curries and soups - gets the children engaged with food and no fingers in the freezer so far.

Good good! Just that I heard on the radio "We buy our mince and make our own burgers so we aren't affected!" WTF?

[scenario8]

Changedmyname said:

Just fine a local butcher.

Edited by Changedmyname on Tuesday 19th February 20:31

Only if he's been mislabelling horsemeat, though, right?

[Terminator X]

Dump the Supermarkets and go to a Butcher instead. Whilst we should have known better it's now quite clear that the Supermarkets value profits over everything else incl the welfare of their customers.

TX.

[RobDickinson]

So easy to turn mince (from a butcher..) into tasty burgers.

[Pesty]

Terminator X said:

Dump the Supermarkets and go to a Butcher instead. Whilst we should have known better it's now quite clear that the Supermarkets value profits over everything else incl the welfare of their customers.

TX.

Do we know that? Butchers are there to make a profit as well. ARe you absolutely sure that not a single one has ever done anything to increase his profit?

[AJS-]

Well I hope it has two effects - firstly making people take more notice of what they're actually eating, not assuming that because it comes wrapped in plastic from the supermarket that it's safe, healthy and exactly what it is packaged to look like. Secondly I hope it makes people realise that there's more to eating meat than beef, chicken and pork, and become a bit more adventurous and open minded with what they eat.

Of course a more likely outcome is that they will demand tougher regulations and yet more labels on packaging to ensure their processed food doesn't contain anything icky (except for a bunch of artificial colourings, flavourings and preservatives, some sort of filler, hydrogenated oils and a whole load of things with E numbers and difficult to pronounce names, which are government approved so must be good for you.) Then they'll complain that it's too expensive to feed their 'ard workin' faaamlees, accompanied by some pitiful picture of a fat middle aged bint whose "food bill" runs to £200 a week to keep her 3 brats in hot dogs and Cheerios.

Oh it makes me mad.

[rogerthefish]

Having worked in the trade 25 years ago, I can tell you will struggle to find a straight butcher, and obviously sausages and burgers are where all the waste products go..just think of it as the contents of the waste bin...whilst the public want to pay lowest price the public don't want to know whats that they are dining on is really innards/ringpieces/eyeballs etc. It's a fact the tastiest burgers generally contain the most fat.

[HundredthIdiot]

rogerthefish said:

It's a fact the tastiest burgers generally contain the most fat.

That may be the case* for sausages but the best tasting burger is 100% unadulterated minced steak, and only needs enough fat to carry the flavours..

(*) see what I did there

[stripy7]

Changedmyname said:

Just fine a local butcher


Just findi a local butcher.

Edited by Changedmyname on Tuesday 19th February 20:32

Just findus a local butcher.

[rogerthefish]

HundredthIdiot said:

minced steak

great username

[AJS-]

Fat is basically what gives meat it's flavour. "Lean" meat is pretty bland. Personal taste comes into it, but eating a chicken breast with no skin or a lean steak with no marbling is a pretty bland affair.

[Digga]

And pork pies aren't made from proper cuts of pig, but bumholes and eyelids....

My take on this is not whether we should be eating horse (I've eating it, knowingly, several times and it's fine with me) but;

1. Putting animals into the food chain which have no business being there, either because of their general health or because specific drugs, hormones or other additives are present.
2. Passing off one meat as an other. Plain fraudulent.

[AJS-]

The biggest shock for me is that it's actually worth passing horse meat off as a beef. I assumed beef would be far cheaper.

[powerstroke]

RobDickinson said:

So easy to turn mince (from a butcher..) into tasty burgers.

you do know that's cannibalism???

[MacW]

There was a brief piece on the news over the weekend about the upturn in sales of fresh meat since the media took the bit between their teeth.

Mission accomplished imo.

[BoRED S2upid]

Is it illegal to sell horse meat in the uk? will some brave supermarket keep doing it and label the burgers correctly and see what the reaction is?

[chris watton]

How powerful the media is.

Why is this still the most talked/written about topic, yet the 1200 NHS deaths through neglect is all but buried!

IIRC, the private care homes got a severe kicking (if the bosses killed so many under their charge, there'd be trials for mass murder) - rightly so - but horsemeat top of the news - and 1200 deaths seem to be brushed under the carpet. What a sick society we have now. Not one person has died because of this horsemeat story.

As Chris Morris once said - "Keep watching to find out what to think!"..

[Odie]

Pesty said:

Do we know that? Butchers are there to make a profit as well. ARe you absolutely sure that not a single one has ever done anything to increase his profit?

There are 3 main factors that customers are primarily concerned with -

Price
Quality
Customer Service

A small butcher shop should be concentrating on the second 2 in order to out way the first in order to increase his profits, he would be foolish to mess with his products quality, BUT then who would be able to tell if a small butchers home made 100% beef burgers were 50% horse, they would still taste far far nicer than any supermarket burger.

I personally dont understand what the big fuss is about, its just miss selling, its not like they have been putting something in the burgers that can harm us (well anything that they shouldnt be putting in that can harm us)

Looking at the bigger picture you may want to considered what parts of the animal that supermarkets put into their mince and hence their burgers.

I try not to eat mince these days, or sausages or burgers.

[Bullett]

I think the issue is fraud and the traceability of food. I don't for a minute thing Findus or even the evil that is Tesco thought "tell you what lets make a bit more profit by adding horse to the burgers" I don't even thing the actual makers seemed to know. It looks like an issue much further down the chain where horse was deliberately passed off as beef.

The whole traces of horse DNA thing in more likely to be a cleaning issue, so the machine made horse burgers before the beef burgers. My issue here would be not the horse but when else has not been done up to proper food standards.

Obviously the issue of Bute makes things a bit more serious, but we are well into the realms of major criminal activity at this point.

I have no issue with eating horse, had it several times in France.

I hope that long term this leads to butchers getting more business and people caring what they eat a bit more.