Best burger, #2: Do you know (or care) where it's from?

[Robin Garr]

Okay, the "City's Best Burger" discussion got a lot of action here, on Facebook and Twitter, and it's interesting to see the wide range of responses.

Now, the follow-up:

* Do you know where your favorite burger is from? Is it locavore? Grass-fed? Humanely raised? Hormone- and antibiotics-free? Animal-free? Or is it industrial meat, feedlot fattened and shipped hundreds of miles in the agribusiness system?

* Do you care? Is your burger's origin important to you? Why or why not?

Let 'er rip!

I know alot of the time, and do care. Not that I don't eat non-local meat, I know the quality from certain producers and therefore know the great taste in the burger. But I happily eat other burgers too.

Deb

We feature 3d Valley Farms all natural angus served on Klaus' soon to be famous pretzel roll @ The Exchange pub + kitchen. The Carr's run a great farm about 20 miles from our restaurant, many folks know them from the farmers market in downtown New Albany. You can always find the owner, Steve Carr, in the back of his pickup up truck with his stetson hat and wrangler jeans talking to the people at the market. We are also featuring their ribeye on our current winter menu. It's very important to us and our guest to know and understand where our products come from and how they are handled. Check them out at http://3dvalleyfarms.com/.

^ *ahem* ^

I find it interesting to know when available, but I do not care enough for it to really impact my purchase.

* Do you care? Is your burger's origin important to you? Why or why not?

Personally, I don't pay one bit of attention where my beef is "from", nor do I concern myself with where it spent it's days/nights, how it was "harvested" or what it might have had for it's last breakfast...All I want to know is if it tastes good between two pieces of bread.

I hardly (almost never) order a burger when eating away from home. Burgers are one thing I make that are darn good, so when eating out I make other choices. An added plus is that our rolls are made in a local kitchen (ours). FTR, my beef and eggs come from a farmer (One of Carr's neighbors) about 1/2 mile from my front door.

Now that I've got that out of the way, I pretty much agree with Ronnie on that rare occasion I "burger-out".

Here's a pic of some 3-D critters that escaped last summer and found their way onto a field adjacent to our property. If you've eaten at Ian's you may recognize one of them.

Dakota 028.JPG

[Robin Garr]

All I want to know is if it tastes good between two pieces of bread.

So stuff like sweet, sweet e. coli and healthful antibiotics and growth hormone are just lagniappe for you?

I know the quality from certain producers and therefore know the great taste in the burger.

Deb

I also know the quality of certain producers, but unfortunately I also know that some restaurants can overcook, mishandle, whatever even the best meat, so unlike you I don't automatically "know" great taste just by recognizing the producer . . .

It takes a joint effort of growers and restaurant, and quite frankly a great restaurant can make most meat taste good, while a not-so-good chef can destroy great meat..

All I want to know is if it tastes good between two pieces of bread.

So stuff like sweet, sweet e. coli and healthful antibiotics and growth hormone are just lagniappe for you?

If you're fishing, I'm not biting...

Just to clear, most of the time we dine out at local restaurants, chances are the Chef is not the one cooking your burger to temp. Generally speaking it would be an hourly line cook. So it's not quite fair to judge a chef for every dish on every menu. It is up to them to source, hire, and train those who are responsible for the majority of the food that comes out of our kitchens. I find it interesting that some menus feature a local product, yet will also put a sub par grind right next it on a menu. We pay $4+ dollars a pound for our product, and I believe that shines thru on the flavor profile of the dish. I have always been one to say you can judge a menu by the most simple dishes, because those are the ones where the product can be showcased, not hidden by other flavors. We are all entitled to our opinions, but I find it ironic that so many of us want to talk local, yet the responses so far have been less than that. Just my 2 cents, but we will do our part to keep that trend.

[Robin Garr]

... quite frankly a great restaurant can make most meat taste good, while a not-so-good chef can destroy great meat..

But it's not just about taste, Andrew. Even if Steve P doesn't want to address the issue, industrial meat raises serious issues about health, even if we choose to leave humaneness out of the discussion. That's an awful lot to ignore.

... quite frankly a great restaurant can make most meat taste good, while a not-so-good chef can destroy great meat..

But it's not just about taste, Andrew. Even if Steve P doesn't want to address the issue, industrial meat raises serious issues about health, even if we choose to leave humaneness out of the discussion. That's an awful lot to ignore.

I'm not meaning to ignore it . . . my post was just a "knee-jerk" reaction to Deb Hall stating that (paraphrasing) if she saw a good producer she would "know" the meat tastes good!

I stand by my point that it takes a producer AND a "chef" (or line cook, whomever) to make a great burger!

(we can argue whether industrial meat raises "issues" or "serious issues", but let's do that one over a local pint or two some day away from the forum)

[Robin Garr]

I stand by my point that it takes a producer AND a "chef" (or line cook, whomever) to make a great burger!

I absolutely agree, Andrew, and hope I didn't seem to imply otherwise. Of course, the same could be said for almost any dish. Quality ingredients count, but a good chef can do a lot to make mediocre product taste good, while a poor chef can certainly mess up fancy ingredients!

At some point I'd argue that tainted or rotten meat or produce can't be saved, but that would just be me being nitpicky.

(we can argue whether industrial meat raises "issues" or "serious issues", but let's do that one over a local pint or two some day away from the forum)

Sounds both fun and educational!

So stuff like sweet, sweet e. coli and healthful antibiotics and growth hormone are just lagniappe for you?

I'd treat e.coli separately from the other two issues. Most food contamination comes from improper handling during and after processing. Given that nobody's marketing their burgers as "Guaranteed e. coli Free!" I have to just trust that restaurants I frequent are handling my food like they're supposed to.

As for antibiotics and growth hormone, I don't order a side of them to spread on my burgers, but they don't bother me too much either. I can count on two hands the number of restaurant burgers I eat in a year, and I trust that's a consumption rate that's not going to expose me to high enough levels of either to have a significant effect.

Quite frankly, e-coli and any other food born illness can come from any product regardless of where it originated from. If un sanitary practices or improper temperatures take place at any link along the supply chain, it wont matter that it came from( insert favorite local farm or processor). That being said, When you consider the millions and millions pounds of meat that is processed by one of the 4 large meat companies left and number of recalls you hear about every once in awhile, I personally like to compare it to flying. Think about the number of planes that take off and land safely everyday compared to the number of crashes......Most people jump on the band wagon and only really worry about when it becomes newsworthy. Many recalls are due to being simply mislabeled( i.e. Soy allergies and the like)
Having toured many food production facilities in the past few months, I can assure you that food safety ALWAYS takes precedence over any other issue. The only food that really makes me take pause is chicken, which is another subject.
Also just to add my last .02, I'm really not a fan of grass fed only beef because it tastes, well grassy and it tends to be too lean. I much prefer grass fed and grain finished product. A fine local example of this is Harned Ranch beef out of New Haven, KY