Voice-Tribune review by Robin Garr
When you're buying a car, a suit, a pair of shoes, a watch, or even a hamburger, quality makes a difference. Leather seats or plastic in your family limo? All-weather wool from Armani or shiny polyester from T.J.Maxx? Mephisto loafers, or sneakers from Payless? Tag Heuer or a fake Rolex? Oh, hell, this is too complicated. Let's go get a burger.
Or not.
When we're in the market for luxury, quality may look and feel good, but you can cut corners without jeopardizing life and limb. Cut corners on ground beef, and you may be taking more of a risk.
It may not happen often, but cheap ground beef has a record: It can kill you. A food poisoning outbreak in 1993, attributed to a virulent form of E. coli in hamburgers, sickened 700 people and killed four children.
The problem with industrial ground beef, experts say, is that you don't know where it comes from, and you don't know where it's been. Worse, everything gets mixed together. "If pathogens are present when meat is ground," warns the United States Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service, "then more of the meat surface is exposed to the harmful bacteria. Also, grinding allows any bacteria present on the surface to be mixed throughout the meat."
All together now: "Eeeuuuwww!"
But there's a way to have your ground beef and eat it too, safely and with real enjoyment: Stick to meat from locally produced, grass-fed critters, grown by folks you can meet face to face at the farmers' market. In Louisville, I suggest Bluegrass Burgers, 3334 Frankfort Ave., or the subject of today's dissertation, Grind Burger Kitchen, the recently established land-based operation of the city's popular Grind Burger Truck. ...
Read my full review on LouisvilleHotBytes.com:
http://www.louisvillehotbytes.com/quali ... er-kitchen
and in the Voice-Tribune:
http://www.voice-tribune.com/life-style ... r-kitchen/
Grind Burger Kitchen
3311 Preston Highway
851-7333
http://louisvillegrind.blogspot.com
https://facebook.com/louisvillegrind
Robin Garr's rating: 85 points
As I'm sure you can imagine the Health Department was not a fan of us grinding beef on a truck let alone serving a rare burger on a truck (despite the fact that, as Robin said, it would have to be practically well done to reach the suggested temp) we just decided to make it policy that unless you're a regular customer and we've built some rapport with you the lowest we would go is medium rare despite the fact that you could eat our beef raw if you really wanted to. As for determining the doneness of a burger based on color, industrial meat is treated with carbon monoxide to keep it red longer which has trained the public to think that the color determines how done it is. It's not to say that it doesn't have something to do with it, but I think we're pretty judicial on our temps and even warn people that they will come out a little more pink than at some other places, but perhaps you're used to something more pink. Regardless, if anyone would like to read more about how color doesn't determine doneness as well as taking temps (or just cooking thousands and thousands of burgers and knowing your product) I encourage you to read this article.
