On the topic of ground meat, if you buy it from your local supermarket, the packages are labeled with the lean/fat ratio. To my knowledge, 80/20 is supposed to be a good for burgers. Your average cut of Kobe meat probably has a lot more fat than that, but you could probably bring it down if you blended it with leaner meat. But what's the point in that?

I like 85% lean for most everything; anything leaner than that is useless for culinary purposes, and while 80% isn't too alarmingly greasy, below that you lose too much of the weight you're paying for in meltoff. (IMO, of course.)

Oh, and here's a butcher-counter tip: Some markets, rather than labeling by percentage of lean, will identify their grade of ground beef by cut (ground round, ground chuck and so on). Chuck is naturally around or a little bit less than 85% lean, and it's a tasty cut as well; as it such makes pretty much ideal ground beef - but, for reasons I don't really understand, some places will label anything with around an 85% lean content "ground chuck", regardless of whether it actually is chuck.

If you're in any doubt, you can always just grab a chuck steak of around the weight you want, take it to the counter, and ask them to grind it for you. Unless you're me, and you always seem to get to your local supermarket 10 minutes after the butcher has finished cleaning the meat grinder for the evening, they should be happy to do that for you, and then you'll know what you have really is ground chuck and not, say, ground round with some extra fat thrown in to balance it out. The latter has the right fat content but never quite tastes as good.

--G.
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I'll throw those on the grill and wait for the edges to start browning, and for juice to start pooling up on the top, and flip them and let them go for another couple minutes on that side. Bison's leaner than beef, so it doesn't take much. I've got it down to where I can get a perfect pink-middle medium by eye. Top with as much american cheese as you can handle and you're good to go.

Bison's a little more 'beefier' than beef, and has a bit more flavor to it. I'm sorely tempted to try and make my own kitfo out of it one of these days- Ard and I have a favorite restaurant in Little Ethiopia here in LA and kitfo's the end to just about every meal we have there. OM nom nom.

	Chad Collier Smirking Kilrathi The Captain of the Gravy Train

I first started to eat Buffalo after I read Dan O'Brian's Buffalo for the Broken Heart. Finding it a decent price was hard, but a local vendor did buffalo jerkey and at $10 a lb it was a complete steal. Both he and O'Brian agree that buffalo burgers are evil because they lack the right fat content...

...unless you're eating feedlot buffalo which is just as unhealthy as feedlot cattle (See Fast Food Nation). I don't do buffalo often, but when I do it's from places I know are use a grassfed, non-grain finish, to their meat. If I'm going to blow $5lbs for chuck I'd like to be sure I'm not paying $2 of that out in antibiotics and corn.

Kifto, btw, is the bomb. It violates a bunch of my dietary laws and I'm a little leery of ground, uncooked meat (dude have you seen those kitchens?) but I've had my hep-A shots and do it once in a blue moon. Are you seriously doing a homemade kifto with buffalo? Wicked.

yours in food,
t.

Trigger Argee
trigger_argee@hotmail.com
Manon, Maccadon, Orado, etc.
Denton, never leave home without it.

"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me." - HST

Hmmm, I'll check next time I get a pack. I do have to treat it with a gentler hand between making the patties and getting it on the grill, because they are more apt to fall apart before you get at least one side cooked. I don't know the brand I'm getting off the top of my head, but using it is much like all the times I've cooked venison; there's a very thin margin between perfect and leather. :)

>Kifto, btw, is the bomb. It violates a bunch of my dietary laws and
>I'm a little leery of ground, uncooked meat (dude have you seen those
>kitchens?) but I've had my hep-A shots and do it once in a blue moon.
>Are you seriously doing a homemade kifto with buffalo? Wicked.

Little Ethiopia, near Fairfax and Olympic here in LA, is blessed with several excellent places. Our personal haunt is Nyala, and it is always wicked clean in there. We've been going for years now and have never had an issue with anything they've served us (aside from the occasional overindulgence ;). Bourdain hit one of the places across the street, though I can't remember if it was on No Reservations or A Cook's Tour. We're regular enough that they've stopped asking, "...raw?" when we order kitfo (they'll do kitfo leb leb for the faint of heart).

I haven't done buffalo kitfo yet, but I think about it every time I'm using it. It always seems exceptionally clean. One of these days I'll be arsed to go up and get the appropriate spices and try.

	Chad Collier Smirking Kilrathi The Captain of the Gravy Train

--Ceci n'est pas une signature.

Clearly, the science of the future has made meat even better :)

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

Or the environmental degradation has forced Kobe beef to Australia where they're being exposed to a lifestyle and feed that leads them to be less fatty then their pre-Kanto ancestors. There's people who complain about US Wagyu because they're not living on Japanese grass.

I'll also note that Zoner did the grinding himself. It's also possible that he's a culinary genius who has found the method of making amazing kobe burgers. For me the obvious move would be to mix the meat with a vegetable, some sort of bonding agent (like Worcestershire sauce), or to coat the outside with something sugary sealing in the juices so that interior is red/pink, but you still get the char. Those might over come the "mush" people complain about. Alt. he could have used a non-standard cut of beef like shank or brisket. Traditionally the Japanese don't eat kobe beef as steaks, so perhaps Zoner used the wrong word?

t.
is hungry now and it's not even lunch yet.

Trigger Argee
trigger_argee@hotmail.com
Manon, Maccadon, Orado, etc.
Denton, never leave home without it.

"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me." - HST

Hey, our beef's already top notch. We don't need weird fatty Japanese cows to make awesome burgers, thank you kindly.

That reminds me though, I really need to try a kangaburger.

Or that he googled for "Alton Brown Kobe Burger". Give the man another ten years, and he'll have to do a show on it.

--rR

Congratulations--you've just invented Kobe meatloaf. :)

Michael

Michael C. Fortner
"Rule 37: There is no such thing as "overkill".
There is only "open fire" and "I need to reload".