The Burger Thread!

[you&me]

Empire Provisions... They do a unique burger every Friday. It's been a while, but they've always been great!

(Reminder to self for this coming Friday)

[Northendzone]

What about that place in inglewood across from the lawn bowling emporium.

Simple but tasty

[Ruttiger]

Originally Posted by DownInFlames

Hy's Steakhouse - I think it's only available at lunch but they grind Canada Prime beef in house.

Yeah this place was on my list of possibilities - thanks. Also considering Sky 360, The Lake House, Ruth's Chris, Vintage (which someone else mentioned as well - can't believe we missed that one), and Teatro.

[Flacker]

Originally Posted by Ruttiger

Yeah this place was on my list of possibilities - thanks. Also considering Sky 360, The Lake House, Ruth's Chris, Vintage (which someone else mentioned as well - can't believe we missed that one), and Teatro.

Buchanan's has a great burger. In-house ground.


Edit: Sorry, I see you have that on your original list...

[White Out 403]

Went to Save on last night to buy some fresh burger patties and got there a bit late, so I had to settle on packaged "beyond meat".

I have to say the flavour is surprisingly good. I was a good tasting burger and I wouldn't have known the difference except for the texture seemed odd in some bites. Overall I'd def buy again if it was cheaper than beef, but, since it isn't I cant quite justify it.

I hope the fake beef market gets popular tho and brings down price and drives up quality. The toll on the planet for our beef demand is pretty crazy.

[Flacker]

Originally Posted by White Out 403

Went to Save on last night to buy some fresh burger patties and got there a bit late, so I had to settle on packaged "beyond meat".

I have to say the flavour is surprisingly good. I was a good tasting burger and I wouldn't have known the difference except for the texture seemed odd in some bites. Overall I'd def buy again if it was cheaper than beef, but, since it isn't I cant quite justify it.

I hope the fake beef market gets popular tho and brings down price and drives up quality. The toll on the planet for our beef demand is pretty crazy.

What is this crazy toll that a southern Alberta beef producer has on the planet? Cow farts? There are massive tracts of land in southern Alberta that are suitable for little else, but grazing cattle.

[White Out 403]

Originally Posted by Flacker

What is this crazy toll that a southern Alberta beef producer has on the planet? Cow farts? There are massive tracts of land in southern Alberta that are suitable for little else, but grazing cattle.

Cows mostly burp the greenhouse gas, not fart it out.

I was thinking more along the lines of "our meat" as in everyone. The cattle industry world wide has a terrible climate effect.

[Party Elephant]

Try Flippin' burgers in Kensington. Not fancy but good honest flame grilled burgers. The place has a bit of a hole in the wall vibe (and I mean that in a good way).

[NuclearFart]

Originally Posted by Party Elephant

Try Flippin' burgers in Kensington. Not fancy but good honest flame grilled burgers. The place has a bit of a hole in the wall vibe (and I mean that in a good way).

I like Flippin' because they are the only place I've found in Calgary that actually charbroils their patty, as having a firm sear crust with slight char is integral to a solid burger patty IMO. However, my major complaint is that they over cook the #### out of the patty 90% of time, and consistently seeing the cook/owner squish the patty on the grill to create flare ups is really amateurish.

[Shazam]

Went there last night, had black olives, horseradish, hummus and basil pesto aioli as toppings. It was great.

I thought the patty was great. Still amazed at how many people think that hamburger meat needs to be brown inside for it to be cooked properly.

[ken0042]

I haven’t been there in a long time because they had been using frozen patties. As in not home made. Has that changed?

[DeluxeMoustache]

Originally Posted by NuclearFart

I like Flippin' because they are the only place I've found in Calgary that actually charbroils their patty, as having a firm sear crust with slight char is integral to a solid burger patty IMO. However, my major complaint is that they over cook the #### out of the patty 90% of time, and consistently seeing the cook/owner squish the patty on the grill to create flare ups is really amateurish.

Completely agree. Way over cooked too many times. Stopped bothering to go there for that reason.

[DeluxeMoustache]

Originally Posted by Shazam

Went there last night, had black olives, horseradish, hummus and basil pesto aioli as toppings. It was great.

I thought the patty was great. Still amazed at how many people think that hamburger meat needs to be brown inside for it to be cooked properly.

Hamburger meat should be cooked to 160 F.

That is the temp at which E. coli dies and is the minimum temp to which a ground beef patty should be cooked.

Generally it is brown at this temperature, although there are circumstances where it can reach that safe temperature and have some pink.

[Scorch]

It’s all the premade frozen patty’s fault as they usually are made from cuts of meat that are more vulnerable to E. coli

The official “safe” temperature for hamburger meat, as enshrined in municipal codes and provincial acts across Canada, is 71 degrees Celsius, eight degrees higher than the generally accepted threshold for medium rare. “At 71 degrees … you’re basically turning your meat into shoe leather; protein with no moisture left in it,” said Gilbert Noussitou, chair of culinary arts at Victoria, B.C.’s Camosun College. The French-born chef compared it to the difference between a fresh, juicy apricot or a dehydrated apricot slice pulled from the bottom of a bag of trail mix.

ReFuel Restaurant in Vancouver has gained a reputation as one of the few establishments on the West Coast in which burgers are offered “to order.” All the restaurant’s burgers come from neck meat sourced by proprietor Robert Belcham and dry aged for 30 days. Then, chefs carefully strip the meat of fat and sinew, dice it up and grind it fresh daily. The risk, said Mr. Belcham, is no greater than a medium-rare steak, and the taste is captivating. Once a person tries a medium rare burger, it’s ‘‘‘where have you been all my life?’” he said.

Hamburgers, more so than most illness-prone foods, remain subject to an odd double standard. Raw sushi remains largely unregulated. Any Ethiopian restaurant worth its salt offers gored gored (raw beef) and this month, Toronto’s prestigious Royal York Hotel is hosting the Great Toronto Tartare-Off, a showcase of raw minced steak mixed with raw egg. “Somehow, somewhere along the way we’ve been conditioned to think that if you see pink in a burger it means someone’s trying to kill you,” said Donald Kennedy, manager of the Victoria, B.C.-based Victoria Burger Blog.

According to chefs, the fault lies with a product completely removed from the traditional, fresh-ground beef patty they learned to make in culinary school: The frozen, heavily spiced, pre-packaged hamburger “hockey puck.” Hardly the product of a single ground-up steak, these patties are packed with a wide array of beef leftovers ranging from gristle to sinew to intestines, the incubators for E. coli. A single patty can contain fragments of hundreds of cows, raised on feedlots thousands of kilometres apart. “It has increased the risk of contamination greatly over the years,” said Mr. Noussitou. Even the most die-hard fan of medium-rare burgers avoids eating frozen patties at anything less than well-done. “I would never want to eat a frozen hamburger patty medium rare because I just don’t know the providence of the meat,” said Mr. Belcham.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada...ous-as-thought

[DeluxeMoustache]

^ that’s nice and all

So my personal experience was at the District, where Last Best is now. They ground their own meat in house. So as I was throwing up that night, with cold sweats, I made a decision not to eat as though burgers are steaks ever again.

No matter the back story, there is the potential that bacteria can be present on the surface of the meat and once it is ground in to the middle, it will survive until it is cooked to a safe temperature.

‘According to chefs’ - the first person who told me he never ate undercooked ground beef was a chef, while he was teaching a cooking course.

I have cooked burgers and verified temperature using a meat thermometer and it is possible for them not to be dry. I wouldn’t spend my tuition dollars on the program of a guy who can’t surpass that culinary hurdle

[Fuzz]

I don't even like the texture of these undercooked burgers. I can make a juicy properly cooked burger, why can't this fancy chef?

[NuclearFart]

Which "fancy chef" are you talking about?

For sure there are other juiciness factors at play besides doneness. Adequate fat content, flip frequency, patty morphology and resisting-the-urge-to-squish .

[troutman]

A micro-biologist at the University told me never to eat raw shellfish (ex oysters). It is the Russian Roulette of food borne illness.

https://www.cdc.gov/features/vibrio-...ers/index.html

[NuclearFart]

Yeah filter feeders are nasty disease concentrators by design. Award yourself +10 Filthy Bonus Points if they lived near a raw sewage outlet in a 3rd world country, might as well go lick a 10000 strangers anuses (ani?).

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

All I can say is that I've made a whole lot of sous vide burgers from ground chuck cooked only to the 130s and then pan-seared, and I've never had an issue. Dunno, maybe I'm just lucky.