Hell, the red juice in a meat package isn't even blood. It's water (all meat has some water in it) mixed with myoglobin, which is the protein that makes the meat red in the first place.
As for your milk concerns; I've eaten yogurt weeks past the date and had no issues. So. There's that.
Last edited by zhero; 2013-07-29 at 03:34 AM.
As a butcher who has worked in both butcher shops and groceries stores I can tell you that (at least in Canada) the meat from the shop, and the grocery store looks exactly the same. It's not dyed in any way. The store I currently work for gets their meat wet aged in cryovac and the butcher shop brought in dry aged, whole cows/pigs etc and it was the same redness after getting hit by oxygen. If you think your meat is dyed then you are probably buying steaks that are actually pieces of meat trimmings glued together with meat glue, shaped like w/e steak (easiest to do this for tenderloin and top sirloin medallion cuts) and possibly even dyed. In which case holy crap dude, find someplace else to buy meat O.o
Well, I mean to say that the meat you buy in grocery stores is often colored. Especially if they don't have a butcher on-site. I don't really care who does it, I'd rather have less pink salmon or browner meat than eating dyes or 'pink slime'. So I go to a butcher that cuts and sells the meat in house, unless I want chicken, since I don't think people do anything to chicken.
So, just ooc, if I left a slab of beef/pork or even ground pork/beef in my fridge, uncovered on ANY shelf, it SHOULDN'T start browning after 2-3 days? o.O
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To be fair, I don't know if this is a US thing (probably? sadly?) but there was this huge thing a few months ago (and then nothing heard of since) about "pink slime", basically they were saying to get meat to look "redder" they use a ton of chemicals and color to achieve it. It even went as far as some stores putting signs up saying "Our meat does not contain any sort of "pink slime" or dyes added".
Pink slime is essentially reduced beef trimmings that used to be sold as dog food, reprocessed, sprayed with ammonia, then added to ground beef. It is allowed by the FDA but I'm not on board with it, honestly, especially since the people who 'ok'ed it back in the 90s now all work for large agricultural/farming corporations.
Meanwhile, the salmon at the grocery store says right on the label 'fish has been dyed for increased pinkness'.
So then the only real way of knowing if my GB had all sorts of goodies (and not just "fat" as in the fat that's on the outside edge of steak cuts) is to watch a butcher ground the beef right in front of me? I'm assuming it's simply the lowest possible quality of cut, ground up so he's not really adding anything, right?
To be quite blunt, I'm unsure if there's even any actual butchers left around me. I'm assuming GB wouldn't simply be $6/lb at a butcher for 93/7 though either?
Apply blizzards model to any other subscription service,you'd be outraged:
Netflix adds no new movies for a year, you click a new movie, there's a $5 fee.
You're in an accident, click your onstar button, but there's an addition $20 fee for them to help.
You turn on your tv only to find all you get are the infomercial channels. Every other show is pay per view.
See how dumb that model is?
Serious Eats will teach you how, along with a lot of the rest of the internet
The steaks you buy from the grocery store are aged too, it's just not the same process. The vast majority use wet-aging on the primals (the larger pieces of meat - not a full side though - that are then cut by the employees). You can find dry-aged in a grocery store, but it is rare and expensive. Also, I believe it is not technically a regulated term so it may be mis-labeled (though the appearance should be a giveaway).
As for meat spoiling quickly, remember that grocery stores have to ship AND have warehouses. Red Meat isn't sold with weeks and weeks on it... it has a fairly quick turnaround. That said, proper storage can extend it. Eventual browning without any associated stink is also pretty normal.
Edit: Also, there are unscrupulous stores who will redate. It is "illegal" in the loosest sense of the word, since it's considered a prepared food... usually via the barely regulated local health department, if that.
An Albertsons in my old area got in huge trouble for grinding their expired meats. It was hella-nasty. But even then, they got in trouble with corporate, not the health inspector.
Say "Hi" to your local meat manager. It should be pretty apparent if he/she cares at all. If they care, just ask what is cut/ground in store and then buy what you want from that. It's a pretty safe bet.
Last edited by Tribunal; 2013-07-29 at 03:54 AM.
Well of course they are going to look identical... after-all a cow is a cow, well maybe outside of those crazy Japanese cows that people rave about, but the whole point when it comes to it looking the same but not possibly being the actual same is all the stuff that's added (chemicals, etc) to it.
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Just ooc, do you happen to know the actual (outside of deep-freezing of it, which with WalMart meat you can definitely notice it's frozen sometimes) turn-around time from the bolt to the actual in-store time? Are we talking days? Weeks with sub-zero freezing of the carcass?
As a side-note, I'm almost positive WalMart (basically pre-packaged beef at least) beef isn't literally simply bolted, cut, trimmed, ground and put in a container shipped off to WM DC's and then put on the shelf. I'm SURE they have to do all they can to extend not only the shelf-life, but also yield of each animal.
I mean a $4/lb GB can't be identical to the price a butcher charges for doing the EXACT same thing? I can almost guarantee it purely because what exactly is a national chain like Wegmans (in the US anyway) doing differently than WM to where WM's beef (all of it) can be so much cheaper...
Last edited by alturic; 2013-07-29 at 03:57 AM.
Unfortunately my source just went to bed (butcher/meat cutter) BUT I will ask him in the AM. If I had to guess I would say around a week for the primals. Other things can certainly vary, like anything cryo-vac'd can add time (he gets some primals vac'd, but not all are). EDIT: Not counting aging. Not sure how long his main processor wet-ages their stuff. Know it can be done quite quickly, especially on a mass scale.
I was really talking more about a full-service meat department, like at a Kroger/Tom Thumb/HEB/Albertsons type store. Wal-Mart doesn't cut in-store, so their times are different. How much any given cut of meat is processed depends on what it is, but in general, the more you can see of it in the package, the less it's been messed with. Chubs of hamburger are shipped in that way, and they are the only things that most full-service departments carry that even had a chance of having "pink slime" when that whole thing got picked up again. Never buy the 10lb ground chub, that shit is nasty even disregarding the fat content. IF you can tell they were done that day, trimmings make the best ground (nicer steaks), otherwise get the 90/10 out of the case since it's most likely shipped in specifically to be ground (hard to make that fat ratio out of anything but, although some stores may augment with trimmings). This assumes you're looking for maximum quality/freshness. 90/10 isn't always the most suited to certain applications.
As far as Wal-Mart extending the shelf-life of their steaks, being able to package them off-site helps. They can be cryo-vacd into their little trays that way. Since your grocery store butcher actually does cut the steaks, they are only "wrapped" (usually cling-wrap over a styrofoam or plastic tray). There are also some treatments that are done to meat (ammonia washes) but they are less widespread that many people make them out to be AND are usually used on non-steak product. Wal-mart used to also sell exclusively Select-grade beef (which isn't bad in and of itself) but they have recently done ad-focus on their steaks and upgraded them to Choice. Adjusted the pricing to go with, though.
Wal-mart's beef pricing is a combination of several factors: economies of scale (they buy more than Wegmans/Krogers/Whoever and can negotiate lower prices/ride price changes better), less labor costs with no butchers, cheaper grades/cuts being featured more heavily. The rollback (don't think they even still use that term) type steak prices are also often a loss-leader.
Last edited by Tribunal; 2013-07-29 at 04:17 AM.