alt Hacker NewsOf course there's some trim that has to go into the grinder, but we could do a much better, more respectful job of using the animal as it was instead of homogenized lumps of 80/20 or 90/10. More beef cheek in the butcher case and homemade cabeza, more lengua, more shank and round and plate, more heart and tripe and liver, etc etc etc. Buy a subprimal and grind your burgers at home from a single animal.
This is more a culinary and ethical argument than efficiency or safety. One should use the whole animal, in all its varieties, because they're delicious. Grinding otherwise edible parts of an animal killed on one's behalf because one disfavors (or is repulsed by) them seems to me much worse than the killing. Eat - and enjoy! - all of it or don't kill it.
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These cuts have gotten expensive as they're now quite popular. Lengua, beef cheeks, and oxtail are no longer cheap.
> Grinding otherwise edible parts of an animal killed on one's behalf because one disfavors (or is repulsed by) them seems to me much worse than the killing. Eat - and enjoy! - all of it or don't kill it.
Who are you to say that it's wrong for me to enjoy some parts of the animal ground up, versus in their original shape? Either way the entire animal is being eaten and enjoyed, so there's no reasonable moral basis on which to say it's wrong. Your position would make sense if people were throwing away the cheek, tongue, etc but we aren't.
The modern meat industry makes more productive use of the animal than what has ever been possible before in history. It makes the famed Native American efficiency of animal use look laughable.
It’s not “some trim”, it’s basically half the animal. I buy several whole cows a year and out of a carcass that yields 400 lbs of meat, I’ve never managed to get more than 60% with a very good butcher. Cabeza/lingua/tripa/offal/oxtails aren’t going to get few more than a few percent points extra. Once you’re deciding on which cuts you want, that trim is unavoidable.
It’s definitely better to freeze the left over bits and grind it yourself, but half the animal gets ground up regardless.